Consumer complaint received 2020-06-09
Product: Vehicle loan or lease — Loan
Issue: Struggling to pay your loan — Denied request to lower payments
Company: Westlake Services, LLC (CA)

My wife and I have lost all our income due to COVID-19 shutdowns, and are unable to claim unemployment because we are here on an XXXX XXXX XXXX. We have been out of work since XXXX, and it's now XXXX, so as you can imagine, it's taken its toll. 

In XXXX, I called Westlake XXXX, the company who finances our car loan, to explain what had happened. They were at first, very understanding, told me not to worry and said that they would allow payments to be added on at the end of the loan term whilst the shutdowns were happening. What a relief, and exactly how you would hope a finance company would react to a global crisis. 
When I called to arrange the same thing in XXXX, they told me that was no longer an option. They told me that investors had 'put the pressure on ' to start collecting some payments, so they would have to take a payment for XXXX, on the premise that next month in XXXX we could do another deferral. I did not have the money - at this point it was very stressful and a case of do we eat, or do we pay our car payment? We struggled and cut back on food in order to make the payment, just so we could ensure we kept our car and at least we could then have the next month off. 

XXXX came along, and they started calling me 5 times a day ( at least ) to collect the payment. I explained that we'd arranged to defer the payment, and they told me this is no longer acceptable and every month 's payment has to be made. 

Unfortunately at the end of XXXX, things got so bad that we had to lose our home. The day after we'd moved out, I received another phone call from Westlake, where I explained that we'd lost our home the day before and we really need to find an arrangement for these payments. The person on the phone made no response whatsoever to me sharing this with him, all he could say was 'right ... so can you make a payment today? ' Having just lost our home, my level of XXXX XXXX was hanging by a thread and I must say, having someone respond like that pushed me over the edge for a second. 

Since then, they've been calling me multiple times a day starting at XXXX every day, sometimes from different phone numbers where they don't even tell me where they are calling from right away, which just feels so scammy. Just now, they called me again, and I told them I was making this complaint, and told them again the situation we are in, to which they again responded, 'right ... ' - no apology, no offer to come up with a solution. When I told them it was unethical to respond to someone saying they've just lost their home with a 'right ', they hung up on me. 

I am just disgusted with this company. We pay a huge amount of interest to have a loan with them, because we are not XXXX, and surely we pay this much interest because we are a higher liability, and something should be in place for a situation like this? We can't get jobs because our XXXX won't allow it, so we are literally stuck right now. Companies like this need to factor in consideration for the mental health of their clients and stop hounding them when they are in horrific situations.