Hide Your Kicks, Hide Your Wife: Nissan's Credit Branch in Hot Water Over Illegal Repossessions
Nissan’s credit arm landed in some big trouble this week. It turned out that there are literally some rules around repossessing a car from a consumer. Apparently Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp. didn’t read those rules, and now they’ll have to pony up.
While that’s a pretty impressive book of business, it’d be even more impressive if NMAC followed the rules in its administration. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found this week that between 2013 and 2019, NMAC wrongfully repossessed hundreds of vehicles from consumers. The vehicles in question did not qualify for a legal repossession, because consumers had made payments or taken other actions to keep their loan or lease in sufficient standing to prevent repossession. Namely among these actions were lowering the loan’s delinquency to less than 60 days. That figure was the established timeline in NMAC’s paperwork.
But wait, there’s more! Nissan held the personal property of the consumers in the repossessed vehicles until they paid a storage fee. The company also required customers to pay by phone, and “deprived consumers paying by phone of the ability to select payment options with significantly lower fees.”
Think that’s enough evidence of wrongdoing? Well, there’s more. Among a broader group of loans (thousands), when NMAC agreed to modify loan payments, it used agreements and written confirmations which included shady language. The language in question “created the net misimpression that consumers could not file for bankruptcy.”
Nissan absolutely denies any wrongdoing in the matter after seeing the information brought by the CFPB. However, they’re willing to settle and said they take assertions from the CFPB seriously. NMAC shares a “commitment to fair practices for all our consumers.” The cost of their newfound commitment? A small fine of $4 million.
[Image: Nissan]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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True fact: People who utilize beverage coasters at home have higher credit ratings.
Bad press is bad press. Nissan is on a roll. For punitive damages require Nissan to manufacture the IDx.