I find the story wholly believable, a lot of people who work in payments seem to be stupid and/or stubborn, and it might be the industry selects for those traits.
I imagine there's a lot more money to be made making someone pay for the fees and costs of a repo, than a phone call asking them to pay a few dollars. Although his friend could also be lying about the few dollars part.
General industry practice people are put in delinquency buckets, and generally not by amount but in the 'are they past due or not?' I'm speculating but there could be other behavioral scoring as well and if they just automated the process of dispatching well... that's on them and good luck with that overhead.
I know he had to pay much more than the under-amount: fees & whatnot. So I'd assume that GM Finance cleared a profit on this deal.
Yeah, on the repo man accepting payment: I'd almost believe that happened, and he just pocketed the money & reported the car missing.
"Stay away from GM Finance" is the lesson here.
That might be a good assumption if human beings were involved in the decision loop to repossess the vehicle, but I wouldn't be surprised if the entire process is automated.
Yup, I accidentally underpaid my mortgage one month by $0.20 (I fat fingered the online payment). I didn't get my house repossessed, but it did send the automated billing system at the bank into a huge tizzy that took six months and multiple phone conversations with different departments to sort out. I was flabbergasted that it caused so much commotion, as it can't be that unusual an error to occur.