Because we look at our customers as family, we want them to succeed. We want to avoid repossessing vehicles.
The fact is that if we repo’ the vehicle, the customer is not paying for the vehicle and we’re not going to get paid for it. Repossessing really doesn’t do us any good. We want to keep our customers in their vehicles and get them to pay it off. Ultimately, we want to earn their business again when they need another one. Repossessing the vehicle ruins the relationship. The first payment is most important. If there is somebody who bought the car and misses their first payment and they don’t call, they don’t let us know anything, then we’ll have to pick up the car—because that’s their first payment.
We’re pretty clear up front of how we work, we don’t sit there and sugarcoat anything. We pretty much tell customers when we’re reading off the contract that the first payment is very important.
If someone has been with us for six months to a year and they’ve been great with their payments, and all of a sudden they lost their job or they got sick, we’ll work with them as much as we can to keep them in the vehicle and get them paying. Because that’s what we want—for them to keep paying and stay in their vehicle.
If it doesn’t happen or they can’t find a job in a month or two, there’s no other choice but to pick up their vehicle. Payments are set up for however they get paid: weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly or monthly. They signed a contract saying they would pay the vehicle off.
If a customer has lost their job and can’t afford the vehicle anymore we repossess it and bring it back to the lot to sell. If we sell the vehicle for more than the contract with the original customer was worth, we’ll cancel out their contract and they won’t need to keep making payments.
We don’t repossess vehicle for late payments as long as those payments are made. However, payments that are made after the 10-day window get an extra 10 percent added on, or $10—whichever is less.
The most important thing to avoid having your car repossessed is communication. As long as you communicate and let us know what’s going on, we are more than willing to work with you as much as we can. Not answering the phone, avoiding us, is the worst thing you can do.
Some people think that used car and buy-here pay-here dealerships are just in business to give them a car and then repossess it and that’s how we make money.But we consider all of our customers like family. We work with them to succeed and are happy when they do.
