Westlake Financial Consumer Reviews

LOS ANGELES, TEXAS -- ¾ BBB review Westlake
Don't walk RUN from this company! It didn't give me the option to give negative stars or I would have. This company is a SCAM and preys on people with poor credit.

November 30th my husband was in an accident in my car that I loved and it was half way paid off and no late payments ever. It was declared a total loss and I found out the hard way that I had not added rental coverage when I handed my other two vehicles down to my teenage sons. This left a mom of 4 with two jobs scrambling to get a car with no down payment and my credit at a low point still showing the loan on the totaled car. I started looking and found the exact car I wanted. I conceded that my interest rate was going to be very high at this point but was on the path to repairing my credit within the next few months so I agreed to the loan knowing that I would refinance it for a lower rate in a few months. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. This all happened right before Christmas of course. I went through with the purchase and my first payment was due on 1/18.

Since I still had to make my payment on my previous vehicle even though it was wrecked and I basically walked away empty handed (thank god I didn't owe....always get gap insurance). The dealer that had the car I wanted got me approved through Westlake. He made it sound like they were a great company and would probably work with me to refi through them when it was time.

Fast forward to January. After Christmas, still having to make the payment on the old car and trying to come up with the high payment on the new car I was late. My last loan and every other auto loan I have ever had with reputable companies have 10-15 days grace period where they don't even charge you a late fee or report it late. I figured this company would also have that. I was VERY wrong. Not only does this company have zero grace period you are considered in default the very first day you are late. In their contract they have a couple sentences about default. It states that you are in default if you do not meet each and every promise OR if THEY BELIEVE you won't. (How do you determine this? And take note that they don't have to keep their promises). The dealer nor the finance company makes you aware of this! And if it is your first payment they have a thing they call a dealer buy back that is no where in the contract nor do either company make you aware of this. (yeah I have never heard of this either, nor has anyone I know including people in the auto sales/finance industry or even attorneys.)

They will harass you with phone calls where they leave no information other than call us back. Working 2 jobs and raising 4 kids I don't have time to answer all the calls that I get that I don't know who they are from.

Fast forward to 2/1 (12 days late) Westlake sent a demand to the dealer I purchased the car from to buy back the car. The dealer (I believe without realizing it) sent me this request 10 days later. In this demand they basically cancel your financing, requesting the dealer buy the car back all WITHOUT your knowledge. They do not send you any written intent, no emails or any calls specifying the severity of the situation. They don't want you to know what is going on. In the letter to the dealer they actually specify that they are not to contact you to let you know what is happening and that even if you make a payment after this request that it is TOO LATE. However they will accept your payment and assure you everything is resolved and the account is in good standing. Which I will get to.

2/9 I was in bed on a Friday night after working both jobs and nearly asleep when I get a text from the dealer at 11:45 PM (VDubsonly in Dallas, TX.. they will be next). The text states that he is reporting the car stolen and I need to immediately return it to them or I will be arrested. WHAT?? I had planned to make the payment complete with the late fee the very next morning. I called the dealer to try to figure out what was going on. He informs me that they now own the car and I do not had again that it is reported stolen so I have to return it. I told him I would call the finance company first thing in the morning and get it all straightened out. This has to be some sort of mistake.

I do exactly that as soon as they open. I was shocked to find out they have a whole department that handles first payments that are even 1 day late. I explained things to the representative that answered. She accepted my payment and assured me that everything would be resolved and this buy back (which I still did not understand at this point) would be cancelled now that the account was paid in full, in good standing and the next payment was not due yet. I called the dealer back to let him know. He said I needed to have them call him. I called and they said they would not but if I gave him authorization he could call and they could talk to him regarding my account. I did that. He called and told me everything was good. I again called them and they assured me of the same thing.

Monday morning, I text the dealer just to again verify everything is resolved. He texts me back telling me that it is, thanks me for handling it and we discuss when I will get my second key that was part of the deal.

After I returned to work from lunch that very same day I get a call from our receptionist that there is someone to see me about my car. Again I am thinking there must be some communication that was crossed and this is a mistake. It is not the guy I have been dealing with but another guy from the dealership. I tell him that the other guy just told me earlier that all was fine and was told that he was lying to me. I need to give him the car now or he will call the cops. I beg him to hang on while I try to talk to the other guy and figure out what is going on. There must be something that can be done and a way to resolve this. After all the account is current. This guy tells me I have to get all my stuff out NOW as he is on a time schedule. I tell him I will have to get a box or something. He then tells me no. I will have to come to the dealership because he won't wait. He gain threatens to call the police. So I grab a few things and let him take the car. I don't want the police coming to my place of employment. This was embarrasssing enough already. For the next few days I am sent in this endless cycle of being sent back and forth between the dealer and finance company. Westlake is clear that they will not refund my payment I just made. When I bought the car it had a chip/crack in the windshield that was supposedly sealed however during the time I had the car when it got cold the entire thing cracked to where it was hard to see out of it so I paid nearly $400 to replace it. Neither company will refund that either. So I am out a car, a car payment, the money for the windshield, and now have two current car loans on my credit as my total loss one was still showing as was this one so I can't qualify for another loan to get my car back. After a day or two of trying to find financing on my own which is much harder than with the dealer I realize although I loved my car do I really want to try to do business with either company. Thank god I didn't put anything down as I am sure that I would have lost that too. After all this is a scam and they are making money on it somehow or they would make sure they gave you the details about this buy back and default after one day or if they think you might default. Why would they want to go through buying back a car. They are in the business of selling cars. Why would the finance company want to revoke a loan? That is their business in finance.

