Auto Repossession...denied legal right to apprasal.....

Hi All,

I have an issue. Back in July I became 60 days late on paying my lease for my car (for reasons I wont bore you with). I was exactly 61 days late on my payment, and they exercised their contractual right to take back the car. I had the car for a total of 7 months.

Ok. That sucked. I have never experienced that before.

4 days after the repo, I received a letter: "Notice of Intent to Sell Vehicle Under California Vehicle Leasing Act." In it, they state the past due payments (61 days worth), other unpaid amounts due (late fees), repo and storage costs, unpaid adjusted capitalized cost, and the sum total of the above.

I tried to pay the 60 days and late fees and all fees associated with the repo(as money was not my issue with being late) and be current, but they refused. I then asked the person who I was talking with to give me instruction on how to get an appraisal of the vehicle per the California Leasing Act and the representative said that the vehicle is new, so i should not owe anything. I still wanted to get the proper appraisal and asked where the vehicle was, and she said it was at the dealership where I leased it. The discussion then got heated, and she basically hung up on me. I did not get any answers from this person as well. The California Vehicle Leasing Act that I received states:

"The amount you owe for early termination will be no more than the difference between the Gross Early Termination Amount stated above and (1) the appraised value of the vehicle or (2) if there is no appraisal, either the price received for the vehicle upon disposition or a greater amount established by the lessor or the lease contract

You have the right to get a professional appraisal to establish the value of the vehicle for the purpose of figuring how much you owe on the lease....the appraised value will be considered final and binding on you and the holder of the lease."

In no way does it detail HOW to obtain said appraisal, it just says I have the right to one, and if I fail to do so, they can basically sell the vehicle for whatever they want and charge me for the difference between what I owed and what they sold it for. And I only had 12 days to do so.

Since I could not get answers from them over the phone, I then began discussion with the original dealer who sold me the lease and who is a friend of a friend, and I got to know him well since I leased the vehicle. I explained to him what happened, and he was shocked and "had never seen that before". he said that he sees people go 8 months behind, and they still work something out. he said he would look into it and see what he could do. I asked him where the vehicle was and he did not know. I told him that they said it was at his dealership, and he assured me that it was not. I then asked him to get me the appraisal instructions. He said he would.

After a few days of leaving voicemails for him, we finally connected and he said he could not do anything to reverse the decision to repo, and that he could get me in a new lease once this was all over. NO THANK YOU.

So I went to another dealership where another friend of a friend is the finance manager. I went through everything with him, he pulled my credit report and talked with me for 45 minutes. He said that based on what he was seeing from my credit, and that I was “only” 61 days late, he would not understand why they would do this and that he had never seen this before. He then called in the GM of the dealership who also said that it was ridiculous and that he had never seen this before. But he said he could not help and that I would need to go back to the original dealer. I told him that nobody is helping, and that time was running out to get the appraisal per the Cal Leasing Act. He said that the Dealer is the one to work to set it up.

GREAT. I then bypassed my friend of a friend and went to the Manager of that location. He said he would help to either get my car back, or give me the appraisal information so I could get it done. He too ran my credit (I say that because I have record of it if this goes to court—I also have all the certified letters I sent in this regard). He said he would get back to me ASAP with the info.

Days went by of my calling multiple times and leaving several VM’s. The time had passed to get the appraisal when he got back with me with “there’s nothing I can do”. I said, fine BUT you have to tell me how to get this car appraised and now it is passed the deadline. He said that he did not know where the car was, and he did not know the process and for me to keep trying the credit dept.

So fast forward to today: I received a letter from their Law Firm demanding the difference between what I owed, and what they sold it for, which was WELL under fair market value (about $8,000!). So here Iam, I paid $4000 deposit to get into the lease, I paid $1680 in monthly payments and now they are trying to get me for another $8000! That’s $13,680 that I paid to have a vehicle for 7 months!!!!

Now I understand why they repossessed the vehicle after only being late 61 days: MORE MONEY!! It had nothing to do with “Risk”. I told them I would pay the outstanding balance and an additional amount of $2000 deposit if that helped them fell better about the “risk”. But they just stonewalled me. And now I know why. $$$ is more important that anything else.

I am really sorry for the long story. Believe me, I could have gone longer with more detail, but the bottom line question is: What can I do at this point? The Attorney is stating in his letter that I have 30 days to notify them if I dispute the validity of the debt or any portion thereof, or they will assume the debt is valid. They are going to sue me for this.

I have sent the creditor 4 certified letters disputing the validity of the debt, based on the fact that they intentionally interfered with my right to have the vehicle appraised. I took a Kelly bluebook print out of what the vehicle was worth at the time of repossession, and figured I owed only $2000. So I made them an offer of $2000 as a fair resolution.

They declined the offer and are sticking to the $8K.

Do I have a leg to stand on with respect to this issue of them interfering with my right to the appraisal? What happens next? If they sue me, and I lose, do I now have to pay even more thousands of $$ in legal and court fees?

Ok, end of long post. Sorry. I really hope there is some kind soul out there who will read all of this and add some help to me.

Thank you!