Late with your car payment? ON TIME system equipped cars won't start

If the American economy tanks, look for car loans to follow the same pattern as house loans, right into the dumpster. However, Sekurus Inc. may have a tool to help subprime car lenders such as AmeriCredit Corp. (NYSE:ACF) fight defaults, help the repo man reclaim the assets, and protect against car theft.

Sekurus' ON TIME system patches a legal wireless-controlled device into the car's electrical system. The consumer is given a wireless control that he must push before he can start the car, which sends a signal to Sekurus. The company verifies that financing is up to date before authorizing the car to start. The customer begins receiving a countdown three days before the vehicle is disabled.

The system also serves as a theft deterrent, since car thieves won't be able to start the car without the wireless remote.

The product is especially useful for sub-prime car loans, a $75 billion market. The company claims that, because lenders can depend on this system to increase pay rates and reclaim vehicles, it will result in more borderline drivers receiving financing that otherwise would not. ON TIME also can be used by new dealers who have problems with cars being stolen off their lots.

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/06/15/late-with-your-car-payment-on-time-system-equipped-cars-wont-s/

:argh: Yep! Punish the borrower and not the predatory lender. :banghead:

I don't even want to think about it. :scared:

Let's list a few, shall we:

Abuse. (Someone in the company or the government doesn't like you. Turns off your car.)

Mistakes. "Ooops! We turned off your car. Please fill out form 1f7899G, have it cosigned, and wait 25 days while we evaluate your claim. Thanks for your business!"

Server/Network Failure. If the company server goes down, nobody can drive. Risks include viruses, hackers, DOS attacks, plain incompetence. If Google goes down for a couple hours, whatever. If your car stops running for a couple hours and you have to be at work, big problems.

I'm sure there are others. Suppose you are trying to escape from a criminal or a natural disaster and your car won't start because of this system. Yikes!!

It's horrible what has happened in the past 6.5 years.

it should be regulated by law that the default mode would be that the system is bypassed and the car starts.

these finance companies face a tidal wave of lawsuits from pissed off or worse customers.

A couple scenarios jump out....

A car is shut down and the driver is a young woman out late at night. She is a victim of a violent crime because she could not start her car and leave.


A car is shut down as a small child has an asthma attack and the mother cannot get to the hospital or Dr.'s office.


A car is shut down as a hurricane bears down on a coastal area killing a family of five.

and on and on and on!

Let's just re-open the debtor's prisons and get it over with...:grr:

now there's a real world class standard to shoot for.

Just put a bomb in the remote and get it over (JK) , it seems to be getting to that point . Of course debters prison privatized may generate more income.

The lock in your apartment door. (If your rent is late, VOILA!!! You are homeless).

Even better, medical applications, such as pacemakers! Whatever you do, don't write a bad check to the hospital.

Any other ideas? We could start a company and make a bundle! :sarcasm:

Someone is going to find a way to disable it and will make a bundle.

as piss through snow.

Hmmm...Cheney has a pacemaker, doesn't he?

Hmmm

;-)

You could call the company "XPire".

If you default on your payments, the automobile no longer belongs to you.

...

Fail to honor a valid contract that you made with another party, and this system of collection is clearly laid out in that contract, I don't see anything wrong with this system.

Sounds like the system Chimp employed to invade Iraq.

whomever finances the vehicle, not the company that makes the device.

...

But if that's the contract you signed, I guess the old adage applies, you get what you pay for.

Rarely to the consumer. You see it as a convenient tool for financiers, I see it as another way to facilitate screwing a possibly absent-minded, indisposed or otherwise occupied debtor who may very well have a legitimate excuse for delinquency.

Edited for typo.

But I don't recall ever having any correspondence with you on this forum.

Has happened to me - took two months to straighten out. Under this plan, that would be two months I wouldn't be driving my car. To work. To make the subsequent car payments.


Yeah, really reasonable.
:sarcasm:

.. car most, some fuckhead in India remotely deactivates it. %^&wipe.

I can see some difficulties arising from it, but overall I can see why they'd want to do it.

But I do think some other posters brought up some very valid points about what could go wrong.

Perhaps it may also make some borrowers think twice before saddling themselves with a car payment that they can't afford.

.. if your late on your mortgage. How cool!

Consumers have, or used to have, protections against this sort of thing. I can see a sharp attorney getting a hold of this and making a bundle.

I used to work in the auto finance business where I dealt with Americredit and their ilk on a daily basis. In the old days, they used to keep a set of keys to the financed auto to make repossession easy. The courts said this was a no-no as the finance company had no right to ANY control over the vehicle UNTIL and AFTER the default took place. In other words, the vehicle is 100% owned and titled by the borrower ....... the lender only has a security/collateral interest AFTER default and AFTER formal repossession procedures. You either repo the car or you don't - you can't exercise 'control' over someone else's property every time the payment is a day late......

.....furthermore, your consumer protection rights can't be waived as a condition of receiving financing........In other words, you can't waive your right to not be harassed in the middle of the night and/or get roughed up by goons.

It will be interesting to see how this works through the courts. I can already think of one attorney in Du Page County Illinois that will be chomping at the bit to test this in court.

Before my time in the business and before a lot of consumer protection laws were enacted, there was a finance company that would repossess the car BEFORE the first payment was due. They would call the borrower up and tell him to come pick up his car and go home with the warning of what WILL happen if they miss a payment.

the Joneses have one.


dp

;-)

when the macmansion gets repo'd. . . i believe their plan was to live in the Yukon Denial.

:P

dp

the Ford Extinction?

Overcompensater?

yeah, same difference.
dp

Redstone

Just take the damn computer out and replace it with one from a junkyard. Done.

What a stupid idea.

just makes a copy of the keys and has a good repoman.

Oilwellian. :D