Consumer complaint received 2016-12-20
Company: ALLY FINANCIAL INC.
State: TX
Product: Consumer Loan
Sub-product: Vehicle loan
Issue: Managing the loan or lease

Complaint:
My wife and I had XXXX vehicles that were both damaged in a series of hail storms that blew through our area back in XXXX. The damage was enough to total out both of our vehicles. Getting everything sorted out on my truck was easy - XXXX XXXX had a great process that took all of like 2 weeks to sort out from start to finish. 

My wife 's car, financed through Ally Auto, was a total nightmare. 

My account was placed in their version of lock down ; I could n't get anybody to talk with me and the people I did speak with were unable to give me any details. This was an issue as I had a ticking clock to get my XXXX insurance ironed out. Around late XXXX, I was escalated to their 'Executive Customer Relations ' team to try and get everything fixed up. At the same time, I was also chatting online with their chat representatives just hoping to get some answers. Neither department was able to assist me in any real way. I had requested some simple documents from them - stuff like company letterhead with my account number and the address to remit payment to. They were n't able to even provide that! Just as frustrating, the ECR team would take weeks at a time - with me emailing almost daily - between responses. 

After some seriously frustrating phone calls ( and about a month ), the ECR team finally managed to send all of my required documents to my GAP insurance provider. During that month long span, I was still getting on Ally 's chat service and trying to track down the documents myself. Part of that involved asking questions that this rep did n't want to answer. So, he kicked me out of the chat service in the midst of our discussion. My login session had expired so I tried to log back in a few minutes later to reengage in the conversation. Imagine my surprise when I get an alert that said I was locked out due to too many incorrect login attempts! Even more surprising because I had saved my password on my computer ; had n't typed out my password for MONTHS with no problem. 

At this point, I also asked ECR about why the heck this was going on ; I was informed that there was no attempts to lock me out, it was just an automated procedure that kicked in. It all seemed to coincidental - and erroneous due to the type of error I received. They stuck to their guns though - and were quite rude through this whole process. I got fed up with dealing with the ECR team and managed to find contact info for several executives in the organization. I passed along all email threads and asked for them to look into it. After much back and forth, it came to light that it was NOT an automated process that had kicked in. Rather, it was incorrect password attempts - as I had been saying since day XXXX. Whenever this came to light, the individual I was speaking with, XXXX XXXX, started threatening lawyers as a way of strong arming me into staying quiet about the whole issue. 
This whole situation was n't entirely unfruitful though. I finally managed to find my payoff amount. In XXXX. 7 months after I started the process.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation