Santander took over my auto loan from Triad/Roadloans in January 2010 without any notice or communication. I had stop receiving payment statements as well. In February ’10, I filed for chapter 7, but excluded my auto loan and continued to make payments. In July of ’10, I received a phone call from a repossession agency notifying me that my car was being repossessed. I call Santander to inquire about the repossession and found that Santander did not map my Roadloans account number to a new Santander account number they had assigned to my account. The checks that I was sending Santander under my old account number was being applied to someone else account. I forwarded the agent copies of the checks and she stated that she would to credit the payments to my account and suspend the charge back/repossession procedures and return my loan payment status to good standing. Again, I did not receive any correspondence from Santander, thus I thought my account status had been restored to good standing and my status was fine.

Fast forward, to February 18, 2010. I was visiting my son and on my son. I was told by his mother that my car was missing. Needless to say I was not happy. The next day I called Santander to inquire if they had taken my car. The customer service agent was so rude and would not take the time to explain in any detail. I mentioned to him that there was an error in my account and that it was never corrected. Now, I did miss payments for December ’10 and January ’11, but I had mailed a check in for December ’10 in which Santander cashed Monday, February 14, 2011. I had planned on mailing them another check for January’s payment on the Friday when the car was taken and another the final week of February to get caught up. Since I did not get any assistance from the agent, I waited until Monday February 21 to contact another agent. In the mean time I was left without a vehicle and not sure whether or not I was going to get it back, thus I took the payment that I was going to send Santander and purchased a car from a friend.

When I got the new agent of the phone February 21, she assisted in reconciling my account and mentioned to me that they should have not taken the vehicle. Santander had made the changes to correct my account back in July of 2010, but they did not reverse the charge back in the system. Thus I had been paying on a car that had been charged off in July of 2010. Not only did they not reverse the charge back, but also due to the sale of Roadloans to Santander, my forgiveness of 2 payments missed in December of 2009 were not recorded on my account. When I asked for the payout balance, it appeared to be a higher amount than I it should have been. I believe that there had been some additional charges placed against my account. My records indicated that I had a balance was around $11K on the vehicle and there’s indicated a balance of $15k. I’m not sure of what the other fees were but I made my concerns known to the agent. The agent mentioned to me that I could possible pick my vehicle up in 2 days. She had put in the request to reverse the charge back, but it was going to take a couple of days to reverse. After a couple of days, I realized that I no longer wanted the car that was taken back from me in error, thus, I plan on letting Santander keep the car.

This experience has left me not willing to deal with Santander and their business practices. Since I have made this decision, I went on the internet and found that there are hundreds who share my experience since their auto loans had been sold to Santander. To add, they made me drive for 2 hours to a small town north of my city to get my personal belonging. When I arrived at the repo location, I was informed that the auto was moved south to another location that was 40 miles from my house. I had to wait 2.5 hours to get my belonging. The agent at the auction center said that this was very unusual. I hope that the attorney general or some other federal agency investigates Santander’s business practices.

I expect them to sell the vehicle in the next couple of days and bill me for the balance like they have done too many of their customers. I fully intend to file complaints with everyone who will listen. I have CC’d my local and federal agencies to voice my concerns and experience with this financial institution. I have also included a link to hundreds of individuals who are not happy with Santander’s business practices. Is there currently a class action suit against Santander either locally or nationally and if so, could you direct me to them.