Federal Trade Commission Goes After Two California “Lenders”

Are you considering trying to find ways to lower your monthly auto payments? If so, avoid two California-based loan modification companies.

Hope For Car Owners and Kore Services (doing business as Auto Debt Consulting) have been charged by the FTC for deceptive loan tactics. Both companies claim to reduce customer auto loan payments from anywhere between 25 and 50 percent for an upfront fee. That upfront fee can range from $200 to $799.

In one specific case, Hope For Car Owners took the $400 up-front customer fee and told the client to stop making her payments on the loan. She stopped paying, and the lender didn’t receive anything from Hope. So the lender went ahead and informed the customer that her vehicle was going to be repossessed.

Hope For Car Owner’s sage advice? Hide your car.

Thanks for the advice, Hope.

This is more of a tale of caution for the general borrowing population than a “what a bunch of scumbags” story. Shady “loan modification” companies had been rampant in the mortgage and credit industries because of people overextending themselves in both arenas over the past decade, and the ease that borrower vulnerabilities were preyed on. Cutting monthly mortgage payments in half is a nice incentive to hand over a few hundred bucks.  The FTC managed to curb these illegal schemes, but predators remain, and a logical place for them to go next is after auto loan borrowers.

Be wary of who you give your money to. If a lending deal sounds way too good to be true (a 50 percent reduction of a monthly payment is an example of this), it probably is.

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