When you’re making payments on a car, obviously you have to keep making the payments or you no longer own the car – the bank owns the car. But what about if the car was in an accident and doesn’t work anymore?

In today’s story, one college student stops making his car payments after his car was in an accident, but then the bank makes a mistake and gives him a way to escape the debt.

Read the full story…

Pay up or give us the car back

As a poor college student working in the cafeteria, I had some money troubles and made a few stupid decisions.

The first car I ever bought was a used, green Datsun B210. [It] worked good enough for what I wanted.

Believe it or not, a local bank in my hometown loaned me money to buy it.

An accident made the car unusable.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and the car and I were rear-ended by a speeding sports car when I was backing out of a driveway. I wasn’t hurt but it basically totaled the car.

I kept paying the monthly payments, even though the car didn’t work any more.

Then I hit a rough patch and stopped paying the car payments. ([It was] stupid, since it was only about $700 left. But 30 years ago, that seemed like a huge amount of money.)

The bank wanted the car back.

The bank started calling and complaining and sending me angry notices. (Totally reasonable of course).

Finally, someone at the bank made the mistake of saying, “Pay up or give us the car back!”

That was all I needed.

He towed the car to the bank!

I borrowed a friend’s truck, rented a car-tow trailer, and towed the dead car 60 miles back to my hometown and left it in the bank’s parking lot.

Mailed them their letter back with the “give us the car back” circled with a note saying it was the green heap sitting in their parking lot.

Years later, [I] hunted them down again, and paid it off to reduce bad karma….

I can’t even begin to imagine what the bank was thought when they saw the car in the parking lot!

What does Reddit think? Read the comments below to find out.

Some readers had a nice chuckle at this youthful mistake.

Others reminisced about the very car this youngin’ once had.

And one Redditor brought up a very responsible reminder.

It’s honorable that this college student made things right in the end.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.