Fifth Third Bank auto loan prepayment ripoff or how the bank makes thousands of dollars off of you Cincinnati Ohio

Read your auto loan contract very, very carefully-every word!

Somewhere in your loan contract should be a section or clause that mentions early pay-off, how it's done, and how the pay-off is computed.

Calling the shills in Washington isn't going to help you. Especially during an election year.

You need to ensure that you have a simple interest loan and verify in the paperwork how the pay-off or early payment will be calculated. IF it turns out that you indeed have a simple interest loan with no stipulated pay-off penalty, then you should write them a certified, return receipt requested letter, affirming that your contract is for a simple interest loan with no early pay-off penalty and you want to know the pay-off amount for MM/DD/YYYY (pick a date about 4 weeks in the future.)

If they fail to respond with an appropriate pay-off figure, you'll probably have better luck sicking a State Banking Commission or Attorney General on them.

Of course, you could also engage an attorney and sue them for breach of contract and probably some other State finance regulations.

Good luck.

"Since i was tracking my loan i knew i owed about 16,000 dollars on my account.."

It is not a RipOff that your payoff was 16K, just that you do not understand the terms of your loan. Your loan is probably a simple interest loan. In this loan the interest is not added in the beginning in one lump sum, it gets applied based on the balance of your loan every month. That is a certain amount of each payment goes toward the principal and a certain amount goes toward the interest.

For Example: If you have a 10,000 balance and make a $500 payment. Of that $500, $400 will go to the principal and $100 in interest. So your new balance is $9,600, NOT $9,500. The next month that same $500 payment would have $401 applied to principal and $99 to interest(since your balance went down there is less interest).

You are not being charged any pre-payment penalties and not being charged any extra interest by paying it off early.