Auto Loan Problem Revealed!

Mystery solved! The finance company no longer had my insurance information. My insurance company no longer had my finance company information. The declaration page didn't get sent for the insurance renewal, and the finance company charged me their own insurance.

The interesting part is that this isn't at all reflected on the payment. The numbers simply don't add up. If I had not checked it, found the problem, called to determine why the money was missing, and called both companies to get the paperwork back in order, I would have continued to be charged this extra insurance while already being covered. I do not know how long the finance company would have done this before bothering to notify me that there was a problem, but I am guessing that they never would have.

In fact, this happened before at the beginning of the loan, but was apparently corrected after 2 months. However instead of taking it from the monthly payment, as they did this time, they just tacked the insurance (I did not ask why their insurance was $2,200 a year) onto the balance of the loan. Supposedly I had not been charged interest during those two months, but I have asked for a full history report so I can check the math myself.

Hopefully this will be taken care of by the end of the week. I have updated the information with my insurance carrier, and with the financier, and had them fax the declaration. It should take 24-48 hours for the fax to go through, plus another 2 days for the financier to update their system and make the correction. I also requested a hard copy be mailed to me so I can fax it to the finance office myself.

Then, I will be having fun all next week checking the account to make sure the remainder of the payment has been properly applied.

So the lesson here is always check your payments, review your statements, and don't finance stuff!