How they do it: Techniques and Methods of locating Vehicles by Repo Men Repossession agents, or repo men as most people call them, have a few tricks up their sleeves that make locating the vehicles substantially more easily than you would think.repossession (ad) So, here we will discuss the techniques using — which they perform an analysis.
Technological Tools
The repo men use high-end technology to trace vehicles. Key tools include:
GPS Tracking: Often a lot of vehicles are installed with GPS tracking devices, if you default the lender will be notified and repo agents can find your vehicle on demand13.
License Plate Recognition (LPR) — Licens e plates photo g raph y in public areas and associating vehicles with delinquent payments 1.
Skip Tracing
Social security search 1-13 Skip tracing is searching for an individual when conventional methods have returned little to no results.
Collection and Analysis: Repo agents will go through a series of data bases including credit reports and financial records to help them locate the borrower13.
Social Media Monitoring: Agents commonly scour social media platforms to find any evidence of the debtor’s location, including recent posts indicating their whereabouts35.
Physical Surveillance
In other cases, repo men will simply wait at the location where they think a car is most likely to show up eventually. This includes:
Frequent Locations: They monitor the locations of a debtor that they are assumed to show up in (home, work place and popular areas)13.
Calls to Your Neighbor: Repo agents may call the neighbors looking for clues and ideas on where you might be hanging out along with your vehicle6.
Legal Considerations
Conversely, repo men are legal repossession practitioners who have to abide by laws that regulate the act of repossessing.
Public Property only: Unless the creditor does so in a way to breach the peace, or violate other state laws then they are allowed to repossess vehicles from public access areas.
Repossession agents are not allowed to be bullies or use force during repossessions, which means they cannot break the FDCPA law 12.
Indeed, these repossession methods illustrate just how complex vehicle repossessions can be and underscores the need for legal compliance by members of this industry.
