Consumer complaint received 2017-10-13
Company: General Motors Financial Company, Inc.
State: MI
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Lease
Issue: Managing the loan or lease
Sub-issue: Problem with fees charged

Complaint:
I purchased a new lease from GM at the end of XX/XX/XXXX. I set up automatic payments on the GM Financial website in XXXX once I received the account information from them in the mail and those payments began being drawn from my account. I purchased another lease in XX/XX/XXXX and auto-pay was set up online. I had no reason until I needed to link the 2 leases online to review the XXXX account online. I saw the payments being removed from my bank account on a monthly basis. 
On XX/XX/XXXX, I went online to link the 2 accounts under 1 id and discovered I had {$160.00} in late fees for the XXXX lease. I called GM Financial that day at XXXX and spoke with a customer service representative concerning the late fees. She stated the automatic payments had a 1-month delay and so the first payment due on the XXXX lease was never applied. The result was every single payment after that was late and a late fee was posted for each payment thereafter. I asked why I was not notified of the issue and she stated that the collection department made attempts to call me monthly at the numbers on file. I stated I did not receive any messages from them concerning the account status. She stated she had authorization to waive {$50.00} in fees only. I requested to speak with a supervisor. The supervisor stated she would only waive {$50.00} again claiming they called me but never spoke with me. I explained I never received a message. She asked if I had a custom voicemail message on my phone and I told her I did not. It is only the default one with the phone number. She stated they do not leave messages in those instances. I inquired as to why they did not attempt to email me or send a letter concerning the late fees. I was told they do not make attempts by those means if the account is set up for auto-pay. The XXXX XXXX was set up for auto-pay in XX/XX/XXXX and I still received a paper statement in the mail in XX/XX/XXXX. That tells me they do send correspondence via mail even with auto-pay set up which contradicts the supervisors statement. I set up the automatic payments for the XXXX and the website stated those would take effect immediately. I ask the supervisor why it makes that statement if that is not the case. She placed me on hold and then claimed she went through the prompts on the website and in fact they do state that. She then stated the website was changed since the XXXX was set up and prior it did not make that statement. She claimed she went through the prompts for the old website. I do not understand how a finance company can charge you late fees for over a year but never make reasonable attempts to inform the consumer. They had mail, emailing and phone contact information yet they only use phone attempts via an auto-dialer and never left a message. I was never informed you were required to have a custom voicemail greeting on your phone in order to get a message. I was never informed that you will never receive mail or emails from them in order to inform me about my account not being in good standing. 
At the point I applied for the new lease and why wouldnt the leasing division inform me of late payments and incurred late fees for happened over a year. Nothing was reported to the credit bureaus either. Reasonable attempts should have been made to inform me of the issue in order to give me the opportunity to correct the problem. Instead they made a business decision to allow the late fees to continue to accrue. They had a number of means in which to contact me that required little labor on the finance companys end but they did not make any attempts. I think they need to revisit their processes concerning collection efforts on auto-pay accounts. 
I promptly made the extra lease payment XX/XX/XXXX knowing it was due.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation