True story: my neighbor's lease payment was under, by a dollar or two, no more. An error in his banking practices, I guess.
They came and repossessed it in the middle of the night. He offered to pay, and they wouldn't take a credit card, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, wire transfer, or any other modern form of payment. No, he had to go to Western Union. Someone who's more up on this sort of stuff can explain that.
A week later I drove him to the parking lot where they take repossessed cars. I waited until he signaled that all was OK.
I saw someone's RV getting repossessed over $50 in 2019. They were clearly living in it. I walked over and handed the repo guy $60. He wouldn't take it. This was in a cul de sac. I parked my truck across the way so that it would not be possible to enter or leave the cul de sac. Someone called the cops. The cops showed up after a few minutes, good response time. The lady living in the RV was told that she could not park there anymore. The repo guy said he was taking the RV. I repeated my offer to pay in front of the cop. The repo guy took the $60. I was told to move my truck afterwards. The lady living in the RV never paid me back. I am overall OK with that. These things happen. This was in northern California. Random acts of angry kindness should not be relied upon.
Aren't repo guys usually just contracted out to do the job and pull the vehicle by the lender? They don't usually have the authority or facilities to take a payment on site.
There was a piece of paper involved that the woman living in the RV had to sign. Much to my annoyance at the time, it took a police officer showing up for that to happen.
Why did you feel the need to give the working class guy a hard time for doing his job? He probably makes an hourly wage or a commission on the vehicles he returns to rightful owners and now he’s facing not making any money for the day or possibly being fired.
He was operating lawfully and you decided it was your job to enforce your justice. I don’t know, just seems wrong. I think it would have been more noble to take her in for the night or take her to a shelter where they can help.
But leave regular guys just trying to put food on their tables alone.
Zeroth, there really is no substitute for losing your home. Not being taken in for the night, not a shelter.
First, morality and legality are not identical.
Second, not doing something is a choice. Not acting and acting both have moral implications.
Third, systems are at times very good at pitting individuals against other. An employee can say "they are just doing their job"; meanwhile it is the organization structure that might strictly limit what authority the employee has. This can put the customer in the unfortunate position of having to raise issues with multiple layers of people, which takes away from their normal duties, before getting an issue resolved. A considerate customer might feel bad for "taking up" the first tier employee's time. This is by design. Think of car dealerships. I feel terrible for the dynamic of almost everyone involved there.
I haven't really laid out the specific connection, but I think you can see what I'm getting at. The car companies that hire repo companies probably don't empower the repo companies to exercise discretion. The people that build these corporate structures tend to understand human psychology and use it to their advantage.
I think the moral thing is to let the guy do his job that he is lawfully doing. Buying him off night buy the person a night but doesn’t solve any problems and only lets someone feel good for doing the minimum - bribing.
If you really want to help then take the person in or get them a hotel or take them to a shelter. Help them get their vehicle back by paying fines and the payment. It’s a lot more work but solves the problem better than hassling a guy, involving police, and then bribing the guy to go away for a night.
The only person to benefit from this is the guy who gets to feel morally superior while bragging about it on the internet.
Not particularly out to brag. Annoyed at the lack of a systemic solution. Random lady in a RV should not have to depend on random angry italian immigrant having cash in wallet, being more angry than tired that day, and having been made aware of a situation by loud shouting.
I may be a fat bastard these days but I grew up with "If someone big is harassing someone little, let the small person hide behind you". Probably old fashioned these days. Got me in trouble a couple of times in my life but at least I sleep well at night.
> He offered to pay, and they wouldn't take a credit card, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, wire transfer, or any other modern form of payment. No, he had to go to Western Union.
I'm guessing they told him to get a Western Union money order, as those can't be reversed after they're cashed (AFAIK). Most modern forms of payment offer some level of consumer protection, as in they can be canceled or reversed. TBH a repo business might not even be able to get a merchant account for CC processing due to being a high risk business. Merchants that have high chargeback rates have to pay higher processing fees and can even lose their merchant account if their chargeback rate is too high for too long.
