Tag Archives: GM financial

BE HAPPY says Capitol Chevrolet. Moral, Professional & Ethical standards are important, says GM Financial. Just… wow.

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You can have an 800+ credit rating, pay the monthly lease, but if there’s a misunderstanding about the lease extension, Capitol Ford and GM Financial might come to your house without warning, hook up the car and tow it away. Without so much as a phone call or email. While continuing to cash your lease checks.

My experience with our (formerly) leased 2016 Chevrolet Volt is the stuff of legends. Bad legends. You can read about the details here, but in a nutshell, we kept sending them money, with my wife writing on each payment that she was extending the lease, and GM financial kept cashing the checks, even though we had not properly notified them, by phone, that we wanted the lease extended. The first and only legit lease extension ended on February 27, 2019.

The first and ONLY phone call ever made to us by GM Financial (or anybody else) was apparently a phone message left on an answering machine. AND THAT WAS IT. The total sum communication between anyone at GM Financial and myself, until June 6th, 2019, when they sent a notice in a normal letter (not registered, nothing scary written on the outside) that we needed to return the car or it would be subject to repossession. That letter was unfortunately not paid attention to; it stated that our lease contract had expired and if the vehicle wasn’t returned to a GM dealer, “We may exercise our rights under the law to repossess the vehicle.”

Which they did. Without anyone at GM Financial wondering why we kept sending them checks, which they dutifully cashed. Checks along with notes asking to please extend the lease. Nobody ever thought to give us a call to say that’s not how it works. Nobody at GM Financial thought anything screwy when they arranged to have the car repossessed. If anyone had bothered to look at our history, they’d wonder what was going on. My guess is that someone did look at the history. They just didn’t care.

But this morning was perhaps the saddest treatment of a customer, or even a person, I’ve come across in a long time. After getting nowhere with Capitol Chevrolet, who insists that what GM Financial does is out of their hands, their social media manager told me to call GM Financial, and gave me a number. I didn’t realize it was the same number I’d called the day after the repossession. The number where someone told me “We don’t have to do that” when I asked if they could send me a copy of the letter they said they’d sent me (which at that point I hadn’t seen).

At 10:36am I got ahold of someone who seemed to grasp the strange nature of what had gone on. She and I discussed the facts of the case, none of which were in dispute (this would change in a later phone call with a different person). It was all about questioning if procedure was followed; if it was really policy that a car would be repossessed when the customer was still paying for it, without bothering to call or email first. After 15 minutes she put me on hold to talk to someone in a different department about it. 6 minutes on hold and my call re-entered the normal queue for a new call. And 10 minutes after that, the phone disconnected.

I called back. Got someone I could barely hear and wasn’t terribly interested in anything. I don’t know if that person intentionally disconnected or if their phone system is just really bad.

I called back again. And this time, I was literally on hold for an hour. They will have phone records to prove it. An hour before I speak to someone who never had any intention of doing anything but tell me that they were within their legal rights to repossess the vehicle. I asked her if that’s how she would like to have been treated, had she made a similar mistake elsewhere. I quoted her GM Financial’s corporate mantra-

We operate with integrity toward
each other, our customers and the
markets in which we operate.
Adhering to moral, ethical and
professional standards is
“the heart of it all.”

She wouldn’t crack. You could tell she was having issues, but she wouldn’t change the corporate response. I asked if she could send this to a supervisor, so she wouldn’t have to deal with being later asked why she couldn’t handle this situation. Get it out of her hands. She wouldn’t budge. It was truly an amazing experience. She told me absolutely, 100%, there was no possiblity of getting the repossession removed from my credit history. It felt like this is what she was paid to do. Her reason to exist. Crush people in a way they don’t bother you any more.

GM Financial and Capitol Chevrolet are going to find themselves greatly bothered in the near future.

