The Georgia-based retail chain immobilized customers’ vehicles more than 5,000 times even though they were on top of payments
- A Georgia-based dealer chain is accused of remotely disabling vehicles for no reason
- U.S. Auto Sales faces a lawsuit, and is being investigated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- The outfit went bust a couple of years ago, but a federal court earlier this year ordered it pay US$40 million in damages for similarly shady behaviours
If you’re not familiar with the uniquely American concept of the so-called “buy here, pay here” dealer model, you’re lucky. The premise involves having the selling dealer finance the transaction through their own in-house finance arm instead of through traditional lenders. This permits the facility to take on risky customers that banks might not touch.
As you’d expect, they don’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather as a vehicle for making major profits off enormous lending fees and interest rates. Since the car’s title is often held by the dealer until the car is paid off, some places install immobilizers to remotely disable a car if its owner falls behind on payments. Sadly, it is some of society’s most vulnerable who tend to require services such as these.
According to local media, the dealer network “accidentally” disabled vehicles on over 5,000 occasions, even when bills were paid in full. That’s not to mention the 1,000-plus times this was done after the dealer had apparently promised the customer it would not. And those figures are what the company’s admitting to—who knows what the real number may be.
That alleged abuse of the tech eventually led to a lawsuit, and, more recently, the company’s practices coming under the scrutiny of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
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