American Car Center
Reviews and Complaints

Had a 2016 Cheverolet Malibu, that was in an accident. The car was charged off from it being totaled. Was waiting for the title to be released from the charge-off of the vehicle.

Reach out to them a few times to see if the title was ever sent off and it never was received by the charge off company.

Now they are closed without information to be reached out to get this situated.

They are still showing as the owner of the vehicle. Couldn't register the vehicle since they are the owner of the vehicle.

We leased a vehicle from American Car Center last year and immediately after purchase the motor went out in the vehicle. We called American Car Center and the requested a diagnostic report. The Kia dealership informed them as well that their was a recall on one of their parts prior to our purchase that American Car Center did not address. After many discussions, American Car Center stated they were not going to pay the amount needed to replace the engine. They stated they would absolve us from any responsibility and we could come pick out a new vehicle.

They never removed the car from our credit report and it still shows we have an open car loan which is impacting our credit scores. We have contacted them at least 15 times since January 2023 in attempts to resolve the matter to no avail.

Last month, we received a notice from a different company stating we owe them money for a vehicle purchased from American Car Center. We explained the situation to this company and are still receiving calls. We are unsure how to resolve this situation as we cannot speak with anyone and noone is responding to our messages or calls.

On February 4 I signed a lease from American Car Center to get a 2017 ford fiesta. The test drive was nice but the problems weren’t really noticed until I took it on the highway. I took it back to inform the sales manager he told me to reach out to ACC. I got ahold of the warranty department and they told me to where to drop it off at. The warranty department reached out once. I reached to the shop but they informed me they haven’t heard anything from ACC and couldn’t reach them. The finance department called me but say I couldn’t cancel the contract even though I was in my 30 days of the contract. They only wanted to take the payment and lied about calling the auto shop to check on the status of the car. The auto shop reached out to me to inform me that the car would start to accumulate a storage fee if I didn’t come pick it up. Nothing was done to the car and I am not being harassed by phones from West lake about a payment for a car I am not even using.

I paid my car off in January was promised that it would take 4-6 for me to receive the title and lean release and the excess overpayment this company automatically forwarded my phone number to a their bankruptcy attorney and I paid the car off before the transition and now I can not get in contact with anyone I just want to be done and move own and his whole process is illegal

American car center committed - fraudulent vehicle warranty and damage waiver insurance coverage paperwork and practices to all american car center customers.. American car center are not honoring vehicles warranties and damage waiver insurance that they placed on all vehicles loan contracts. American car center assured me that if I keep the damage waiver insurance coverage on my account/loan they would fix my suv or perform a total loss and I would be free of all financial obligations to my loan if my truck is involved in an auto accident (no fault of my own) and they had not done so. I need for travelers casualty and surety company of america and american car center to honor there agreement as soon as possible and I need my title to my suv immediately

I would like for travelers casualty and surety company of america and american car center and all parties that are involved to honor

There damage waiver insurance that I have been paying for and file a total loss claim for my suv and free me of any and all financial

Obligations to my lease contact with american car center effective immediately.

Please mail me my title and file a loss on my suv...

Purchase date of vehicle: 07/29/2021

I was told by american car center that if I get the damage waiver insurance, that insurance will covered the vehicle if it was in a

Accident especially if the accident was no faulty of my own and it was not fault. Now I find out through several law firms that

American car center was not truthful at all and took all my money for insurance that they did not honor at all... And I want all my

Payments/money back from the entire loan or total out this suv... I could have purchase my own insurance but the sales manger stated

To me as if it was a either/other type deal... Meaning that american care center can cover my suv or I can get my own insurance and in

Realty I should have gotten both but I was listening to american car center and now I am stuck with a totaled out suv.

I got my car feb 13 2023 on bell rd in nashville tn with american car center. The guy name was brian. After I purchased my vehicle they went bankruptcy. A weel ago I went to my county clerk to get real tags since my go out april, only to find out that my car is not register. No one know where my title is. I called westlake portfolio whom took over and they told me they dont have a title for me but I still need to pay car note. Here I am paying for a car I cant drive because I dont wana get pulled over for driving a car thats not register

Im on low income and this is so heartbreaking. I have wasted money on paying carnote, uber and lyft for my kids and myself

I’m writing this at this hour because this situation has caused me to lose many nights of sleep.

As you know AMERICAN CAR CENTER/AMERICAN FINANCIAL (ACC/AF) closed its doors in February and recently filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. This has caused so many problems for so many people, and according to the media, all people have to do is pay Westlake Portfolio Management (WPM). That’s what everyone says. Just send them your payments. WELL, it’s really Not that simple. First of all, WPM is a Collection Agency. Does anyone know what that really means? All of the accounts are in Collections! Why is that ok? Collection Agencies handle accounts that are delinquent and the original creditor has made all attempts for customers to pay, unavailable and unsuccessful.

