As someone who spent the better part of 20 years in the finance department of a very large volume dealship group, and was involved in more repossions than I can remember, it is my experienced and well-informed opinion that there is more to this story. I know of no auto lender that would initiate a repossession for an account that was 30 days late. Most won't do it for a 90 late account. I used to arrange financing for people with multiple 90 day late payments on previous loans that were never repo'd. And prior to a repo being ordered, there is A LOT of documented communication between the lender and the borrower. Finance companies know how to CYA, so if they have to go to court, all their ducks are in a row. Now, USAA is different as the relationship is directly between them and the member, without the dealership as the middleman, so I can't claim to be privy to their policies and procedures, but I'd be surprised if they were vastly different from SOP in the industry.
One final thought is that if you were transitioning from active duty to disabled/retired, there may be some fine print in their agreement that they can call the loan due, and if you aren't in a position meet that obligation, they would recover the car. Mere speculation as I've never read a complete USAA auto finance contract.
Well, the issue in depth was I spent 2.5 years in hospital. I had repeated issues with paying on time as a result. For example, my normal full pay was something like $4,200/mo. When the USAF declared me not fit for active duty, they retired me at 30% disability. Thus, I was taking home only 1200 or so. The hitch here is that the meds the doctor had me on ended up causing some bad side effects and the drug interactions counterindicated and I had several grand mall seizures and so on. I was formally retired while in the hospital after having a seizure. Long story short, the USAF shipped me off to civilian care at the VA's expense to Duke University to a specialist who prescribed me a medication that was needed to fight off the nerve damage in my brain the previous doctor's meds caused. This lasted for 2.5 years where I was 100% disabled.
The VA took over a year to amend my pay. During that year I was unable to work, I lost my home, both cars, my motorcycle, and just about all of my possessions. The Mustang in question was the last one to go. I sold the other car and the motorcycle. The home was foreclosed upon and the Mustang was shipped to my neighbor's house. I had repeated run-ins with USAA caused by slow payments. I only had 3 payments left when they repo'd it.
So, I don't fault them for repo'ing the car on principle. If someone doesn't make payments on time and has a history of late payments, then these things happen. However, in my case, it was a service connected disability where I was laid up in a hospital 7 states away from Colorado. I spent a lot of time hooked up to Propofol drips to sleep, as the nature of my condition was that the previous doctor's meds caused my pineal gland to malfunction. I wasn't producing normal amounts of melatonin and norpinephrine. The way they fixed that was to put me on a super-dose of an anti-psychotic drug over those 2.5 years. The side effect of that treatment left me nerve damaged without the ability to use my hands and I was unable to walk for 4 years.
A few years after my recovery, the Federal Government passed that Veteran's Protection Act that preventing creditors from doing things like foreclosures and repossessions of disabled veterans in treatment. My case was such that they chopped my pay by 70%. As an enlisted SSgt at the time, I didn't exactly have deep pockets of savings (see, just about none) as I also had just divorced my ex-wife less than a year previously. Without the ability to work, my only source of income was that $1,200 per month. My mortgage at the time was $1,100. Things got worse from there.
They did end up back paying me up to my 100% level, but that didn't come until after all this and my bankruptcy occurred. I attempted to get Welfare and Social Security assistance at the time, but was turned away by Welfare because they said I made too much (they added in my gov't healthcare as a benefit value) and Social Security Disability initially declined me, but a year later I was able to reverse that. As I mentioned before, after I sold everything I could, I bankrupted on something like $3,100.
As for USAA's policies, disability and retirement didn't matter. I went from active duty to retired. USAA covers retirees. They repo'd it because they said I had a history of late payments. That last payment, after I made the deal to pay the insurance first, it would have posted on the 60th day and I would have made the following payment on-time to bring the account current. The extenuating circumstances involved didn't matter to USAA. It wasn't like I was just shirking my financial responsibilities. I was in a state of twilight sedation for a long period of time (low norpinephrine levels makes for an unbearable amount of pain) and they would have to turn my med drips off to let me do things like talk to relatives, creditors, and so on. My father had a power of attorney to try and help me out, but he too was deployed (USAF AC-130 navigator), so I ended up having to do the best I could on my own for the majority of that period. At the time, my dad and I had a distant relationship. I didn't borrow any money from him nor anyone else.
If I could sue USAF doctor's for malpractice, I'd easily have been a millionaire. My original condition was caused by a break in my circadian rhythm (extreme sleep difficulty) caused by too many years working odd ops shifts. The flight doctor's "fix" is what put me in the hospital.
