Apparently Hyundai is notorious for slow-rolling title releases once you personally payoff a lease (I’m mired in it right now). Their primary tactic appears to be the “odometer statement” which they only accept via fax, and claim takes a minimum of 3 business days to be “processed”. There’s no alternative, and they simply pretend they never received - send it dozens of times and same issue. Nice racket. They did manage to cash a cashier’s check quickly (surprise!).
If you go through BBB complaints, every other one is for this exact issue.
It seems so prevalent, at some point they hopefully attract the attention of some attorney general.
Anyway, FYI heads up for anybody who’s contemplating similar plan (now that 3rd party buyouts aren’t functioning). Realize it will be a huge pain and take forever. I’m contemplating having a lawyer send in a threatening letter to get attention depending on how much longer things take. They’ve burned me as a buyer, I’ve admired the Genesis models, but a rebrand doesn’t save you from the rock bottom customer service.
The only workaround I can imagine is to buyout direct from a Hyundai dealer, who for sure will screw you on price.
Oh, the actual processing/receiving is handled by their “backoffice” and of course anybody you talk to isn’t allowed to contact them except for “in writing”. No matter what you say, they’ll just respond with, “Check back in 3 business days.” And then resend. And then “check back in 3 more days”. LOL
It’s your typical corporate scam setup, multiple layers designed to f*** over the customer.
I will try switching to multiple fax attempts, but my assumption is they’re receiving the info fine - there’s enough reports that it’s obvious they are deliberately stonewalling people.
I had this exact issue buying out my Kia Stinger… took about two months for them to send the title and nobody could ever tell me if they actually had the odometer statement or not.
After faxing a bunch more times and still no luck this morning, had a customer service rep all of a sudden volunteer that there is another way to submit the odometer. An electronic signature form (via echosign). Was skeptical it would work, but was sent via email (password is last four of SS), and had all the info filled out, just needed mileage and typed signature.
Attached is screenshot of form they sent, not sure if this is brand new - but I’d recommend pushing any rep to send it over rather than going through the fax way. They probably put 10 pages in the fax machine every month and just let it print to the ether…
Their dealers benefit - a number of 3rd party dealers have said they won’t work with Hyundai as they’re a pain, they all recommended going through the Hyundai dealer directly. Of course those offer a worse payout and tack on mandatory fees since they know you’re a captive audience.
The only alternative is what I’m doing, which requires cash/temp loan being held up for 1-3 months until they release. There’s no incentive for Hyundai to be fast/painless with the process.
But they aren’t losing the cash when they release the title, so the interest doesn’t change.
You aren’t a 3rd party dealer, so, again, what is the “racket”?
Why would HFS give one whit about how much independently-owned dealerships make on used cars?
EXACTLY! There is nothing malicious or underhanded about it. They just don’t care! They have your money and will get around to sending you the title in their own sweet time. With money already in hand, you move to the bottom of the To-Do list.
It’s 100% underhanded - no coincidence this wave of disallowing 3rd party buyouts has happened lately. If they get back a car with a low residual and can resell back to dealer for higher, ka-ching. They don’t want lease buyouts.
Anything they can do to discourage people from buying out a lease is in their interest. So “misplacing” documents, making you submit through a fax machine that doesn’t work, endlessly responding “call back in 3 days!”, it’s all designed to delay and discourage people to stay in their lease.
The customer doesn’t find out that they are being discouraged until well into the process and the check was cashed, so the process is not really reversible? How does that discourage anyone from doing anything?
Most likely they just don’t have the personnel to handle anything at this point, and see no reason to increase staffing where there is no direct financial benefit to the company.
The same process is used for dealer payoffs - I’ve talked with multiple dealers who refuse to work with Hyundai as they’re slow and incommunicative. Ka-ching.
I know this is an old thread but I’ve been researching this for awhile and need advice - my lease is up in December. Is there anyway I can pay my lease end amount for that month NOW and get this process started ASAP?
My plan is obviously flip the car to carvana/vroom but I’ll need the title to do that and I’ll need to sell my current car in order to get into a new one. So Hyundai taking their time to fuck me over really isn’t an option - there’s got to be a way to fuck them first.
The only way is to see if a Hyundai dealer will give you near the price of Carvana, anything else…well…bend over and ask them for another. Don’t forget some Autonation and RODO dealers have Hyundai dealers in their network and might be able to buy it.
Just reading the BBB complaints is sad - they are literally ruining ppls lives with their incompetent CS department. Made me look at my situation differently, they deserve the hate.
I’ve looked at Autonation and their quote is consistently 2k less than what carvana will pay so rather not go there. I can try the dealer but prob not a good bet either. I think I’ll keep an eye on the situation and hope it sorts out or be ready to file complaints/lawyer up.
