Repossession HQ

Repossession careers, training and information

Steven Cohen

Nationwide New Car Sales is Way Up and Perhaps Repossessions will Jump Higher Soon

By Leave a Comment

According to news reports this week, automobile sales have risen to extreme levels. This jump in new car sales is primarily due to a newly structured finance deal that has been working well to bring sales up and make auto maker happy.

Auto manufacturers nearly across the board reported strong April sales gains in the United States, powered by the continued rise in sales of pickup trucks and crossover sport utility vehicles.

The industry sold 1.45 million vehicles last month, up 4.6 percent from a year ago, according to Autodata. The seasonally adjusted annual rate rose to 16.5 million, up 450,000 from April 2014.

General Motors, the nation’s biggest automaker, posted a 6 percent increase last month compared with the previous year. It was its best month for crossover vehicle sales, which were up 25 percent companywide.

Ford also had its best month for S.U.V. sales. The shift by Americans away from cars has been striking. April was the 20th consecutive month that trucks and S.U.V.s outsold cars in the United States, according to Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst at Edmunds.com.

The rise of compact and subcompact S.U.V.s, which compete in price with traditional midsize sedans, has opened up sport utilities to consumers who previously could not afford them. Small S.U.V.s — like the forerunner Buick Encore, with sales up 29 percent in April for a 16th consecutive month of gains — are attracting not only those who are downsizing from larger vehicles, but especially drivers of smaller cars.

“A lot of people thought it would have an effect on larger S.U.V.s, but it’s actually having the strongest effect on small and midsize cars,” Ms. Caldwell said.

Dave Winslow, vice president for digital strategy at Dealertrack, said traffic at online car sites indicated a curious trend: Shoppers who research small cars, and even see them in person, are increasingly deciding on compact S.U.V.s when they actually get to a showroom.

“You may start off looking for a Camry and when you get there, come across a compact S.U.V. and decide to move up,” Mr. Winslow said. “They find out they can get a better value.”

Indeed, the typical small S.U.V. may cost only a few hundred dollars more than a comparable car. And gas mileage is increasingly competitive as well.

However, with this increase in auto sales and auto loans there will absolutely be a massive increase in auto repossessions as well. It’s just like corporate to think about the now and worry about the defaults of such loans later. This will be unavoidable especially with the sketchy economy and part time job conversions from full time jobs and or ending careers due to increasing regulations in almost every industry nationwide and world wide in many cases.

Big Bank Gets Hit with 9 Million in Fines for Taking Military Cars

By Leave a Comment

santander

Come on Santander, repossession 101. Never take active military cars? Either the bank hired agents that had no knowledge of the law but they were in fact cheap. Or Santander felt they were above the law and for that they will pay dearly. They could have allowed the debtors to keep each car for less than the nearly 9 and a half million they lost in court.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Auto lender Santander Consumer USA has agreed to pay $9.4 million to settle charges that it violated military members’ rights when it repossessed their cars, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

The Service Members Civil Relief Act cuts some slack to members of the military who signed consumer contracts before they joined the service or were called up for active duty. Under the act, lenders can’t repossess a military member’s car without a court review, if the service member took out the loan and made a payment before going on active duty.

The Department of Justice said Santander didn’t seek the required court review before it repossessed 760 cars. In addition, the DOJ said, Santander tried to collect repossession fees after it purchased the loans on 352 previously repossessed cars.

Service members whose cars were repossessed by Santander will receive $10,000 plus any lost equity. Santander will pay $5,000 each to those whose cars were wrongly repossessed before it bought their loans.

The Justice Department said the settlement is the largest it has received in an SCRA repossession case.

The Department of Justice said it began investigating after the Army’s Legal Assistance Program referred a repossession case. Justice discovered that Santander also had used an arbitration clause in its contract to keep a service member from filing a class action suit against it.

In the future, Santander will be required to check the Department of Defense’s database to see if a military member is on active duty before it tries to repossess a car.

The Justice Department investigated illegal repossessions between January 2008 and February 2013. The settlement requires Santander to review its files to identify any wrongful repossessions after February 2013.

Service members eligible for restitution will be contacted by the settlement administrator, the Department of Justice said.

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/consumeraffairs/index.ssf/2015/02/santander_to_pay_94_million_fo.html

The service members will get 5k each for the disservice they have gotten.

 

Agressive Repo and Woman Destroys Car While Being Repossessed

By Leave a Comment

Violence is certainly way up in repo work and it is nothing new that a car gets picked up that has been destroyed by an unhappy debtor but the new trend seems to be to destroy the car while it’s being picked up. The following is a video and article from the South Carolina news source. Here is what they had to say:

After an Upstate tow truck driver said he was bitten while repossessing an SUV, he pulled out his camera and started filming as the woman smashed the windows out of the vehicle. Scotty Fowler, the owner of Mission Towing & Recovery, said they had been looking for an SUV for repossession for over a week before they located it near Collins Park in the city of Spartanburg on Sunday evening. Fowler told FOX Carolina’s Adrian Acosta they hooked up the SUV to the tow truck when Lakeisha Smith, 29, jumped in and tried to drive off with it still hooked up to the tow truck, and attacked him. “I was holding the door open to keep her from starting the car and she bit me,” Fowler said. At that point, Fowler began recording the incident with his phone. In the video, the woman can be seen first pulling the SUV loose from the tow truck with two wheels off the ground then smashing the cars windows. Fowler said Smith left the scene on foot before police could arrive. He said she was bloody from the incident. A Spartanburg County deputy arrived at the scene after Fowler was bitten, but did not apprehend the woman. Fowler said, besides the damage to the SUV, there was also thousands of dollars worth of damage to his tow truck. Fowler said they were eventually able to repossess the truck. Smith spoke with FOX Carolina Monday evening and said she “flipped out” when Fowler tried to tow her car. “I went out to retrieve my things out of the car and as soon as I touched my car, I was being yanked and pulled by the driver, so then I became angry and just flipped out, like seriously,” Smith said. Spartanburg police said Smith was wanted on a charge of assault and battery third-degree for biting Fowler. Smith said on Monday night she would turn herself in. “I’m not going to run, I’m not going to look over my shoulder for a cop, it’s not what I do,” she said. Online jail records show Smith was booked into the county jail about 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday. A judge gave her a $2,130 personal recognizance bond. When asked by reporter Adrian Acosta why the Spartanburg County deputy didn’t act, Lt. Tony Ivey with the sheriff’s office sent the following statement:

“Based solely on the actions shown on the video you sent me I see a repossession taking place which is a civil matter and not a criminal matter. The actions of the woman in the vehicle are alarming but she has not tried to assault anyone and she is not yelling or screaming profanities in public. She breaks out many of the windows of the vehicle but the question that is not clear is at what point did it stop being her vehicle, which she has a right to do with as she pleases, and becomes the property of the bank or finance company that is repossessing it? The deputy must not have felt that the vehicle was no longer her property and chose not to intervene.”

Work in Aircraft Repossession for a Living

By Leave a Comment

As spoken about in several articles and many of you have seen the probably not so hit TV show Airplane repo, you will know that contrary to all the fake things the TV show aired, there is allot of truth to much of it as well. Just to be clear coming from a guy who really repossessed hundreds of Aircraft ranging from Commercial airlines, Lear Jets and even the small Piper planes, I can unequivocally tell you that there is allot of excitement in this field so no matter how you judge the fake shows or should I say scripted show, the scripts are coming from past situations. Every single repossession guy has stories that most people would find to be crazy.

The thing is that you could ask me 20 years from now about all the aircraft repossessions that I did and I would remember them clear as day. It is one of those jobs where you remember the cases as in most cases you get deeply involved in the search and organization processes. Here are a few questions you may have:

  • Do you have to be a pilot? No you do not. It would surely help allot but not at all a necessary qualification. However in this business, like in the shows many of the guys you will hear about or meet are in fact pilots. Since this industry is so low key or has been low key for so long, the only way guys knew about it in the past was being pilots. I personally have had many commercial pilots ask me for work for them on the side which I have used over the years, more so since I am not a pilot.
  • Do you have to have the ability to find jet planes all over the world? Yes you do, this is the main qualification that will differentiate you from the others and if you suck at locating, plan on being used less and less over the time working.

 

Florida Man Awarded Over a Quarter Million for Problematic Vehicle Repossession

By Leave a Comment

For some reason the agent makes contact with the debtor in order to get the vehicle, it could have been keys, it could have been called in as a voluntary repossession as many times this happens and the debtor has second thoughts after setting the thing up. Sometimes the bank will assume it is voluntary in order to save a few bucks on the repo, banks pay about half for a voluntary than an involuntary.  The agent knocked at the door at 3:45 in the morning to ask for keys and allow the debtor to get his possessions, what is wrong with these agents? I would never knock at a door at 3am. Just take the car even if you drag it out and worry about the keys another time or just have new keys made. I never understood the concept of these guys insisting on keys. Perhaps it was that non of my repossessions were even close to voluntary. [Read more…] about Florida Man Awarded Over a Quarter Million for Problematic Vehicle Repossession

Usually How Many Payments Behind Before Repossession is Assigned

By Leave a Comment

 

The repossession department of a bank like Citibank or Bank of America will typically put a repo order out right at around 90 days of delinquency. These departments are on their own away from other banking departments within the bank, usually located at the corporate location of the particular bank you hold the loan with. The repossession manager has allot of power in that area and has the ability within reason to delay that period or repossess sooner than that 90 day period. There will be factors looked at prior to that car going into “repo status” as they call it.

The bank or finance company will look at this prior to assigning repossession:

  • How long have you had the loan
  • How payments have been since you had the loan
  • Is there a possibility of fraud attached to the loan
  • Was the loan a straw purchase meaning was it bought for a friend or significant other
  • Does the car have and maintain insurance
  • Does the debtor answer the phone when called or does he/she duck the bank
  • Job history of customer
  • Previous tapes of phone calls, all calls are logged into the system and what was said is logged in with the date
  • Amount of loan left
  • Amount of payments
  • Value of car verses loan
  • Auction or wholesale value in the current market
  • other possible risk factors

After review they may feel the car is not even worth the cost of repossession so they will strongly attempt to collect on the car by threatening repossession which on paper will happen but you will keep the car as we wrote in the article here. In which case they will keep the title of the car but you will maintain possession and cannot sell the car until it’s fully paid off. If you were an idiot on the phone verbally abusive or any of that, they will take note of that and probably not work in your favor. If you are however struggling due to a job loss they will typically work with you as long as you have been honest, but be warned banks do lie as well and also cannot be trusted. Many times a bank has stated they will work with a customer and that very same night put the car out for repossession. This happens often if they feel the car will be hidden.

The answer is typically at 90 days after a ton of collection phone calls or attempted collection phone calls. You can expect on the 90th day that the car will be gone so be prepared.

Man tries to unhook car that was already repossessed

By Leave a Comment

CONYERS — A Conyers man unhappy with having his car repossessed decided to take matters in his own hands and attempted to unhook his car from the tow truck and try to destroy the evidence by breaking the surveillance camera system, according to the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office.

A Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office deputy was called to a location on Country Trace around 7 p.m. on March 11 where he found a number of people yelling in the street near a tow truck and a red car in the middle of the road.

The tow truck driver told the deputy that he was there to repossess the red car and when he hooked it to the truck, the car’s owner, George Ali Robinson, ran outside and demanded to see paperwork justifying the repossession.

“(The driver) stated that he walked back to the cab of the truck to retrieve the paperwork and Mr. Robinson started to unhook the car from the truck,” Deputy Timothy Kutsch reported.

The tow truck driver told Robinson to leave the truck and car alone and that the camera in the truck recorded him tampering with the car. Robinson then reportedly went to the cab of the truck and tried to take the keys out of the ignition. The two men struggled and the victim showed the deputy red marks and bruises on his arm.

“(The driver) stated that Mr. Robinson then grabbed the camera and ripped it out of the vehicle,” the report states.

He gave the camera to another man, later identified as Cedrick Scanes, and Scanes took the camera into a nearby home.

“I asked Cedrick what did he do with the camera and he stated that he did not know,” Kutsch stated in the incident report. “I advised Cedrick that (the driver) saw him take the camera into the house and that if he knew where the camera was, he needed to return it. Cedrick stated that he did not know were the camera was. I then took Mr. Scanes into custody for taking the camera into the residence.”

Cedrick Maurice Scanes, 22, of 2635 Country Trace, was arrested and charged with theft by taking and being party to a crime.

Robinson, 45, of 2700 Cherry Blossom Circle, was charged with simple battery, criminal damage to property, obstruction of law enforcement officers and entering auto.

 

Repossession without having a license to repossess becoming common place

By Leave a Comment

repotruckI have been saying for a while now how badly unlicensed repossession would affect this industry, how badly rules would change as populations increased especially in Florida. These days, dealing with cultural and societal differences that seek nothing less than massive short cuts have taken place and aside from all other business, licensing and legal issues the repossession field would be greatly impacted due to extreme price gouging among other considerations. Not to mention making a complete mockery of the business itself.

One of the main problems is the grey area of in house buy here pay here dealers being allowed to repossess their own cars. This grey area will be fully manipulated and indeed exploited so much that the state will have to eliminate that all together. Just because a buy here pay here lot does in house financing should not allow them the right to repossess as well when licensing takes so long to get. There is a reason for such a long process of licensing so that this business will hopefully remain professional.

How do you know illegal repossession are taking place?

To start with all you really have to do is take a note of all the newer cars being picked up by tow companies left and right. In fact, I was in the SW part of town the other evening and while pumping gas, I noticed a fully marked tow company truck with no repo numbers whatsoever with a fairly new 2012 Dodge Caravan on the back. While there is a chance this car could have really broken down and yes their are absolutely lemons being sold, it’s just far too coincidental for this to not have been a repo or lets say for coincidence sake, 1 out of 10 of those are true break downs. This is a case where a tow company is being used to do repossessions for someone and the fee’s are probably 3 times lower than the true fee’s of a repossessions company. This car was probably picked up for a $100.00 bill which is insane for this business.

Repossessions being down for the last few quarters but yet car sales are up

This could be the fact that the numbers are coming from repossession companies and all of the unlicensed activity is not showing up in those numbers therefore coming out much lower. Sort of like the unemployment rates dropping due to those on unemployment running out of unemployment and eventually falling off the charts, allowing for false numbers among a society that actually listens that garbage.

Bottom line is that it is a fact unlicensed activity is going on and going on in a big way. It must be addressed before the industry is crushed completely by the new form of short cuts that are flying in. Its all about making a dollar today and screw tomorrow ridiculing a once highly professional industry or multi tasking with an unlicensed tow truck company.

Ironically, the same week I notice this truck at the Hess station, the very next day I have two e-mails from the FLCARS asking to fill out a survey on unlicensed activity and also with a date to meet on unlicensed activity so it appears that this is already being addressed thankfully. For the sake of repossessions, we are in hopes that this unlicensed curb comes about. My take is that the grey area must be eliminated and used car dealers should lose the right to repossess their own cars, allowing for dealers to say “yes he works for us.” The same thing is happening with law firms now and private investigators being hired without licenses which should also be addressed simultaneously.

Nevada Man Guilty of Shooting TV Show Crew

By Leave a Comment

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada judge set bail at $100,000 and a sentencing date for a 43-year-old former schoolteacher jailed after he was found guilty last week in a shooting involving the crew of the reality TV show “Repo Games.”

Carlos Enrique Barron returned Tuesday to the Las Vegas courtroom where he was convicted last Thursday of felony assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, burglary and misdemeanor discharging a firearm.

He could get probation or up to 22 years behind bars at sentencing May 27.

Barron told jurors he acted in self-defense when he confronted two men in a van that he said was blocking his driveway while other crew members filmed a vehicle repossession scene in his North Las Vegas neighborhood.

Three shots were fired. No one was wounded.

Read more here

Can a Dealer Repossess a Car Before Registering it

By Leave a Comment

leinregisteringOver the years of being in both liquidations and repossessions I have encountered the problem of needing to repossess a car or vessel before actually titling it for several reasons I will outline below. First off quite often someone makes a car purchase and might be short on the registration fees or the tax money or even a touch short on the car so the dealer figures OK no problem I just won’t register the car until they pay it. I used to think like that years ago, until I tried to do a legal repossession and ended up having an issue and almost taking the loss.

If someone buys a car from you and there is any kind of balance due or if it is a check transaction you must go on as a lien holder. The customer will not like this but too damn bad, nobody can be trusted and it is what it is. If they are unwilling to allow you to do them a favor and be a lien holder on the vehicle the only other thing you can do, is have them bring the balance in cash before releasing the vehicle otherwise there will be no legal repossession. Remember that possession is nine tenths of the law so if they really rob you and you take the car back quick enough you may be in good shape but you want to look at the legalities a little closer in your state.

Will I lose money if I go on the car title as a lien holder

What the customer doesn’t understand is that you really are risking your money even if you do go on as a lien holder. Lets say he owes you $300.00 on the total balance, it doesn’t matter what its for, registration, taxes or whatever. It is the balance on the car sale, so if you go on as lien holder you will actually have to follow through with registering the car which costs money in which was not paid in full. Do I like this law, no not at all but the law is the law and if you want to make the sale and allow them to leave it must be done like this so that you can repossess the car and later file for a repossession title.

If you end up repossessing the car, it will cost you the amount of the repossession, the amount of the registering of the vehicle and if it was a bounced check, you are at a loss, if it was a balance due, you will then send them a check less the repossession fees of what they did give you for the car. Usually it will never get that far unless it is a total bounced check. Not many people will lose a car over a short $300.00 for registration.