I can't express how disappointed I am in the auto loan funding department. I've been trying to buy a used car from a private seller for a week now. I applied and got approved last week Thursday so I made an appointment to go see the car. Everything looked good, so I made a deposit and started the paperwork with funding the loan Monday morning. This is when the nightmares started. First I find out USAA is still living in 1960 and can't electronically send any payments, they have to issue check by mail. Fail. I smoothed that over with the seller, and USAA told us if the paperwork was submitted by 4 pm central time on Monday, it would only take 24-48 hours to send the not-so-environmentally friendly tree-pulp checks out, and that they'd do Fed-Ex overnight with the fastest horse drawn carriages known to man. Fine, check in the seller's hands by today (Thursday). I live in AZ, and the seller is in CA, but I had work trips I could make all week in CA so as long as I could pick up the car by Friday it would work. I called USAA every day twice a day starting Tuesday morning trying to get an update on the release of the checks and oh, I don't know, maybe a tracking number to reassure both parties that it's on the way. Now I learn that neither I or even the loan origination department at USAA can talk to the loan funding department. They have to send electronic messages in the form of notes attached to the account politely asking for an update and to maybe, if it's not too much trouble, pretty please expedite the processing of this payment. This surprised me for two reasons, one I was half expecting at this point the messages would have to be written on scrolls and flown to the mysterious funding department, and second, how the heck can you not talk to a sister department within your own freaking company!? Especially one so fundamentally important to your day-to-day operations? You are the auto loan department, but you can't talk to the side of the business that actually provides the money for your loans? There's only one end of the horse where something like that comes from. Now it's Thursday, the only people I can talk to are the loan origination people, and all they can do is tell me that it hasn't been funded, still pending, no checks are released, another useless note added to the account to which no one is paying attention, a disappointed customer of USAA now having to go back to AZ empty handed and needing to frivolously plan another trip out to CA, that is assuming the equally frustrated seller doesn't cancel the deal and sell the car to someone who's bank knows how wire transfers work... I won't be trusting USAA again with my previously very loyal business.
