The Myth of the Voluntary Repossession

The Myth of Voluntary Repossession

Every culture has its myths.  There’s a new show on TV called “Finding Bigfoot” which is getting a lot of press. And, we just went through Christmas, a time when the mythical Santa Claus is paraded around as a legitimate being.  Some myths are pretty persistent.

A persistent myth in our culture...the world of auto repossessions...is that of the existence of “voluntary repossession” (or at least the belief that they are significantly easier than a self-help repossession). The reality is that the chances of finding the easy, should-be-done-cheaper voluntary is as difficult to find as Sasquatch.

Let me hit you with a Debbie Downer moment; several of the recent repossession-related deaths that have been documented in the press lately were on “voluntaries”.  And other deaths have occurred when the repossession had supposedly transitioned from being confrontational to the customer appearing to become cooperative (a recent situation in Florida, the customer went in to get cardboard boxes to get his property out of the car, and then came out of the house with guns blazing.The repossessor was killed). 

Why is that?

Well, first off, many of the accounts assigned to repossession agents as voluntaries never should have been assigned as such. The phone conversation in which the debtor yells at the collector “yeah, go ahead and send your #$%& repo guy out tomorrow and I’ll be waiting for him!” gets lost in translation, and becomes “please go to the address tomorrow, our customer promises to meet agent there with the car”.  All to save maybe $100.00 on the repossession fees?  This is more common than you could ever imagine.  

Also, it puts the customer more in control of the time, place, and manner of surrender. Since its based on the customer’s cooperation, there’s the possibility of no-shows (commonplace) and re-scheduling. The customer can force the repossession to happen at a time when he and his buddies have knocked back a case of brewskis, and they are all sitting around waiting for the arrival of the recovery agent.  

But its bad for the lender, too.  With a voluntary, we often find the car sitting on junkyard wheels and tires, or with a hole in the dash and doors where the stereo was…situations the client could have controlled if handled after the car was safely in possession of the agent. The $100 savings in repossession fees translated into a $1000 hit on the car’s residual value.


You might like to think that voluntary repossessions are friendly exchanges, like old friends meeting over coffee. Those do exist, but they are a rarity. Ask your repossessor; I am sure they will tell you.

There might be some internal reporting benefit to the creditor to consider an account a “voluntary” , but the potential costs to their repossessor or even their own collateral seems far too high, in my book.