A Collection Agency on your credit can cause your credit score to plummet by 100 points. A Collection Agency on your credit can cause people to Not be hired or Lose a Current Job. A Collection Agency on your credit can prevent a home purchase. Why should the people that were doing business with ACC/AF have to suffer because they decided to shut the business down? Not only is the Collection Agency issue a problem, but what do they do about warranty issues. WPM has made it clear that they will Not honor any warranty. There are people with their vehicles STUCK in the shop because they were never paid for repairs. They have also told individuals that the term of their car notes is 136 months! Do you know how many Years 136 months is? 11.3333333….. Would you pay a car note that long?

Another issue is most didn’t even know they were leasing their vehicle until all of this happened. Others found out after they paid their deposits. These are people that weren’t able to get a car loan, and now they’re APPROVED! The excitement about having a nice vehicle with an affordable down payment blinded most of us. Nothing about ACC/AF said Lease. They were the King of Credit. It was a Buy Here Pay Here Car Lot. What about that says Lease?

I don’t know of a vehicle from them worth more than $15,000 and to own it will cost at least $30,000. With a lease certain terms that were available. You could turn it in and walk away. You could trade it in for another vehicle. You could make a balloon payment and then begin a purchase. These options weren’t even known by many of the customers, but now None of those options are available anymore. There’s nowhere to return the vehicle. WPM says they only collect on the debt and even if you return the car, you’ll still have to pay for it! There are people with a car and No Paperwork. They have Nothing saying they even have a vehicle from ACC. Nothing! They can’t even register the vehicle! WPM doesn’t have anything on them! They just have a vehicle they can’t do anything with, not even operate legally! Just pay y’all say.

There’s not even a guarantee that WPM even had the titles. Have you even looked at the reviews? Horrible! People are waiting for titles long after paying for their vehicles. I know of someone that had their vehicle totaled and can’t do anything with the check from the insurance company because ACC is on it and WPM doesn’t have her account! Now she has No vehicle and a check that might as well be a piece of blank paper. Just pay the y’all say!

WPM says they don’t need to issue any new contracts because they’re honoring the original contract. How is that when they’ve canceled the warranty, changed the terms of the payments, removed the lease options, don’t have titles, and don’t even have everyone’s account! Just pay y’all say.

Would you pay? What about the rights of the consumer? We are aware that to y’all we’re nobody. Nothing. I mean we couldn’t even purchase a car at a regular lot. We didn’t even know we were leasing. We made a down payment before signing paperwork (that locked us into the “lease” without even knowing that was what it was)

We can’t even find an attorney that will listen to us because who’s going to pay them? ACC/AF is bankruptcy and the business has been dissolved. We want you to know that We are Not a bunch of Nobody’s. We Matter. We have Rights as consumers! We have a Voice! We Demand to be heard!

WPM has made hard inquiries on people’s credit without any consent! They have automatically deducted payments on bank accounts without permission! They harass people by calling several times a day from different numbers! They don’t care about how they speak to people! They even hang up or yell over people. They aren’t even supposed to officially take over until March 31st. (According to an interview with the BBB)

The law states that they have to send out a verification letter within 5 days of contact, and they didn’t. They can’t even validate the debt! They’re asking people to send them their original contracts! Pay them Y’ALL say! Why should they pay them?

There are so many things that have been done illegally! People have cars in other people’s name that they didn’t know about. People have vehicles with VINs different than their paperwork. People have accident reports on their insurance since they’ve had the vehicles that they did didn’t make or know about. Pay them Y’ALL say! WPM is a debt collection agency and most of the people weren’t even delinquent! Tell us again that we should just shut up and pay.

People are scared. People are stressed to the max. Why pay again? Because they bought the information? What about ACC/AF filing bankruptcy followed by York Capital? Are our vehicles part of the bankruptcy? Are they listed as assets? Should ANYONE be collecting while the bankruptcy is in process? Who do we have in our corner? Who cares about us?

They had over 40 dealerships in 10 states! Do you know how many customers that is? Thousands! What about us? Some people have already paid $10,000+ into their car already for a car worth $7,000, and they still have more than $15,000 to go. They don’t want to lose their only means of transportation, but at what cost? We were preyed upon and now we’re been preyed upon by a different company and thrown away by the rest of the world as if we’re trash! Just pay Y’ALL say.

