This was a while ago but I only found this site now. On May 20, 1997 my car was repossessed. I found this out by calling the Menlo Park, California Police to report my car missing. They promptly told me it was repossessed. I'll talk about the cops later.
The police already had a number for me to cal and to make a long painful string of phone calls I finally got to PNC bank in Pittsburgh.
At the time I was still using my paystub book from Chemical Bank bank. I had no idea they merged with PNC. The PNC folks said I was missing 4 payments and that they had had the vehicle repossessed according to their rights and merely as a business process. I asked if they attempted to contact me and they had said they did. I had moved from New Jersey a short time before leaving forwarding addresses with all magazines, and loans promptly. I was also listed in the white pages with address and phone number. I had an answering machine yet never received a message.
PNC insisted I had not paid 4 of my payments. The missing payments were random with payments occurring in between. I had checked with my bank and sure enough the checks I had written were not cashed. I had no physical evidence or carbon copies of these checks and I had been a traveling consultant at the time and didn't balance my checkbook for months (maybe longer) at a time.
I immediately paid the car off since I had plenty of savings to do so. The loan was so cheap it wasn't worth dumping the money into it. I had to go to the police and pay them an extortion to get my car from repossession. I then had the pleasure of going to get my car and paying another $525.00 to get my car. Now I paid more in fines than in interest in the loan. I got my car the day after it was repossessed.
Now I started to investigate. Since I had never missed a payment on anything in my life and had a spotless credit history (which was now destroyed even until today). I narrowed it down to the US Postal service or Accounts receivable at PNC.
Bottom line:
No effort was put into finding me. I did a white pages lookup for 3 minutes found and called the Vice President who wrote me the letter stating that I'm am responsible (which I acknowledge) and will do nothing. While talking to him on the phone I told him how long it took me to look him up and call and that if one administrator had taken the time to look me up this would not have had to go this damaging and anguishing route. He was unsympathetic. My credit is screwed and I don't deserve it. I had more money in the bank and I was making more money than any other time in my life. It's been 5 years. Mr. Vice President Gary Urschler probably is President of PNC now and I can't even get a home loan. I believe they were laxed in their investigation. I believe they do not care about the customer. I believe if the mutant scumbags at the repo dump could find me the folks at PNC could have found me.
That's all I got to say. It has been a difficult road and there is no ear or sympathy from the Credit history companies. They will not even publish my side of the story in my credit report.
Michael
Dallas, Texas