“We don’t have to do that.” Beware GM Financial & Capitol Chevrolet

Personal stuff, , , , , ,
You can have an 800+ credit rating, pay the monthly lease, but if there’s a misunderstanding about the lease extension, Capitol Chevrolet and GM Financial might come to your house without warning, hook up the car and tow it away. Without so much as a phone call or email. While continuing to cash your lease checks. GM Financial’s website says this about their workplace- We Act with Integrity- We do the right thing, the right way. We operate with integrity toward each other, our customers and the markets in which we operate. Adhering to moral, ethical and professional standards is “the heart of it all.”

(Update at bottom; still not resolved)
“We don’t have to do that.” Perhaps the final word in customer service with GM Financial & Capitol Chevrolet?

We’ve been Chevy Volt people for over 6 years. Leased a 2013 model for 3 years, then a 2016 for another 3, the latter car from Capitol Chevrolet. My wife loved that car. We were hoping to get another until Chevrolet announced there would be no more new models. Our lease was up at the end of December, 2018. I called and received a 2 month extension, at the same terms, so we could have some time to look for a new car. I was told 2 months at a time was the way lease extensions worked (I preferred 4 but that wasn’t an option). We were very happy with the Volt so not in a huge rush; after the two months my wife kept sending them the monthly checks, which GM Financial dutifully cashed, with notes asking that the lease continue to be extended. This continued from March through the most-recent check, dated May 30 and cashed by GM Financial on June 7th.

10pm Sunday night, June 23rd, my wife tells me somebody is in danger of backing into our car and damaging it. I look out the window and see a tow truck hooking up the Volt, preparing to take it away. The guy had a legit repo order from GM Financial & Capitol Chevrolet.

What the heck? Can’t get ahold of anybody at GM Financial on a Sunday night. Call the next morning, get someone who tells me we were in violation of the lease agreement because we hadn’t returned the car when the December extension expired.

The woman at GM Financial told me they’d sent a letter (not registered) on June 7th telling us the lease was expired and they could seize the car. I asked if she could re-send a copy of the letter to me. “We don’t have to do that.” This, I assume, is on their recorded call. It was pretty surprising to hear that.

Even-more surprising is that neither GM Financial nor Capitol Chevrolet sent a single email, appparently leaving just a single message on a business answering machine sometime in March, which we never heard.  A misunderstanding that wouldn’t have continued had they done so. They were happy to keep cashing the checks, for an expired lease. Since the lease was null & void, does that money go into a tip jar? Obviously not, but one has to wonder, is this any way to run a customer-facing business?

Earlier Sunday, prior to the repossession, my wife had mentioned how much she liked that car and maybe we should just pay the residual and buy it. Capitol Chevrolet and GM Financial certainly ended such thoughts. I cannot wait to see what they’ll be billing us for the repossession, despite getting back a 3 year old car with less than half the expected mileage (13,000 miles in 3 years) in great condition.

If you’re thinking about leasing a car using GM Financing, you might want to ask them whether they’d bother to call or email you if something seems amiss, to try and eliminate any misunderstandings. They legally don’t have to. I get that. But how much effort does it take to pick up a phone or send an email, and create happy customers that give happy referrals, vs have to be concerned about unhappy customers steering people elsewhere? “We don’t have to do that” is something I’ll never forget. A great reminder of how not to treat my own paying customers. Note to Capitol Chevrolet- You’ll find I sent questions about this to you via your website a couple days ago. You didn’t reply, presumably because “We don’t have to do that.”

Updated 8/7/19- Lots of back & forth between me and Capitol Chevrolet’s social media manager since then, all of it trying to get something going between Capitol Chevrolet and GM Financial to see if what happened to us was “normal” procedure. Hard to believe it’s “normal” not to make a single phone call about the car but keep cashing checks, and then tow it away 10pm on a Sunday night. Rachel (the social media manager) says they tried, but GM Financial cannot release any information due to “privacy laws.” That may be, but does not preclude someone form Capitol Chevrolet from asking GM Financial to look into it and see if it was done according to their standard procedure, and, if so, questioning if that standard procedure seems an appropriate way to deal with Capitol Chevrolet’s customers.