Consumer complaint received 2019-10-07
Company: TCF NATIONAL BANK
State: NC
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Loan
Issue: Problems at the end of the loan or lease
Sub-issue: Unable to receive car title or other problem after the loan is paid off

Complaint:
The company in which I have a vehicle loan went out of business due to fraudulent activities to thousands of people like myself. I am attaching websites to show the length of unethical activities they participated in as it relates to my own situation. Apparently, when they went out of business, they sold the existing vehicle loans to a unknowingly third party company in which they did not transfer accurate records. I have been locked out of the online portal of my online account several times after calling the number given to me from the former Gateway One company to reach the third party company that is supposed to be handling the completion of the vehicle loans after the company went out of business. I have called hundreds of times to fight to gain access to my statement after the third party company told me verbally over the phone that my balance was always over {$900.00} even after I called in to pay my bill, the balance never went down. I was transferred from another country ( where the 1-800 #  routes you to ) and I requested to speak with someone in America. Everytime I was transferred to someone in America, they told me that they did not see that I owed {$900.00} plus dollars. The third party company outside of America stated that I had two repossessions of this vehicle and that is what made up the extra money owed. My vehicle has never been repossessed. I have never received any court documents, certified mail or notification of a repossion since I have owned this vehicle. The vehicle has never been taken from me in any way. I again called hundreds of times to find out how this happened. I was hung up on from the international person that transferred me over for several months. I contacted my local attorney general 's office to get help. They researched this and told me that their were thousands of complaints and the company was forced out of business by the courts. They helped me get Gateway one to give me access to the statement so that I could see the false charges on my statement. They also helped me put a fraud alert on all of my credit reports. They stated that since the company was out of business, the credit reports would investigate it and remove it. After I gained access to my online statement, I saw the false repossession charges myself. I called back again to Gateway One and asked to speak with someone in America. I spoke to a woman who introduced herself as the manager of the  repossession department. She stated that her name was XXXX. She put me on hold and pulled up my account number. She came back on the line and stated, no you do not have any repossessions under your account. I will contact the accounting department to have this removed. I asked for a copy of all of my records from Gateway One to  ensure that nothing was showing up under my name. The attorney general also asked me to do this so that I can see any certified mail, court documents or FDIC required documents that Gateway One would have had to file in order to initiate or administer a repossession under my name. I was told that since their was no repossession, there was nothing that she could send me. So, the attorney general helped me mail a packet of evidence to each credit bureau to get the false and inflated repossession charges off my statement so that I can have the correct pay-off amount. I paid it down to under {$2000.00} at this point, but with the fees, it is still showing over {$4000.00} in error. When the credit bureaus investigated this, Gateway One ( who refused to respond to me or the attorney general with evidence of any repossession paperwork or notification date and sign stamped or certified ) send false statements to the credit bureau and are continuing to report the wrong amount on my credit report. This has been going on for over two and a half years. After Gateway One went out of business, the new administrator has told me several times that they have no evidence or paperwork of any repossession under my name. However, after the credit reporting agencies investigated them, they must have supplied false documents to get the credit agencies to keep the wrong amount on file which shows not only one, but TWO repossessions. I called back to Gateway One after getting an update from the credit bureaus. I spoke to XXXX who stated that he was the manager. He again assured me that no repossessions were showing up under this account and that he was going to speak to his manager to review the statement and have an updated copy showing no false repossession fees. He stated that he would mail me a copy of the updated statement showing me the accurate pay-off amount so that I could pay it off and have the correct amount. He never contacted me back. A few months went by and Gateway One again sent a 3rd party person in another company to call me stating that I owed over {$900.00} including two repossession fees. The company went out of business due to falsifying thousands of people like my account. It has been very frustrating to try to show integrity and pay off this loan when they refuse to remove false repossession fees and destroying my credit. I would like to see a copy of the certified court stamped repossession documents signed by a judge, a copy of all of my internal records from Gateway One and all of their third party contractors and a copy of the information they submitted to all three credit bureaus. This evidence will provide clear proof that these repossession fees are fake and are being used to harass consumers like me when companies are exposed for not honoring the FDIC and Consumer Protection laws. Please help me, please! These people don't care about no one!

Company public response: Company believes complaint is the result of an isolated error
Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief