Good for you. My Husbands Uncle bought a new Cadillac. Drove it home. He paid a down payment. No trade-in. The car loan people somehow thought he paid for the car. Some box was checked incorrectly. He never received the payment book ( remember those). Never made a payment. Got the title in the mail. He drove that car for 20 years. He called and called. Told the story to anyone who would listen. Just got it free. Minus a down payment. I swear it’s true.
And no additional interest for the six years?
That was one key negotiating point. My position was that the mortgage company (or ‘bank’, for easy shorthand) was going to get all of their interest in the end, anyway. I didn’t want the bank making money on payments they refused to accept from me. And I certainly didn’t want to pay interest for the 6 years in addition to the normal interest they would get once the mortgage resumed. Even my lawyer was saying it’s not reasonable to expect to have lived the 6 years ‘rent free’, and paying interest to the bank would be reasonable. I countered with saying my living was rent deferred, and they’re the ones who did the deferring. He finally saw it my way and was able to negotiate that with the bank, though it wasn’t easy.
So, no interest payments for the 6 years.
That’s a great story and I certainly considered this — don’t pursue it, and see what happens. I asked lawyers about the applicable statute(s) of limitations, but that was 6 years ago and now I forget, but their answer contributed to my decision to pursue this closure. If I didn’t pursue closure, I’d likely not be able to sell although I don’t intend to move in the foreseeable future. I’ll probably retire here. I also didn’t want the problem transferred to my kids (I do love them! :)).
Oh and when I say I me my, it’s me and my wife, we worked together equally on this, and she took the lead at many times. I married a smart gal.
Your husband’s uncle’s Caddy — yes a great story and these mistakes do happen. Just Google ‘bank error in your favor’, like the Monopoly game Community Chest card.
BANK ERROR IN YOUR FAVOR COLLECT $200 — but instead this was …
BANK ERROR IN YOUR FAVOR BULLITT, COLLECT $600,000
These mistakes do happen.
So, let me get this straight - they refused to accept your money for six year and though you should pay for that and your lawyer was going to roll on that?! Legal minds are just different.
I don’t follow. Are you a lawyer?
No, I think only a lawyer would have thought your should pay interest on the six years when the company was refusing payments.
Ahh, got it. Yes it was annoying to have to fight him on that issue, initially. I’m glad he came around and then argued the point effectively.
My regional treasury’s new e-payment system for companies (including the self-employed) doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. Even when it tells you that the payment has gone through, very often it hasn’t. The previous e-payment system was very simple to use and it worked, but hey, it was from Those Guys and we’re The Other Guys so it had to be changed.
But alas, if a payment hasn’t gone through, then they hit you for it plus late fees plus a fine plus interest. Even if it’s you who has contacted them saying “I have here a document from your site saying my payment has gone through but my bank account doesn’t show anything from you guys, is everything all right?”
I’m one of many small companies who have taken to making payments the old-fashioned way: present your paperwork on actual paper, get a payment document on actual paper, take it to your bank and have the bank manage the transfer. The Treasury is bitching about the amount of people who are doing this, don’t they know we have a shiny new e-payment system?
Thanks for coming back and giving us closure, too!
Some people might have argued that the full six years of payments should be waived. That would not be reasonable, in my view. What you asked for seems eminently reasonable - it was their error, and you should be entitled to some compensation (in the form of zero interest for 6 years) for the time and effort you had to go to in order to resolve the matter.
I had a couple of similar things in the past with utility bills. In one case, we ended up paying considerably less than the actual cost of usage, with no comebacks (and because it was a LOT of hassle to sort out, I considered this fair), in the other I was aware that the full bill would likely need paying at some stage and duly did so (without any interest or penalties added). Nothing close to $600k, of course.
Well played and enjoy the small windfall (as I assume you were holding the full payments, including interest, in a savings account all this time - now leaving you free to spend the difference?).
Hmm, so thay actually transfered the title to you? Couldn’t your lawyer arrange a “hey I don’t think I’ve paid this off but you think so, sign this and no backsies” document?
(Ok, I know that wouldn’t work, but one can dream)
Any clue how the mistake was made?
Brian
Hi Brian,
I never bothered to ask how this happened. It dragged on for six years and during that time the ‘bank’ changed their legal team about 3-4 times. The lead lawyer on one of their teams went to the same school as my lawyer, and they struck up a good rapport. When that lawyer was relieved / replaced by the next one, his departing words to my lawyer were, “My client is an idiot.”
And it’s possible that they might not even know how this happened. I work in software engineering and sometimes in updates to SW versions or databases, some DB records can get orphaned. That’s my best guess as to what happened here, based on all I know of the situation.
Bizarre.
Nah, he shot a man who was in Reno. She two-timed him.