Friday August 21, 1998

William Meany, President of Repo Depo, shatters some myths about the art of car retrieval.

Laura Lind - On any given week in cities across Canada, hundreds of repossessed cars are in the lots of the national auction chain, waiting to be reclaimed by their deadbeat owners or resold to the highest bidder in silent auction.

What these cars have been through is anyone’s guess.

On the day Special Reports visited the Repo lot in Toronto, the inventory ranged from late 1980s Hyundai with smashed windows to a pristine 1994 Series III BMW convertible whose owner is in jail.  Somewhere in this inventory could be a incredible deal on a car, or perhaps, an unwelcome introduction to a felon just in town from Kingston.

That last possibility is highly improbable, says William Meany, RepoDepo’s president.

“A drug dealer is a businessman as far as we’re concerned. The last thing they want to do is show their face anywhere where it can be documented. Once their car’s repossessed, you’re on candid camera; the premises are on video surveillance. If I was a drug dealer I’d just stay away.”

Moreover, he adds, in the thousands of repossessions his company has been involved in, there has never been a problem with the former owners of repo cars.

“They are often quite relieved when the bailiff shows up to take their car. It’s difficult and sometimes they’re upset.  But the upsetting goes to the wayside once the vehicle’s gone and they realize there’s not a monthly payment anyone.”

What about the cars with the windows smashed in?

“I don’t know if that’s anger about their car getting repossessed,” Meany says. “ I think it’s more often Sally has her car parked in from of her house and someone comes along and breaks the side glass, goes in, steals her stereo now she’s got glass on her seat, her stereo’s gone and she doesn’t have any money.

“She may not have insurance, and she just decides to stop making payments, put the car in her garage and put plastic over the window and just wait for he bailiff to come. That’s what happens. It’s not violence on behalf of the debtors.”

“For a lot of them, it’s a big weight off their chest. There’s a lot of misconceptions about repossessions. They think it’s all done in the middle of the night and its all very covert.”

But in fact it can get very covert. Although some repossessions simply involve a phone call from a bank or finance agency to the creditor, once the bailiff is brought in, repossession typically take on a clandestine nature.

“We try to repossess with the least resistance while the owner is not around, at work or in the middle of the night,” says Terry Robertson, president of the Ontario Bailiffs Association.

When debtors walk in on a  repossession, Robertson says, things can get ugly.

“I’ve seen a person flip out off the deep end, break all the windshield wipers and antenna off their car, get in the car and start it, put their foot to the floor, blow the engine out, throw their keys on the street and there you go.”

But Robertson agrees with Meany that in truth, most repossessions go without a hitch, and the owner can be at the door ready to hand over the keys.

But how does the prospective buyer make sure he’s not getting stuck with the car with the blown engine? That’s the tricky part, particularly since Repo Depo and other repo auction houses don’t generally sanction test drives.

Repo Depo will allow prospective buyers to start cars, and to bring in mechanics to inspect the engines, but with this kind of a restriction, even a mechanic wouldn’t know if the transmission was gone.

This is intended to protect the rights of the owner, Meany says.

“ To let everyone test drive would be prohibitive with the statutory process that’s in place,” he says. “Sometimes you’ll get a debtor who comes back …who’s very displeased, first off that their car’s been repossessed, No. 2, that they’re having financial difficulties and No.3, that everyone that was interested in buying their car has actually driven it, and there’s some feeling of violation that escalates people and we don’t want to do that.”

Although, Meany maintains, losing a car is a great relief for many people whose cars are repossessed…but never mind.

Some bailiffs say this policy works against the debtor’s best interest. If potential drivers were aware of how well the cars drove, they say, they would make higher bids with more confidence securing a better price for the debtor –who is still on the hook for the amount owed in the car loan and the amount it fetches at auction.

“If you’re the high bidder, we invite you to come down and have a test drive, make a deposit and get your financing arranged,” Meany says. “ At that point, if the car doesn’t drive to the buyers satisfaction, they don’t have to buy the car.”

The fine print in the RepoDepo auction form plainly says that the bidder accepts the car as it is, where it is,  subject only to the approval of the vendor, with no mention of a test drive.