Unexplained Car Payment Reversals Drive Couple Into Bad Credit

Kristin and her husband say they’ve made all the payments on their Nissan Altima on time, but Nissan has nevertheless denied their payments and reported them delinquent to credit bureaus. Customer service won’t help, and they don’t know what to do. Their story:

I am writing you today in hopes that you may be able to assist me in getting an error fixed that occurred with Nissan Finance. Let me start by saying that my husband and I have had nothing but good experiences with Nissan from the minute that we bought our Altima. The dealership ensured that we got exactly the car we were looking for and made it hassle free for us to drive our car off of the lot. When something had gone wrong with my Altima, the Nissan dealership was there and ready to take care of everything that needed to be fixed and had a loaner car ready and waiting for me. Everyone has been truly helpful and wonderful. Nissan is a great company which is why it surprised me a few months ago when I experienced what I had experienced.

I have always been on top of paying my bills, two bills in particular, my mortgage payment and my car payment. I have never missed a payment with either one of these two things, so when I got notified by my credit monitoring company that Nissan was reporting me 30 days past due on my credit report, I was shocked! I immediately jumped onto http://www.nissanfinance.com to find out what had happened. Searching through all of my statements, I could not find where I had missed a payment. Each payment had a posted status that said “Paid”. At that point, I picked up the telephone and called Nissan’s finance center. I spoke to a lady on the phone who had informed me that Nissan had reversed a payment that I had made to them ( on time ) 6 months prior to that day. I asked them why they would reverse a perfectly good payment, and there was no legitimate reason given. I asked then to speak to a Supervisor at which point I was transferred. The Supervisor told me that she did see that I had attempted to make my payment to Nissan but for whatever reason, Nissan reversed the payment and again I was told this with no good reason why. I then asked why I had not been notified of this happening, either through mail, email, telephone….with so many different ways to get a hold of somebody these days, I had not received any correspondence from Nissan informing me of a reversal and letting me know that I was still on the hook for a months car payment. She stated to me that it was not Nissan’s responsibility to do such things. At that point I was speechless, I felt like I had been dooped. I arranged payment with her over the phone to catch up on the “reversed” payment but explained to her that I could not have this effect my credit report. She stated that she understood and would contact the credit reporting agencies and that she would also send me a letter in the mail stating that. I have not received anything.

Today, I pulled my credit report only to find that Nissan reported me not only 30 days past due, but 30 days past due for 4 consecutive months in a row. This has effected my credit in a very bad way. My credit score has dropped significantly due to this internal error on Nissan’s end. I don’t feel that it is right that I, the consumer, should have to pay the price and now live with this on my credit report for 7-10 years. I am a hard worker just trying to do the best that I can do for my family and in this economy, you need to have good credit and what’s sad is that I had good credit up until this happened.

I have at this point nobody else to turn to that can help and have this removed from my credit report. I am not asking for money, for a car, for anything other than you please help figure out how to get back what Nissan Finance took away from me…my credit worthiness.

It seems Kristin and her husband should do all they can to set their credit history straight. What would you do if you found yourself in such a situation?

(Photo: RussSwift)

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