What are my rights when loan company accidentally pays off car loan?
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My husband and I had our trucked financed through Citifinancial. We came into some financial hardships and just needed to defer our payments for a month till we got back on good footing. A month later, we receive a letter with our original finance papers stamped with "PAID IN FULL" across them. We were puzzled.
My husband immediately called them and asked about this and we were told by one of the agents who said that we had a zero balance and that everything is in order. Strange, bizarre, but we figured that because of the financial state of the country, we figured that lenders were writing off debts on loans that were previously set on high interest rates or something…
Fast forward 6 months later, we receive several phone calls from what the caller ID shows as "Irving, TX" and an agent left a message on our machine stating that they wanted to talk to my husband about reopening our loan…We call them back and we are told that our car loan was accidentally paid off and Citifinancial wanted to reopen our loan due to this mistake, but in order to get the ball rolling, they needed our original loan papers with "PAID IN FULL" back. A few days later, we receive a UPS correspondence from these same people claiming they are Citifinancial, but it just all seems too suspicious. NO official letter head, first names only on the documents, etc. They are even asking for the money retroactive to the mistake, so we are talking about 6 months worth of payments paid back to them for their error.
What are our legal rights? If they send us paper work stating that our loan is paid off, are we obligated to reopen this loan or even pay any money back retroactively? Anyone else ever experience this?
3 Comments on this post
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SPIFIMAN1 said:
Auto finance is what I do for a living do not send them anything.
Don’t even talk to them. If they call simply say I don’t know what your talking about I have your letter stating that our account is paid in full and hang up.
Your best defense is their letter stating that your account is paid in full.
You are not legally obligated to to reopen this loan in any way, their mistake is your windfall.
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0February 9th, 2010 at 12:23 am -
Ingrid S said:
Spiffman is right you should ignore them, Don’t answer their phone calls or reply to letters. Keep the "PAID IN FULL" letter in safe place.
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0 0February 9th, 2010 at 12:23 am -
StephenWeinstein said:
If the correspondence was really delivered by UPS (the private company with the brown trucks), it is definitely a scam and not Citifinancial. Citifinancial would use USPS (the quasi-government entity with the blue trucks). If correspondence was sent by UPS that one would expect to be sent to be sent by USPS, it was probably because sending it by USPS would have violated mail fraud laws.
If still in doubt, call Citifinancial at the phone number on your loan paperwork, not the telephone message or the recent correspondence, to verify that it is them.
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0 0February 9th, 2010 at 12:23 am
