Extended auto warranties

[k3am]

Anyone have experience with these?

Backstory: my mom has severe cognitive decline. She can’t manage her finances and we are trying to sift through everything. It’s a mess. Tons of subscriptions and payments going out that she has no idea about.

My mom has 3 extended warranties. She’s paying 150% more for auto warranties than she does for her actual car payment. Billings are all handled by separate companies that you can’t cancel through. We don’t have any of the initial paperwork. We’ve tried cancelling them, but there are so many hoops it’s nearly impossible.

She also (conveniently and annoyingly, since I just spend HOURS setting all her utilities up on bill pay) has fraud in her checking account, and the accounts will be cancelled and reissued.

Any issue with just defaulting on these payments? At this point, no one gives a shit if it effects her credit.

[aprilsails]

Those will not go to collections, they will simply cancel the policy, so I say you are good to go for it if you don’t care about the hit to credit.

I’m really surprised you can’t simply cancel with written notice (or a fax) though. Like what if you sold or totalled your car? Are you still on the hook for paying the extended warranty? Have you looked up these companies on BBB? This all seems super scammy.

To be honest, that’s probably not worth your time. Just stop paying.

[k3am]

aprilsails, she entered into contracts with each of the warranties, which threw me for a loop. They draft directly from her account. The billing entity has said stuff like “payment 3 of 48” type stuff and I’ve managed to find ONE of the contracts. Cancellation notice needs to reflect info from the original contract - odometer reading, warrant type, issuing agent, etc, that we don’t have. And the request needs to be notarized, because reasons.

And they are total scams, and she is complete scam bait. She has so many versions of this going on and it’s been a nightmare. But if anyone needs 15 months worth of moisturizer billed at $167 a month, a box of CBD oil, or 360 day supply of memory supplements totaling almost $800, she’s got you covered. And those were just the easy things to find.

[origami]

When her accounts are cancelled and reissued with new numbers, would that break all these auto payments? If so, I’d do that and default on all of them except the ones like utilities, taxes, etc. you know are legit/necessary. We had to cancel/reissue our CCs recently because DH lost his wallet and our auto payments continued to the new numbers without me having to update them. Just wanted to mention that in case they can turn that off.

[k3am]

origami, that is honestly my hope! I may have suggested that we do this to her accounts before we caught the fraud and been overruled..

I’m also trying to find out if there’s a way we can give her a separate account with a debit card that can only be used for ATM withdrawals.. we don’t want to leave her without access to funds, but we don’t want her to be able to set up things like this again. We conveniently “lost” her checkbook, which has kept her from writing 5-15 checks a day for “bills” to charities she doesn’t care about.

[tealblue]

I’m so sorry your mom has fallen for all these and you have to work so hard to figure all this out.

Would something like Greenlight debit cards work? You can grant access to certain stores - probably even an atm. And you can control the $ that’s in there and get notices. I think it’s $5/month but surely that’s money well spent in a situation like this.

Or maybe they have a similar product for older adults?

[ellipses84]

Can you sell the car and get out of the warranties that way? If not, try reporting them to the BBB and leave a bad review about it online. Not cancelling when someone has cognitive decline and has triple the coverage they need is predatory. How do they even determine who is responsible for paying between the companies?

[ellipses84]

Also, I’m so sorry you are dealing with this. I know it’s so difficult. How independent is she going to be? Does she understand all financial decisions need to go through her? I agree new bank accounts that stop the subscriptions/ auto payments and a debit card like the kinds you get for kids are best. Maybe even give her cash and write for emergencies only on the debit card. If she can see how much money she has, she may be less likely to give it all away.