The next weekend when I went to get my stuff out of the car my Spectrum cable box was missing from the trunk. I had it in there because I cancelled service and was planning on dropping it off. The whole time my friend and I are there getting my stuff the guy I worked with at the dealer is telling my friend how he's on my side blah blah. I mention the cable box missing at which time he tells me that they haven't been able to get in the trunk because the other key didn't work. Um I guess working at VDUBSonly you don't know that a VW has a trunk release on the door? Weird...

When I was still trying to get my car back and had hoped if I appealed to the executives that maybe I had a shot. They are conveniently all on their website with email and phone contacts. I emailed them all telling them the story. I had a glimmer of hope when the president responded and told me he would look into it right away. He then had me work with another exec who was just as nasty and rude with no customer service skills as the rest of the people I had spoken to on the phone. He literally told me he would do nothing to help me, that he does not have to honor the fact that his employees assured me everything was resolved and tried to make me feel like a bank robber or some sort of criminal because I was over 2 weeks late.

I have since disputed the account to all 3 bureaus and told that exec that there better be nothing and I mean nothing about this loan on my credit. (It helps that I use to do credit repair and am very familiar with the fair Credit act etc. ).

Their response to my BBB complaint was the same as they form letter they say on them all and that they will contact me directly by mail. That letter said exactly what you would imagine..more of their bs about me being late and so they had no choice but to take my car that was not even a payment behind after assuring me all was good. Refusing to refund the payment or cost of windshield and once again referring me back to the dealer....as there is nothing as a FINANCE company they could do to help me. It has been almost a month and still have no car. I have never in my life had a car taken in fact I have handed down my last two cars to my teenage boys so they have cars. But I don't have anything to get to and from work (both jobs) or shuffle the kids around.

Both companies are completely unethical and are running a scam on people that feel they have no other alternatives. Truly disgusting. After reading all the complaints on here, reviews and the consumer affairs page... I would never do business again with either company and this may have actually been the best thing as I don't have to deal with them for another 5 years....

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA -- I had a car loan through Westlake Financial, I fell into a hardship around February 08, I talked to a supervisor there who told me as long as I had a payment in there by close of business everything would be okay. So I let them know I get off at 6 and I would have the money sent Money Gram. Supervisor agreed. Hours passed by and someone called me to my front office and there was a guy out there for me.

He said he was a repo guy. I asked what he was doing there. He said to take car. I was like that's impossible. I just talk to a supervisor so I called supervisor back. She couldn't believe they were there. She was like "Let me talk to tow guy so they could leave your car there." He told her he couldn't release car because already hooked to tow truck so me not knowing I was like okay so a hour later I went out to see if car was gone. It wasn't. It was being blocked by two cars so after a while it was towed.

Months passed by I couldn't get car back because of all extra fees. I started getting calls over and over from Westlake finally a Lagila called me trying to make a deal with me. She said we don't want to see you lose your car loan so what we will do is take a 400.00 payment from you. Make your account current and add your past due at the end of your loan. As long as you pay that before April 1 we will give you your car back. I made the payment called back to get address to pick up car I started getting runarounds then I finally got ** back on the phone. She said "Oh I'm sorry we sold your car." I'm out of 400.00 and a car.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- My husband and I got a 99 Suburban from Westlake. All was good till our first payment was due. He was to get paid the day after our payment was due and I was already receiving phone calls from them saying our payment was late!!! This went on for almost a year. Then we fell into some hard times and were late on our payments. We asked if they could work with us so we could keep our truck. They agreed to do so only if I could come up with $650 in less than 48 hours!! Or they would have to begin the paperwork to representative the truck.

Well, we couldn't get them money that fast so the next time they called I tried to explain to them I could make small payments every week until we could again make one monthly payment. They said, "NO way," and started to threaten me and my family.

So I let them take my truck in hopes that I could get the money two weeks later so I could get it back but then they started to add all these charges on to my bill so I would have to pay more before I could get it back. Well, we ended up letting go of our truck and now we still have to pay $7800 for a truck they re-sold for 1300. I will never give them a good reference to anybody considering we tried to work things out with them and they still would not give us a break.