Can I dispute this charge?

Question

Okay, I purchased a car from a buy here pay here lot back in Jan 2006. I originally wanted a 2000 daewoo that had only 60k miles on it, and they gave me a down payment price of $1500. However when I got there, they jacked the down payment price of the Daewoo up to $2000 and suggested I look at another car. The car was a 2001 Saturn originally for $6500 & I put down $1500. Although they were buy here pay here, they said after 6 months of payments they would begin reporting my good payments to the credit bureau which they never did. I was ALWAYS on time with payments. However, in Mar 07 I decided to surrender the car back to them because the car had significant problems one being a problem with the transmission. I took it to a saturn dealership and the total cost to fix the car would have been $1800 which I did not have. I told the car lot about it and they basically said they don't fix cars and see if I could find someone to do the job cheaper. I found a cheaper job of $1600 which wasn't really much better. So as I continued to drive the car it began to get worse and I surrendered the car back to them. I had made $200 monthly payments from the time I bought it in Jan 06 to the time I returned it in Mar 07 and I even made my Mar payment before I turned it in. I get my free credit report, and see that they have placed it on my credit for a charge of $4600. WTF! How is that for a car that was originally $6000, minus the 14 months of payments I made? Also, it wasn't a repossession. I took the car back to them and handed them the keys. If and I mean IF I owe anything, aren't they supposed to take out for what they resold the car for? Can I dispute this charge on my credit report?

Answer 1

Our legal system allows you to dispute almost anything.

You need to decide what are your chances of winning.  I think slim to none.

Answer 2

You can dispute it, but I doubt it would go any where. Bad things appear on your credit much faster than good things do sometimes it takes a little longer than 6 months and sometimes not.

The car's mechanical problems are your problem.  The dealer has no legal responsibility to repair or take back the vehicle.  It's a used car and you started to have problems over a year after buying it.

When you stopped making payments and gave the car back that counts as a repossession if you didn't have the car payed off.  You are responsible for any reposession charges, extra interest, fees, and payments you should have been making.  If they in turn sold the car absolutely none of that goes towards your bill.  You defaulted on the car loan so the car is 100% theirs.  You are still responsible for what you owe.

You should have asked for some advice from people before you took the car back.

I imagine your interest rate was also very high.  Most of those places charge close to 30% interest.  If your interest was that high you wouldnt pay off much in a 14 month time frame either.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, there is not much to dispute. A repossession is a repossession; voluntary or not. When you turned the car into them, it is considered a voluntary repossession. And, as such you are still legally responsible for the outstanding balance and any additional legal fees or interest. I can’t say without looking at the exact docs to see if their total reported is correct, so you may try and clarify that.