We say NO! Since WPM has only some of our information, what about the rest of the accounts? Who has them? We Demand proof that we can get our titles once the vehicles paid off. We Demand Validation of the Debts? Are they (WPM) even licensed to collect in the states we all live in? We Demand a new contract with terms that they plan on adhering to! We want to be turned over to a finance company for negotiations. We want WPM off of our credit reports completely and all collection activity stopped immediately! We want attorneys to work with us to ensure all if our rights are observed and that WPM be made to stop. They are harassing people and pressuring them to pay a debt they legally cant collect on right now. We dealt with enough from ACC/AF, we refuse to go from a bad company to the worst company. WE DEMAND THAT OUR VOICES BE HEARD! WE WON’T BACK DOWN! Why not take some time to actually investigate this matter instead of telling us to JUST PAY WPM! HELP US! PLEASE! We can be contacted via Facebook under American Car Center Customers. Join us and read our stories. See for yourself what this situation is doing to Thousands of people that have been thrown into the lions den. We are Not trying to get a “free” car! We just want to be treated fairly and justly, and be taken seriously. We are willing to pay a reasonable amount to a finance company under a new contract, or to the bankruptcy courts for the blue book value of the vehicles. Thank you for taking the time to hear me out. I hope that we hear from you soon.

Signed

A Human Being With Rights

P.S

This letter will be sent to every news station in every city that ACC/AF operates in, and we will send this and other letters weekly until we are taken seriously.

Purchased my van in12/22 as soon as i pulled off the lot the check engine light came on and it has been a nightmare since. I took it to pepboys which serviced the warranty with american care center and there was almost 4000 dollars worth of stuff wrong with the van...Mind you they only paid for one thing to get fixed and here i am now with a lemon of a van and no warranty now because american care center has shut down. This is so disgusting and i really want to just turn the van back in and be done with it.

I did not want to go to this dealership bc I had seen my moms suv sitting in the shop more than she drove it for 3 yrs and they kept tacking on payments. My mom and I were out looking for me a car while I had plenty to put down. She saw 2 Ford Fusion’s one white 2018, one pewter 2016, so she stopped although I did not want to I thought I’ll talk to them and just see. I ask about the pewter ford fusion, and they started pushing the white one on me immediately. Also, I didn’t like the way they were trying to force me into this car, I had $4-$5000 to put down, he told me I could keep it in my pocket, it was only $1000 down I think. Well they start forcing me, getting ready to close. So I say I’ll come back tomorrow, I’m not making a decision under duress. Then the GM tells me he’s already sent off for the title in my name, I’ve yet to sign the first paper, I cont. to say I’ll come back, until this. So one they pressured me into doing something I didn’t wanna do. Lied about the down payment. I drove the car from the lot, 10 mins to my house, parked it. The next day didn’t drive until I met my mother for a late lunch early supper 1-1.5 miles down the road. When I came out of the restaurant I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t go into reverse. It kept jumping from P to N, skipping Reverse all together. It would jump from D to Low, although at this point I can only go backwards bc I was in a parking place. My daughters friends dad came to help me, it wouldn’t reset or anything so after messing with it himself for an hr he looks under the hood and noticed the _ wasn’t bolted in, so worn out he said it could cause the car to get stuck in a gear and that could kill us. He fixed it best he could and told me to go straight home and to the car lot the next day bc it had been less than 18 hrs since I had bought the car and it was already torn up. He said they may have to tow it, it’s that bad. So I go back and they tell me it’s no longer then it’s American Financial. So I call and they tell me to go to Meineke which I do and they don’t look any farther than the part I said my friend said it could be, put another on, guy said it literally disintegrated in his hand. Over a year I am constantly calling and complaining that I need my car fixed. You could be going down the road and it would start jumping from Drive to low. You would have to pull over turn it off start it back up and it never went right into reverse, this was also another thing that you would have to piddle with back-and-forth until it finally went into reverse. I was told that it would have to go to Ford by 2 mechanic shops and that could take 8 months to a year. But American Financial would never let me take it to Ford to be fixed. They never tried to fix it. They never hardly put it into notes because each time I would call in to complain. I would have to go through the story over again I paid my payments until I would get tired of it and say fix my car. I’m not gonna pay it And you can come get it but they didn’t wanna come get it. This went on for exactly a year. My mom spoke with them and they were giving me until taxes. Did decide what I wanted to do. Keep the car or let it go. I had wanted to go to the Better Business Bureau from day one but researching they got away with it by saying it was a leased vehicle, so the lemon law didn’t apply which I was not told when I bought the car nor about the balloon payment at the end, when signing the papers, I did not want to sign, the man kept his hand over the writing And told me he was telling me what was on the paper so we could rush through it. Again another of the 100 red flags, so I kept trying to walk away but again I didn’t know what to do since he already sent the title off in my name, although at that time I had not signed any paperwork. So after one year of this back-and-forth and they never fixed, my car, they snuck in and repossess the car the next morning. The car lot was closed down, and you could not get American Financial on the phone. Ask for another car and ask for my money back that I had put down not even all the payments that I had made just my money back that I put down so I could put it toward another car. They never would do anything I paid way more than that car was worth, I feel like I’m entitled to that car paid free and clear. This was nothing more than a scam from the moment I walked in the door when they push the white car on me with me telling me and my daughter would get upset if I got a white Ford fusion because she had a 2013 white Ford fusion and they never even let me draw or look at The 2016 pewter colored one I went to look at they just said it was more expensive with less miles and an older car.