Historically, a common usecase of bitcoin is as an intermediary between two people. If I recall, if you "buy a pizza with bitcoin", the seller instantly switches it over to cash, so there's basically no loss.
Cashier's checks from people you don't know or banks you don't know should always be considered forgeries until proven otherwise. They are easy to fake and the penalties for faking them are virtually nil; hence forgeries are rampant.
The days of cashier's checks being default trustworthy are long gone.
This happened to me. A guy mailed me a cashier's check and said his "friend" would pick up the item. I called the bank the check was drawn on; they confirmed it was fake.
I pretended I never got the money and the "friend" never showed up. Lesson learned. Now I only exchange Craigslist items in person, in the parking lot of a police station, for cash. And I test the cash with a counterfeit detector pen.
> And I test the cash with a counterfeit detector pen.
FYI, having owned a liquor store for a while and processing a ton of cash, the only counterfeit bills the pens could detect were the crappy amateur ones that were already pretty obvious without using the pen. Plenty of counterfeit bills passed the pen test just fine and didn't get revealed until the bank rejected them from a deposit.
If the named payee has physical possession of the check, they can cash it and it can't be undone(without a valid court order, i.e. fraud, etc). All other situations, it can be undone, with work.
Do you know how he was paying? By check perhaps? I've been late on payments of various types a few times over the years but I don't think I've underpaid even once, because with how most things are set up that's not easily possible.
Follow-up: I saw him today. He had paid the dollars but left off the cents on his monthly payment, which was $0.42. When that reached $10, GMAC turned it over to Western Union, who went after him.
I don't think so. Aside from the shadiness of it: he called the car loan company and they owned up to repo'ing it. He did in fact pay too little on his monthly payment. So how would a scam work?
(I don't know if he called the police or not, or what they would do in a case like this. Probably say, "Yep, sounds legit" and that would be the end of it.)
How much was the underpayment (I know you said a dollar or two, but I presume this had gone on for a while?). It's odd to me that they repo'ed rather than contacting him to say 'hey, there's a problem with your account.'
I find the story wholly believable, a lot of people who work in payments seem to be stupid and/or stubborn, and it might be the industry selects for those traits.
> It's odd to me that they repo'ed rather than contacting him to say 'hey, there's a problem with your account.'
I imagine there's a lot more money to be made making someone pay for the fees and costs of a repo, than a phone call asking them to pay a few dollars. Although his friend could also be lying about the few dollars part.
That would be an insane practice. The internal overhead is a pain. Repo is a last effort to protect the asset rather than a way to cure an account. Even with repo fees there's no guarantees you're getting that money back and the asset won't be worth as much if the customer doesn't true up.
General industry practice people are put in delinquency buckets, and generally not by amount but in the 'are they past due or not?'
I'm speculating but there could be other behavioral scoring as well and if they just automated the process of dispatching well... that's on them and good luck with that overhead.
I’m fairly convinced a lot of places give loans with horrific interest rates hoping person defaults. They repo the car. Resell it. The person usually has only mostly paid interest and still owes most of the original price of the car plus fees.
> It's odd to me that they repo'ed rather than contacting him to say 'hey, there's a problem with your account.'
That might be a good assumption if human beings were involved in the decision loop to repossess the vehicle, but I wouldn't be surprised if the entire process is automated.
> but I wouldn't be surprised if the entire process is automated.
Yup, I accidentally underpaid my mortgage one month by $0.20 (I fat fingered the online payment). I didn't get my house repossessed, but it did send the automated billing system at the bank into a huge tizzy that took six months and multiple phone conversations with different departments to sort out. I was flabbergasted that it caused so much commotion, as it can't be that unusual an error to occur.
They came and repossessed it in the middle of the night. He offered to pay, and they wouldn't take a credit card, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, wire transfer, or any other modern form of payment. No, he had to go to Western Union. Someone who's more up on this sort of stuff can explain that.
A week later I drove him to the parking lot where they take repossessed cars. I waited until he signaled that all was OK.