Da Repo Man

This morning started out like any other. Showers, breakfast, the packing of lunches, garbage bins to the curb and the final brushing of teeth before heading out the door.

And that's when things got weird.

I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when Dallas walked in, waited for me to look at him and said,

"My truck's been stolen. I don't know how else to tell you that."

Well, I think he did a pretty good job. I got the message loud and clear.

I stopped what I was doing and followed him into the garage. He hit the opener and as the garage door rolled up, a very empty driveway came into view. No truck. It seems kind of funny now that the two of us went out there to confirm that, yes indeed, there was no vehicle. He told me about how he had used his remote to open the truck, failed to hear the telltale, "Beep, Beep" and assumed that he had a dead battery. That would have been a reasonable conclusion and right in line with our luck lately but to walk out and find it GONE...

Well, we called the sheriff who let us bleat on about the truck only to tell us that it wasn't under their jurisdiction. We needed to call the city police, which we did. They told us the truck had been repossessed for non payment, which would have been understandable except THERE IS NO LIENHOLDER! We've had the title since April 2008.

So, we call the repo company and clearly something is wrong. They have a different owner name and a different owner address but Capital One Auto Finance (apparently, they want to know what's in your wallet AND your driveway) has the year, make, model and VIN number of our truck.

Weird. Makes my stomach hurt.

So, after scanning a copy of the title and emailing it to the Repo Man, Dallas and I have been asked to sit back and wait while the powers that be sort things out.

What has struck me as mind boggling is that in the middle of the night, while we lay snug in our beds, a bank that we don't do business with, was able to send out the goon squad to an address that doesn't match their files to pick up a vehicle that has been paid for and legally registered in a name since 2007, that doesn't match the one they have on file.

What's worse is that nobody will call us back and they don't seem terribly concerned about the fact that they have, in essence, stolen a vehicle.

So, in addition to being one of the great credit card rate hike offenders and one of the guys that accepted 3.56 billion dollars in taxpayer bailout funds, Capital One can add car thief to their resume.

I'm sure we'll get our vehicle back but I wonder just how long we will be inconvenienced because of someone's clerical error.