They are rip off. I got my car and was never told it was leasing. Was told didn't need full coverage insurance that a lie they charge you for not having it. I ask them to fix my air within a week that I got it and they wanted two hundred dollars. I took it my place and was told it was wreck and flooded out. I ask them three times to come get it and they didn't until I threatened them. My payment on payoff wasn't right.

In Feb 2022 I purchased a 2017 Chevrolet Cruz from American Car Center. I was never told I was in a leased vehicle. The day the company went bankrupt I totaled my car.(February 24 2023)No fault of mines. By March 1st new lien holder Westlake Portfolio..states I owe 25k on my vehicle. When I purchased it it was 17k...not until today I find out I'm in a lease. Why would anyone do that with a 2017..and after I pay the 25k I still not own the car. It's an additional 3995 plus tax. I feel so stupid and taken advantaged of. And they say my GAP coverage may not cover it all and I will still owe. How can this happen? Especially if my car was totaled before they even became my lien holder ..and who agreed to that.I sure didn't!

My truck was deemed by American Financial - American Car Center. I was advised that I could go to one of the American Car Center location and look for another car but I would be starting all over. They told me I would have to put another down payment and start my car notes over. Why? Because, I had purchase the truck October 2021 and the truck shut completely down on me July 2022 after having the truck for only 9 months. I was advice that I would still have to pay the truck payments until I start another contract. Why? My Representative was Mrs. Koya Valentines. I would like to get my money back because I don’t have the truck anymore they picked it up…. after sitting in my driveway from July until November…wow

I purchase my car feb 10,2022. I was told I could pay $500 and leave with the car the same day. I ended up putting down $2250 for my down payment. Then my payments were supposed to be 204.47 every two weeks. I had to pay an additional $500 ontop of the $2250. After a month I noticed my payments changed every two weeks. From 204.47 to 264.47. I called multiple times to get the issue corrected. My damage wavier fee for my gap insurance changed from 30-60-90 dollars. Then today I get a message saying my auto loan was handed off to a debt collection agency. I need this looked into asap.

When my mother bought her car from them they said this was a finance vehicle now after having several issues with this vehicle she traded it in at a real dealership! Unfortunately it was a lease. So she ended up owing $2000 after everything was said and done she actually owed $6800

This company is a scam and takes advantage of people with no credit or bad credit and the elderly. It is so sad that people exist like this. How do they sleep!

I was I could sue this company!

America Car Center closed down last Friday nationwide without any notice to employees or customers. Now we cannot get the title to our car because no one is available to answer the phones at corporate office. We have tried to contact them, but no answering service or customer service or anything.

They could have least told us customers. All of their dealerships have closed down.

I have been without my car for a month because after i changed my battery and terminal. The GPS system on my car started to malfunction my car so my car does not start. I have been dealing with the service department for over a month, my car has been sold to four different places it has been sitting at one location for 2 weeks because the warranty manager is trying to find another shop to do electrical work and not understanding that mechanic shops don't do electrical work. I have been unable to get in contact with the service department in 2 weeks. I have been told that Nissan should fix my car, and Nissan will not touch my car because the liability issues. I call and I email, no response and leave voicemails no response.

ive had my car for over 2 years. the reps are so rude especially karen and erica . i had a situation and i called to talk to them they didnt care . i sent papers of my divorce to take exs name off as i am primary and it was a domestic violence case they told me no they didnt care what the judge signed . ive always made my payments i was 4 days late and told her id have it the next day and they cut my car off and told me to borrow the money to be able to even get home . then im being charged fees i dont owe for ins. when ive sent proof and always had full coverage . but every week theres more fees that i will not pay! when i asked the payoff they added another 4000 if i pay off early its ridiculous . there needs be a law suit on american financial

Long story short. I receive an hit/accident report on my CDL and it was not me. The accident was in a total different city and some how the Vin number on the car traced back to mine. Add note that this car was also bought from American car center. This has made my insurance high and also it intervene with my CDL when time to apply for other jobs. My car was stolen Feb 7th 2023 they knew where it was located for 2 weeks and never said anything until I called again. It took a police officer to get on 3 way and ask question. Also it is now Feb 27th and still no car but harrassed for payments. These guys are a piece of work. Lawsuit coming!

I have sent In paperwork confirming that the front frame was in bad shape since June of 2022 totaling almost $4,000 worth of repairs. No one was willing to take me out of the car into another one for safety reasons still have the same issues with the car as of today. I have been getting the run around and unresolved issues with the vehicle please help thank you.