I previously wrote about an incident where my husband and I
received a lien notice. in October of 2013, against an auto we had donated and
had not seen since the previous February.
In the meanwhile, I am putting the takeaways here, right at
the top. That way, if you don’t have time, or otherwise don’t want to read this
story, you can go away having been completely and utterly informed by this
article. Don't worry if these takeaways seem unrelated; you'll thank me for this information later.
The TAKEAWAYS:
#1 - DO NOT DONATE CARS! If you want a group to benefit by a
gift from you, sell the old clunker you have for parts, file all the paperwork
yourself, and hand the group a check. Read farther down if you want find out
why this is better.
#2 - Transparency means that everything organizations and
institutions don't want you to see is farmed out to a contractor, where the
opaque becomes more opaque; no one you need to talk to is reachable by phone;
you can’t get a report in under 4 weeks, though the data is all digitized; and
no one is accountable to the truth but you.
**
As I mentioned in that previous article, I sent $20.00 to
the DMV to get the history of the car, so I could prove I no longer was
responsible for it. This was indeed the best $20.00 ever spent. I received the
documents in November; they proved we no longer owned the car. I collected these,
along with everything else I had relating to this odd incident, into a file. I
had already returned the lien notice to the DMV indicating I had no interest in
the vehicle and was not the owner of it. I waited for the other steel-toed boot
to drop.
Last Thursday, we received a call from a collection agency. Clunk. That was the other boot.
The collection agency was calling to tell us our credit
rating was at risk if we didn’t pay a bill for towing and storage of the vehicle
we no longer owned. I explained we had a release of liability and that we never
saw the vehicle once it was towed away from our home, and further, we had never
received a bill from anyone and expected to pay nothing.
I faxed documents over to the agency and the woman called
back to say that their legal advisor would look it all over and call me to let
me know what the resolution was.
Tuesday morning, after a holiday weekend, the call came. The
documents I provided were insufficient, I was told—we would still be obliged to
pay. I reiterated that I had never seen a bill from anyone, and had no idea how
much money was involved. We are not
legally obligated in the matter of this car, I yelled into the phone; this is a matter of public record! I
asked the woman to fax me all the information pertinent to their case. (They
are actually required to do so, by law.)
The more I thought about this, the madder I got. How in the
world did this happen? I called the donation center that handled the car and
left an urgent message, asking for a return call. I emailed Consumer Action
with my story, asking for advice.
Then, I started doing research on the web. What was up with
this collection agency?
Well, what was up is that they have an “F” rating from the
Better Business Bureau. The complaints I found on Yelp resonated with what I
was experiencing. Interestingly, this company had been named in a class action
suit against a consumer credit reporting agency that allegedly disclosed
consumer credit scores to that collection agency and possibly others, in clear
violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so that consumers could be targeted
based on their financial vulnerability. Lovely.
The collection agency settled with plaintiffs out of court. Well, you know what
that means…
(Sigh)
Knowing there was no reason for me to be charged for the
towing and storage of someone else’s
wrecked car, it was time for me to play hardball back. I drafted a very
terse note to the general manager of this agency:
We have been
receiving phone calls from your collection agency regarding an automobile (VIN #
-------) that we have not held title to since February 5, 2013. This is a
matter of public record through the Department of Motor Vehicles, to which you
may apply for verification.
We find it curious
that we are receiving phone calls from a collection agency when we have never received
an invoice or a collection notice. We can only conclude that you are making a
fraudulent claim against us on behalf of your client.
If your office
persists in harassing us in a matter that does not concern us, or if our credit
rating suffers at your hands, we will take legal action. In the meantime, we
shall be contacting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the FTC
regarding your activities.
Sincerely...
I sent this missive by certified mail on Thursday, January
23rd.
Friday came and went. Nothing was faxed to me by the
collection agency.
The Consumer Action people got back to me with advice, and
the donation center spoke to my husband, who forwarded all the documents
pertinent to them.
Saturday, we received a bill from the collection agency, our
first contact by mail. The amount they want is nearly $3,000.00. This bill was
dated January 13, 2013, but was obviously sent overnight, possibly retro-dated,
to cover for the fact that they had forgotten to send us a bill. Most things
sent from that ZIP Code to ours come overnight or in two days. The reason they
had to send this is that, by law, they are not supposed to communicate with us
by phone until we have received something in the mail in writing from them. The
postmark on the envelope is January 24th.
HA!
We are surrounded by technology, and everyone and their
brother seems to have access to my information, yet that is somehow insufficient
to prove something as simple as “we haven’t owned the car since February that
was involved in an auto accident the following October”. We still have to push
the paper around. Even though we have pushed paper at them, they persist in
their quest.
Okay, the way we read it is that the bottom feeding
collection agency is in collusion with the towing company to work one kind of
fraud. But we realized there is probably another kind of fraud going on here,
and it has to do with the auctioning of vehicles.
When we organized the documents from the DMV in the order in
which each event took place, we realized that after the car was auctioned in
late February, to the person or company whose address is in Mexico, there was
no more paper trail. This is significant, and I will tell you why: if the car
was purchased by a Mexican concern, one would assume it was taken to Mexico,
particularly as there was no further registration of the vehicle.
However, the car was being driven by California resident in
October. Where did that person get the car? And why didn’t the seller properly release
liability and transfer title?
Such an occurrence cannot be an isolated one. If it happened
with the car we auctioned, the potential is great that many vehicles purchased
at auction are being resold without transfer of title.
The implications are chilling. How many people have purchased
autos that subsequently disappear from the system? How many similarly unregistered
vehicles are on the road, even as we speak, with drivers who are uninsured, possibly
even unlicensed? Such “ghost” vehicles not only endanger us if they are
involved in accidents, but these cars could be also used in the commission of crime.
These vehicles, subsequently abandoned, are virtually untraceable to any person
but the last person who registered the
vehicle before it was sold.
Fortunately, in our case, no one was injured in the accident
involving the car.
We are not done with this story, Morning Glory. We don’t
know what will happen next, although we are hoping the case will be closed.
Will we have to go to court? Stay tuned...
In the meanwhile, here are those takeaway messages, one more
time:
**
#1 - DO NOT DONATE CARS!
#2 - No one is accountable to the truth but YOU.
