HI everyone, i made a post several days about how to go about turning in my truck which i hadn't made payments in 2 months and simply decided to keep one car and turn in my truck. Well it turns out before i turned in my truck they took my other car which is a VW Passat which i owed the same 2 months. 12 days passed and i was able to come up with the money to pay the late months and get the car back, or so i though... At this point I owe VW Credit $1300 which is 3 months, and they are charging me $350 as a "repo fee", on the other hand I called the place where the car was being held and they say i owe them $475 for repossession plus storage fees, mind you the car has only been there 12 days, another thing i should mention is that i had called in and they said they charged $55 plus $5 per day to keep my car stored, now they changed their mind. So i decided to call VW Credit and humbly and politely see if they could help me out somehow .. well to listen go to wfernandez dot net /vwcall the site wont let me post links. i cut out the beginning where they ask for my personal info. what do you guys think? they are putting me against the wall and im basically going to lose my car which im almost done paying for it. i refuse to pay $850 for the simple tank of having a tow company come to me and tow my car for 10-12 miles, a service that should cost no more that $100. what should i do?
As you're unfortunately finding out right now, repossessions can be really difficult to deal with. Once the repo man takes your car, you really have little power to negotiate and the people in this business are rarely friendly. They get cussed at, threatened, and physically attacked all day long, so I guess that rubs off on them after awhile. Anyway, it sounds like the deal you're getting from VW is about as good as you're going to get. In the past, since they would consider you highly likely to default again, you usually would have had to pay off the entire loan in order to get your car back. Now, they're asking you for what's past due plus the amount they had to pay to get the car repossessed. $350 sounds a little high, but not unreasonable. I'm sure every repo company charges different rates depending upon how difficult the car is to find and repo. Also, VW isn't going to help you deal with the repo company at all. That will be completely up to you. My only suggestion is to get in touch again with the Repo company and ask for a complete breakdown of all their storage charges, etc. Explain to them that you want to get the car back and you're in the process of paying back VW credit. And remember, the $475 they're charging you isn't just for storing the car, but they may also be storing personal items in that were in the car. As with everything in life, storage and the responsibility for keeping your things safe comes with a fee. As far as the amount they're charging, it doesn't sound too unreasonable for the amount of time that's passed, but then again I'm not in the business and really don't know what the average repo company charges for storage fees. Unfortunately, your hands are really tied here. Best of luck to you in getting the repo man to explain his fees and maybe cut them down to a level that you can afford. And remember, this too shall pass. Life doesn't end with a car repo.
