After three Yamaha motorcycles and a boat over the years I can't imagine EVER purchasing ANYTHING from Yamaha again. The incompetence they've displayed here is unimaginable. There is literally NOTHING they've done correctly, so how can we believe anything they say?
- January payment made early? Check.
- Amount paid for January over and above the step amount despite being in the lower-interest period? Yup.
- Notification that the loan was being transferred to a different servicer? Not in anything that didn't scream junk mail, so who knows.
- Surprise two weeks after making my January payment when I called Synchrony to check my current payoff and got transferred twice only to be told they couldn't tell me anything about my loan and provided me with the number of 1st Associates? Complete!
- Bonus surprise when I called 1st Associates and was told that my January payment (made two weeks previously) was past due? Massive.
- Seeing that Yamaha's selected Loan Servicer 1st Associates thinks I should be making the step payment several years before the step occurs? WTF?!
- Making my "January" payment a second time to protect my credit rating? Unnecessary in theory, but...
- Seeing that the excess I paid above the step payment was being considered part of my February payment and not being applied to Principal reduction? Are. You. Serious?
- Double bonus surprise when I received the letter showing I still owed my January payment and that Yamaha Finance now expects two payments (at STEP AMOUNT) from me? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YAMAHA??!!
I really didn't enjoy all the hours of wasted time on hold across two phone interactions with Synchrony and another two phone interactions with 1st Associates either.
When I'm able to see, securely, on their site, correct information about my loan and payments, and not also be surprised by some completely inaccurate ding on my credit report (because come on: they're doing everything else wrong so why wouldn't that happen as well), maybe
then I can stop worrying that these clowns will continue to get almost everything beyond my December 2019 Principal Amount wrong.
I've never seen anything approaching this level of incompetence out of any Finance Operation. Loan Transfer and Servicing are basic operations for them. Managing accurate information about Loan Terms and Amounts is basic competence for them. No properly-functioning Finance operation would ever tolerate this volume of garbage numbers and inability to accurately reflect the basic numeric values of their business. Would a bunch of grade schoolers do a worse job than this? I don't know, but it's hard to imagine they'd be any worse.
Yamaha has accomplished ONE thing with COMPLETE effectiveness here: Yamaha has convinced me that they have such a low quality bar that I'll NEVER be comfortable trusting any product or service they provide because who knows what corners they've cut.