Consumer complaint received 2024-05-20
Product: Vehicle loan or lease — Loan
Issue: Repossession — Account reinstatement or redemption after repossession
Company: TOYOTA MOTOR CREDIT CORPORATION (CA)

My car was repossessed on XX/XX/XXXX. Toyota Financial Services claimed that i had not paid my loan since XX/XX/XXXX. I have been paying this loan for XXXX XXXX years now using XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX account thru AUTO PAY. We have a bit over a year to pay and maturity date is XX/XX/XXXX. Never missed a payment since its an auto pay and our bank account has more than enough balance to cover the remaining outstanding balance of {$5500.00}. Not knowing any problem concerning our recurring payments, TFS claimed that there has been no payment made since XX/XX/XXXX. On evening of XX/XX/XXXX, our car was taken from our parking lot. XXXX notified me and I immediately went to talk to the guy taking my car. I told the guy there must be a mistake with their record because it is impossible that there is no payment made since theres an auto pay setup for the payments. XXXX years and XXXX more year to go, why would i not pay it and it doesnt make sense at all. Next morning i called TFS XXXX Department and talked to a lady which was not very helpful at all giving me information why and what happened to my recurring payments. its an autopay and it should be good every month. She said that there was a return payment on XXXX ( payment request for the bank was returned ). No other explanation than NO payment was made. I wanted to talk to a manager but she wouldn't turn it over to verify my inquiries. Me and my wife personally went to the bank and talked to the Bank Manager to verify why there was no payment made for TFS, the manager verified that there was NO request made from TFS. XXXX XXXX would not deny a payment request especially if there is money in the account. Proof of balance in our Bank XXXX for the period of XX/XX/XXXX to XX/XX/XXXX with ending balance of {$7300.00}, XX/XX/XXXX XXXX balance is {$7800.00} and XX/XX/XXXX {$8400.00}. Our XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX account is actively funded for the AUTO PAYMENT of TFS only. 
After going to the bank, we called TFS trying to find out the problem why there was no payment for XXXX to XXXX and why there was no payment request from their side. The lady on the phone said that the bank account # they have on record was an INVALID although she didnt tell us what account # it was. How can they have an invalid account # if we have not changed any bank account information, it is the same bank account number and routing # information for the last XXXX years of autopay. None of the people from the Repo Department was helpful enough to tell us how the problem started and resulted to repossessing our car. I checked all my voicemail and NO record of TFS phone # or messages. They sent me an email dated the day before the repossession but that email was not opened at all as I was not aware that there was a problem with regards of my car payments. 
We got our car back a week after going through all the process that needed to be done. I called TFS again on XX/XX/XXXX just to check and make sure that there will be no more problems with the upcoming payments and that the AUTO setup is okay and good to go ( still the same acct and routing # ). We asked the TFS lady, her name is XXXX, just trying to get some information what happened to their records on XX/XX/XXXX and how our problem started in the first place. We learned from her that they had a system upgrade/update in XX/XX/XXXX and that may have affected their record including our bank information. None of the XXXX XXXX mention anything about the system update and they just assume that we neglected our car payments in general. That Invalid payment request happened on XX/XX/XXXX stopped the XXXX setup until XX/XX/XXXX and caused the repossession of our car. I started researching complaints about TFS on XXXX and found out a lot of problems and complaints similar to us because of the system upgrade they had in XXXX. There was no disclosure about it and this problem has caused us so much stress, time, loss of wages, late fees and a bad remark on my credit report. Is there anything we can do to rectify this situation and avoid problems in the future? I want to make sure it does not happen again to us and/or other XXXX customers/clients XXXX the future and/or to help others be aware if they are going through the same problems like we went through.