Stay away from Toyota Financial Services
While I was doing a three-month term of service in Nicaragua and relying on automatic payments, which had been occurring without fail for two years, to make my payments to Toyota Financial, they made a mistake that temporarily cost me my car and left a deep scar on my credit report for some time. Fourteen weeks after later, the whole mess is finally sorted out. They had applied a bad check to the wrong account–mine. They discovered and reversed their error, but had stopped my automatic payments and didn’t bother to restart them or send me a letter telling me about the goof. We only found out when my roommate and landlord were gotten out of bed in the middle of the night by the noise of a tow truck.
The representative I first spoke with said they tried calling after they realized the error but didn’t have a phone number for me (guess that makes it easy to “try”). I gave that person my phone number, and again when I talked with a manager a few days later. In May I sent them a letter saying I still wasn’t sure they had my phone number and I provided it in writing. Then I called in June to make sure they were going to make my automatic payment happen and the representative said, “Mr. Garber, I’m not showing a phone number on file. Would you mind giving that to me?”
They didn’t send me a letter telling me of the problem, either. The manager, Darien, with whom we argued for a long while to get this resolved said, “Sir, we tried calling and we sent you a letter.” I said, “Darien, I didn’t receive any letter. My girlfriend’s mother has been checking every two weeks and she says nothing’s come. Did you send me a letter?” He responded, “No, sir, we didn’t send a letter.”
Toyota eventually did the right thing, but they sure weren’t nice about it. It took them a long time to see that they had made a mistake and then get all the parts of this huge corporation to work together to return the car and clean up my credit history. One division could clean up one credit flag. They had a phone number, but no mailing address. The credit dispute group had to handle the rest of it. They have an address but won’t give their phone number. I still haven’t heard back on my request for a written apology to the five people who were up half the night on Friday, April 13 when the car was towed or for reimbursement of the $400-some my family incurred in phone charges to get it straightened out. I was in Nicaragua, after all. (At the rate I'm earning money from people clicking ads on this page it will take only 11 years to make that back.)
As of today that loan account is closed and it and all my bank accounts have moved to a friendly local bank. Their interest rates are better, they know me by name, and I know if they were to make a mistake, I’d get a personal visit if I couldn’t be reached. I couldn’t be happier with them.
Update: Though Toyota sent me a letter on 6/28/2007 saying the delinquency indicators and "redeemed repossession" had been removed from my credit report, a periodic check of my credit report on Sept. 1 showed it had not been removed. I had to file a dispute and wait until Oct. 7 to get the results of the dispute. So Experian is clean, but what about the others? Since I spread out my free annual reports from each of the monitoring agencies, I won't know until January and May of 2008. So, even if they say they cleared it up, you may need to dispute the record with the credit agencies anyway.
Also, since I posted this I've gotten some inquiries for contact information or advice on what to do in some situations. It seems lots of people are having similar experiences.
You must write, not call, the Credit Dispute Group at the following mailing address:
Credit Dispute Group
P.O. Box 9786
Cedar Rapids, IA. 52409
and tell them specifically what they need to fix on your credit report. In my case, I asked them to remove the delinquency indicators and "REDEEMED REPOSESSION."
Toyota Financial's "customer service" phone number is the one that appears on your statement: (800) 874-8822. Not getting a statement? How convenient for them. Run, don't walk, to http://www.toyotafinancial.com and register yourself for an account so you can request a billing statement and account history as often as you like (which starts to be satisfying if you get one several times a month).
