Consumer complaint received 2016-11-03
Company: Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc.
State: NE
Product: Consumer Loan
Sub-product: Vehicle loan
Issue: Managing the loan or lease

Complaint:
I am writing this in recent response to Incident ID : XXXX. I have had a tough XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX. I fell behind on the loan with your company, XXXX. After tax time XXXX XXXX XXXX, I had caught up the loan balance and everything looked good going forward. After that XXXX plus payment was made ( XX/XX/XXXX ) I was made aware that Santander would not report the loan being current to any of the XXXX credit bureaus. As you would imagine this infuriated me. As a consumer, you have to ask yourself, why would you continue to pay on a loan that a financial institution is supposed to be governed by law, says since you were more than 120 days late, that waives your rights under federal law and will no longer report any current, on time payments to the XXXX credit bureaus? So when that occurred it, made me want to not pay on this loan more and more as the months went by. This is due to the fact that any on time payments were not being reported to the bureaus and having this loan was not making a positive impact on credit and my livelihood. So due to that, the loan defaulted once again. The auto was placed in repossession status ( as you know on XXXX XXXX ). I was advised to pay XXXX to redeem the vehicle which I originally did on Friday, XXXX XXXX XXXX. The auto was picked up at XXXX on Monday XX/XX/XXXX and sent to auction on Wednesday, the XXXX. I was advised via numerous call on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to Santander the auto may be moved to auction within 24 to 72 hours. I figured my call to the company repossessing the vehicle every day and Santander would prevent that. Also I figured my phone call to Santander, especially, if and when the car was sent to auction they would advise so I could make the appropriate decision to redeem or not redeem the vehicle. The tow company never returned any of my calls and only after I made the payment on Thursday, XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX central time via money gram, I was advised it was sent to auction on Wednesday. This was unacceptable. I called every day and was advised I made an arrangement to pay on Wednesday that should have prevented this. Also doing my due diligence, I called Santander Wednesday night at around XXXX central time to verify status of the vehicle ( whereabouts ) and amount to redeem. I was advised it was still at the original lot, which I found was untrue. Why would Santander not advise the tow company that I was paying on a specific date to redeem the vehicle? Did Santander no longer care and want to get rid of it asap if I decided not to respond or pay? Regardless of the issue, it 's still customer service. I feel XXXX was in collusion with the tow company to sell the vehicle ASAP and also the tow company wanted to get paid for shipping it to the auction when they did not have to. Even the tow driver misrepresented himself at the time of pickup. His name was XXXX and he said, just call Santander, make arrangements and the vehicle will still be here until XX/XX/XXXX and you can pick it up. Myself and XXXX ( primary on the loan ) were both present during that conversation as we removed our belongings from the vehicle. It feels like this was a sneaky business tactic by the tow company. As a result, I incurred additional pain, suffering and expense to retrieve the vehicle. I did contact Santander on Thursday about this issue, but it was not until later in the day that after speaking with more than XXXX individuals, one person with the office of the president decided to do what was right and have my vehicle returned to the original lot of the repo. The only catch to that is that they said they would bill me for having the vehicle returned to the original lot of the repo company and said it could take up to 5 to 7 days. So once again, I have to pay again in additional costs, interest and fees.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation