I purchased a gently used car from a dealership back in '07 and received financing through then Drive Financial. I was only 20, a struggling single mom, then lost my job and of course fell behind, and the car was repossessed after about two years. Nevertheless, the entire time I had the car, Drive spelled my first name wrong from the beginning on all statements, and correspondence. I tried relentlessly to get my name corrected, but they simply never did it and were extremely unorganized throughout our entire relationship. This is probably why they sold/merged/changed their name/went out of business/or whatever and became Santander Consumer. It even took them over a year to repossess the car, considering I tried to contact them during their transition to allow them to repossess it because I knew I could no longer afford the vehicle. I always got a recording about their transition when I called, because my father even attempted to get into contact with them to make the past due payments before they repossessed the car but I was never able to get in contact with them no matter how much I called. Again, it took nearly two years for them to finally even come take possession of the car. With all of that said, I'm now embarking upon my credit repair endeavor, and would like to get this negative mark off my report. I still have a balance with them of over $10,000 BUT have been unable to speak with anyone to even make a settlement or offer a PFD, or anything at all. Do I have any leverage with the misspelled name, in attempting to get this removed? If so, should I first dispute the wrong name with the CRA, then dispute THEIR using this wrong name? Help greatly appreciated!
A simple misspelling of the first name probably isn't going to give you much "leverage"; however, it sounds like this lender really doesn't have their act together at all. Dispute anything that's inaccurate through the CRAs, and you might be pleasantly surprised with the response you receive.
