PRESS RELEASE
In a meeting attended by repossession industry leaders at a secret location in October 2014, current practices of repossession assignment forwarders was discussed. During this meeting, it was agreed forwarding companies are guilty of unfair and unsafe practices when assigning repossessions to their network of agents.
Agencies are expected to work for fees much lower than industry standards. Repossessors have been asked to work assignments contingent on recovery meaning if the car is not recovered, there will be no monies paid to the recovering agency. Expecting repossessors to give away services such as skip tracing and storage is common practice among the growing number of forwarders.
Public Safety has always been first and foremost in the practices of the professional repossessors. Because the forwarders have forced the recovery agency owners to work for low fees, quality of service has suffered. Truck and equipment maintenance has declined while hiring standards have been decreased. More than ever, consumers are at risk of untrained and unlicensed repo-thugs attempting to repossess their cars. Forwarders have resorted to hiring the cheapest instead of the more qualified.
On many occasions, recovery agencies are asked to work assignments which have previously been assigned to neighboring repossession companies without their knowledge. This practice has always been considered not only unsafe, but unethical.
Repossessors normally would hook up to a wanted car and safely leave the scene of the repossession. Now the recovery specialist is asked to knock on the customer’s door and ask for the keys after hooking up the car to save expenses to the client. This dangerous practice, known to cause unwanted confrontations has been blamed for injuries and death to customers and repossessors.
Agents are running multiple addresses on assignments only to determine the account is a charge-off or a skip. Repossession agencies are unable to invoice for time and mileage when checking these old accounts which add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. When the recovery agency notifies the forwarding company the customer/debtor has moved, the forwarding company sells this information to their client. Forwarders are saving millions not paying recovery companies for this information. The forwarder notifies their client the debtor has moved and charges a service fee. The repossession company loses, the forwarder wins.
Forwarding companies are not only paying low fees, but expect the recovery company to wait as long as 90 days to receive payment.
It was recently learned, the CEO of one of the largest forwarding companies stood up at a recent repossession convention and told the group they should “sacrifice the quality of service and appreciate the volume of assignments received”. When repossessors sacrifice the quality of service, people die. We cannot, any longer as an industry risk our lives as well as risking the lives of the consumer because of unsafe and unfair practices of the repossession assignment forwarders.
The attendees of this meeting have decided it is time to do something about the forwarders taking advantage of the professional repossession companies. An anonymous strike was discussed by the group.
Taking a page from the worldwide group known as “Anonymous”. Anonymous is a loosely associated international network of activists which promote anonymous social engagement by direct action.
Repossession leaders at the unsolicited meeting have chosen to use the group’s signature logo.
An anonymous strike is designed to protect the repossession company from acts of retribution by the forwarding companies.
Beginning February 1st 2015, repossession agencies will begin the anonymous strike.
Across the nation, recovery companies will accept the assignments as usual but will not work the assignment. All updates sent to the forwarding company targeted will state “address checked but vehicle not showing”, or “customer no longer at address”. The anonymous strike is designed to substantially lower the productivity of the forwarding company. Anonymous strikers will work some assignments while ignoring others. In some instances, no assignments will be worked while in some situations all assignments will appear to be worked. In some situations, only certain clients of the forwarder will be selected as “not to work”. The forwarding company and their clients will not be aware of the loss in productivity for 90 days costing the forwarding companies and their clients millions of dollars and possible litigation concerns.
At the meeting held in a secret location, a list of the forwarding companies was presented to the industry leaders for review. After careful consideration Primeritus Financial Services based in Nashville Tennessee was chosen as the first forwarding company targeted. The second forwarding company to be targeted has also been chosen but the name of the forwarder has not and will not be revealed.
Repossession companies would prefer a direct relationship with the lenders but understand the forwarding companies do provide a service to the lending community. “This could have all been avoided if the forwarder was not so greedy” one of the attendees stated.
The message has been sent, repossession companies have been notified. Repossession agencies from all of the national, regional and state associations are banding together beginning February 1st 2015 to protect consumers. Professional repossessors will bring the quality of service back to professional standards set before the forwarding companies entered the repossession market.
Sent by,
ANONYMOUS
Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage. It is an agreement among firms or individuals to divide a market, set prices, limit production or limit opportunities.[1] It can involve “wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties”.[2] In legal terms, all acts effected by collusion are considered void.[3]
kinda missing the big picture..good idea..but the contracts is where we need to work on…
wonder what they (forward & legals) would do if the professional repo companies just started state by state cancelling their all contracts until they agree to our collective rates and storage fees/close fees IF EVERY ONE IS THE SAME THEY HAVE TO ACCEPT OUR FEES AND CHANGES…in stead of not working the accts on the back end ..leave them with no one professional to place the orders with ..make them redo the fees schedule…if we all want to “strike” that is a union action..we need to start to act like a union…we all need to come up with a “fair” repo rate that all on this “strike” can work under and keep it simple and SAME and stick to it…don’t sign the contract until we nation wide, state by state have the money we want and don’t give free storage…don’t work for contingent…not working the accts will hurt..but not having any one on their “repoman list” that is any good or professional will hurt worse… the banks will want the “NAME COMPANIES”..as for those companies that will work for free u better step it up a knotch or agree to join our cause…working at volume at a cheep rate only cheep n s your company and the banks and forwarders dont respect you as a professional.. at a better rate and sticking to the “collective rate” you are now a professional and if you dont… YOU ARE ONLY HURTING YOURSELF BY WORKING FOR CHEEP…..you cant give good service and will have high damage reports…make the “true clients”..the lenders place orders direct again by using companies that have zero loss runs and fair prices…we need to do this state by state place it in the govt regulation the banks can not use companies with high loss runs …until all professional repo companies are controlling our own contracts….not the companies (forwarding) that just pen push and lip service our true clients, saying look at my repo list we only hire the best repo companies ….we will not be a UNION or “collective” group
FYI we are not employees…we are COMPANIES THAT are Independent from the forwarders…
I dont know any contractor that does not write their own contracts or sets their own prices…
example..construction, taxi companies, roofers, realestate sales, party rentals, barricade services the list goes on and on….WHERE DID WE GO WRONG ….letting them set our rates and writing our contracts….
I totally agree. Because they have been targeted watch for them to send to another forwarder. Each of them need to come out with us professional repossesors and let them see how hard we work. I do believe we all need to stand up for a close/cure fee. if you run account even once you still have to pay for your overhead, ins. to run your truck, maintenance and not including use of gas or diesel fuel.
I would also like to add that due to new compliance laws, forwarding company and Lenders are now asking us the repossesors to break compliance laws so each of you watch out!
There is no honor in this… if your desire is to choke out this forwarder, then you must take the steps needed to get different clients so you can afford to stop providing your professional services to them… and then help educate and empower your friends so they can do the same… removing professional services one by one from their pockets becomes devastating on the large scale… but this “strike” seems more like a kick in the chin rather than a solution to any problem in my book… educate yourself, evolve and provide superior services so you can get different clients and stop supporting Primeritus with your services… This is how you hurt them and counting on other car thieves to have your back when they are starving will only make you the nail that stands out… I have already seen responses to this post in private groups where people said “More work for me…” and this will be the reality of many that simply can not afford to stop putting money in the 4-6 week pipeline.
This is Brilliant !!! Everyone please join.