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Smart Shopper Owe more than it's worth... I'm upside down and I can't get up!
1160 messages, Last post on Oct 22, 2009 at 7:11 PM
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Hello, all. My mom got a 2006 Chevy Malibu last July. Well, just last month she had complications from heart failure and had to have triple bypass surgery. Of course now she's in recovery and probably won't be able to work to keep the car. Suggestions? We know the finance company wants the money, not the car. Is there any way out of this short of repossession? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Replying to: yusuf1 (Mar 10, 2007 4:13 am) |
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I have had a time or two of having to do pretty much exactly what joel0622 describes. I've got a few physical problems that will lay me low for a while and I am the one at home that writes the checks and keeps the finances. In early 2002 I was pretty incapacitated for a month. Even when I could get around and do a little that payment didn't seem on the rush list when I was busy with recovery. I made a call to the lender on my car loan and explained the situation. They could not have been nicer about it. I proposed just skipping a month and extending teh loan out a month. No problem. My one other experience like that in my memory was a credit card that has an insanely low interest rate from quite a while ago on a transferred balance deal. Again I was ill and missed a deadline. This resulted in a late fee and the great interest rate turning into an ugly one. My wife made one phone call and they took off all fees and brought the interest rate back down. This was not a company normally known as nice guys. If you are straight with them they will usually make something work. Just a note - if your credit stinks and you have a history of late payments or defaults the above will not hold true. |
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Replying to: yusuf1 (Mar 10, 2007 4:13 am) Is your mother going to lose this car anyway? In other words, she is not going to be able to get the money to make payments? And, there is noone that will take the car and take over the payments? (Be very careful here. You don't want someone else to physically have the car, not make payments, and your mother still have the loan in her name. You need to have a lot of confindence in the person taking over the loan...) Is the car worth more or less than the remaining loan amount? If it is worth more than the loan amount, selling it for this would be the way out. If it is not worth the loan amount, and it will be lost in any case, don't make any more payments, these will essentially be lost money. Just call the finacnce company and make arragement to return the car. This is still a repo, but there is no reason to have the car towed, with possibly personal items inside that have to be retrieved, etc. If it's a lost cause, give it up. |
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A thought for this thread.... I recently saw a relative lose a car. Bought from one of those By Here, Pay Here places, I think. He was behind. They sent out a couple of girls/young women to talk to him. If he would have given up the car, I think they (since there were 2 of them, one to drive his car), would have taken it. After talking to him, and another family member talking to them, they did not take the car. I think they might have gotten $100 or so, which still did not get him caught up on the loan. In a few days he got some more money together, which he paid aganist the loan. But in a couple more weeks he continued to be behind and lost the car. Anyway, I got to thinking about this. They send out a couple of young girls, not 'Big Fred' with a tow truck, greasy overalls, and a big wrench in his back pocket. These non-agressive girls can successfully pull a few more dollars out of him. (From 'loans' from family members that are not actualy loans since they will never be paid back.) They probably come by a time or two again and pull some more money, but he never has enough to be 'caught up'. The car is taken back. Any of this additional money they were able to pull out of him after he got behind is just more gravy for the BHPY seller. They've got the car again, it's a semi-junker in about the same condition as when he got it a few months ago, they will be able to resell the car again for the same amount he bought it for. Anyway - The bottom line. If you are going to lose the car, let it go. Any money given in the last few days is just gone. It is an expensive way to get a few more days transportation.
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Replying to: bolivar (Mar 10, 2007 11:56 am) I guess thats one way to look at it. Another way would be that they collected more of the money in which he/she signed a contractual agreement on. |
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I would never, ever let the car be repossessd if there was the slightest way to avoid that. That is a major, major mark on your credit report. The missed payments that lead to the repossession are in addition to that, so you are taking a really bad situation and making it worse. If in this case the car is worth, say, $1K less than the loan balance I'd try to get the $1K together. A decent credit record is worth more than that and a bad mark on your credit stays there for at least three years. Obviously there are individual cases but as a rule you want to keep those things to a minimum. Plus there is the validity of a signed contract and a moral obligation to live up to it. |
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Replying to: joel0622 (Mar 10, 2007 12:12 pm) But you're not familiar with how BHPH works...it's in their business plan to repo as many cars as possible, but only after squeezing as much money as possible off the borrower. It's a viscous circle for most buyers.
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Replying to: bolivar (Mar 10, 2007 11:56 am) Do I have this straight? You lend me $1,000. I pay back $100 then skip town. I can have a clear conscience because you're holding gravy, right? tidester, host SUVs and Smart Shopper
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Replying to: sebring95 (Mar 10, 2007 1:13 pm) I am not familiar with them? Well thank you for pointing that out to me. I will make sure they know that when I am standing out front this evening before we close BS'ing with 3 or 4 of them that are here to buy are wholesale pieces from the weekend. Maybe one them can explain it to me. You saying they are in the business to repo cars is crazy. they in the business to have a very, very strong AP Account, a large group of people making there payments on time every week. When they open the door on Saturday morning the want a large pile of envelopes laying there that came through the slot from FP's (Friday pays) They do not want to chase paper They do not want to pay a repo man They do not want to hassle with a PO'ed customer What they want is you to pay your fricken car payment like you promissed you would when you signed the contract. I think it is funny how allot of you think you can just wipe your feet on these guys because they are a BHPH lot. That speaks volumes.
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