Consumer complaint received 2018-09-05
Company: Westlake Services, LLC
State: SC
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Loan
Issue: Struggling to pay your loan
Sub-issue: Lender trying to repossess or disable the vehicle

Complaint:
I purchased my vehicle with Westlake financial Service in XXXX. I had my first hiccup with them in XX/XX/XXXX I sent them a payment for the month by money order from my local post office and put it in the mail using the address that was included on the billing statement. After a day or two passed I called the financial company to check on the status of my payment all to find out that they never received it. They then wanted me to fax them over a copy of my receipt from this as " proof '' so I faxed it over to them got confirmation and waited again all to find out that they never got the fax either. By this point my account with them was days past due and I had to turn around and send them another payment ( this made two payments for one month ). Needing my car I did what I had to do but I wasn't going to let that stop me so I went back to my local post office to inquire about that money order I sent and it came back that the money order was received by someone ( due to law the post office could not disclose this info to me ) and cashed. Fast forwarding to XX/XX/XXXX after changing up the way I made payments to this company now paying them over the phone and keeping a record of all my confirmation numbers I ran into another issue. Something about the month of XXXX huh. After my monthly payment was made to them I got the gut feeling to call them a week later to check on the status of my account saying that just a year ago I had problems this same month. I contacted them and asked the customer service rep if my account with them was current he informed me that it was, I proceeded to ask for a payment book and after being on hold for 10 minutes while he talked to his supervisor I was told that he didn't even know what that was and that they didn't do those but he could give me documentation of my payment history. I took that as proof saying that now im realizing im dealing with a shady finance company I made him send me those details to my email. This phone call took place on XX/XX/XXXX not even two weeks after that phone call I received another phone call from a lady stating that my name was on the repossession list and that my account with them was showing me to be 3 months behind on my payments. I knew this was a lie I told the lady that two weeks ago I just spoke with them and got a copy of my payment history from them sent to me via email and that that showed otherwise. She mentioned I could fax over that information to them I declined because of the previous time they told me to fax something to them. She then insisted that if I paid {$50.00} to them it would take my name off the repossession list. Not having the money at the moment I sent it anyway via XXXX and what went from only {$50.00} turned out to be {$61.00} this money was sent to them on XX/XX/XXXX. On XX/XX/XXXX I walked outside thinking I was going to work and my car was gone. After texting my boss to inform her that i would not be into work that day I immediately called my local police department not knowing where to really start and I was informed that they received my car at the precinct at XXXX XXXX. that morning by law they weren't able to disclose who took it but c'mon im not crazy once I confirmed that it wasn't stolen I knew who came and got it. I called the financial company spoke with XXXX XXXX ( the guy was very rude btw ) and after questioning him about what was gong on he began to ignore and beat around the question but then proceeded to tell me how much i had to pay them in order to get my car back if i wanted it back. After reminding him that he never answered my question as to why they came and got my car, all he could say was because my account was 3 months past due. After explaining to him that i had confirmation numbers for all my payments and telling him that everything went through ( meaning the money was taken out of my bank account ) he got very frustrated made the comment " Well ma'am on your account its showing you are past due, is there anything else i could help you with today '' and everything else after that he continuously cut me off not even letting me get a word in. My boyfriend then tried to talk to him and ask him some of the same questions. One question that was asked was why would you send a person a confirmation number if you haven't gotten your money! ( that's like getting a receipt for something you haven't purchased yet ). XXXX had no answer for that question at all and he got nasty with him too rushed him off the phone and hung up in our faces. This has by far been the worst experience yet within two years and the sad part about it is i now have this on my credit report, no car still to this day because banks wont even look at me for another loan, and i only had less than a year left to pay on that car.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation