“That was humiliating and embarrassing.”
Corpus Christi, TX – August 24, 2021 – “I felt like I was sinking through a hole with my friends and everybody in the restaurant watching,” said Angelica Garcia as she recalled watching her 25th wedding anniversary present getting repossessed. Financing, tax, title, license and payments, everything was in order, but somewhere, somehow, things had gone wrong.
On July 18th, Garcia was coming out of a restaurant with friends when she discovered her 2018 Mercedes Benz hooked up to a tow truck and ready to leave. Rushing up to the driver she explained that she was up to date on her payments and that there had to be some king of mistake. Her husband has just purchased the vehicle from an AutoNation dealership late last year.
“I’m gonna drop it. Take your car home and hide it until you get a hold of Auto Nation.” Advised the unnamed and soft-hearted repossession agent, probably equally wary of a breach of peace risk. That’s when Garcia discovered that her car was on a national database, most likely located by LPR.
Following the agent’s suggestion, Garcia went home, stashed her car on got on the phone. That’s when she discovered that there was another lien attached to her vehicle. Garcia claims that no one at the dealership had advised her of this and that Auto Nation GM, David Clower advised her that they had purchased the vehicle outright from the prior owner.
Garcia claims that Penfed Credit Union had the title, but then was told by them that the vehicle had been sold to Security Service Credit Union last November, the terms of which were not disclosed. Both Penfed CU and Security Service CU apologized and advised her that she had nothing to worry about. No one states who assigned the account for repossession.
It is unclear if the dealer had sold the same contract to both credit unions or if Penfed had sold the loan to Security Service. Considering the loan had made its way to such a high level of delinquency without Garcia being alerted by delinquency letters or calls makes one question whether her and her husband had soon after the purchase move or that the CU’s system loan data contained an error.
That it was not recovered from a given address in earlier repossession assignment stages could be explained by the vehicle routinely being locked in a garage. Assuming Garcia made all payments as claimed, this was likely a first payment default for either PenFed or Security Service and one of them may have assigned it for a skip insurance claim through their CPI provider, who in turn used one of the national repossession forwarding companies that they usually employ.
Either way, it’s a mess and the repossession agent did the right thing by trusting her. Checking for secured title is a standard of pre-repossession due diligence and how this got missed is of question that may unfortunately find itself answered in discovery or deposition should she employ her legal options.
There is no worse feeling in the collections and repossession world than a wrongful repossession and my sympathies go out to folks at PenFed and Security Service. Someone owes the agent a beer for saving a wrongful repossession. Let’s hope this serves as a reminder and teaching point for all and that this doesn’t make its way to the court.
Source: KZTV
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