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Chrysler Discriminatory Class-Action Lawsuit - From plaintiff Vanessa Dampeer

The Human Story - Vanessa Dampeer

The following is Vanessa Dampeer’s first-person account of how Chrysler’s alleged redlining has affected individuals. Vanessa is one of the named plaintiffs in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed against Chrysler’s financing subsidiary, DaimlerChrysler Services North America, LLC, commonly known as Chrysler Financial Company. For more information, view the complaint or contact Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro for more information.

For Vanessa Dampeer, buying a new car for her mother should have been a painless process. After all, Vanessa recently purchased a 2000 Ford Expedition, and her years of carefully managing her credit and finances paid off, earning 6.9 percent financing, a spectacular rate for that time.

Vanessa has worked in the banking industry for more than 26 years, and she knows the importance of a good credit rating. “I’ve always been very careful to keep a close eye on my finances, and I know I’ve done a good job,” she added.

“I went in to help my 64-year-old mother buy a new car,” Dampeer said. “Chrysler sent her a flyer touting great deals and telling her she’d been pre-approved for spectacular financing, so she went in.”

According to Dampeer, her mother left with a new Chrysler Sebring but then received a call from the dealership saying there was a problem with the financing. Dampeer accompanied her mother to the dealership and agreed to switch the purchase from her mother’s name to her own.

“I didn’t think twice about stepping in for my mother,” Dampeer said. “We were financially able to purchase the vehicle, and my credit rating should have enabled us to receive great terms for the purchase.”

That is not what Chrysler concluded, though. Although Dampeer had an Empirica score of 641, which, according to the suit, should have qualified her for one of Chrysler’s lowest rates, the auto giant refused to finance the purchase. According to the complaint, that decision was not based on her credit rating, but because she owned a home in an area with a heavy concentration of blacks.

The Chrysler dealership helped arrange financing with an outside lender, but at 14 percent, more than seven times the 1.9 percent rate Chrysler was offering to purchasers with less attractive credit, adding thousands of dollars to the final price for the auto.

“Overnight, we went from zero percent financing to 14 percent,” Dampeer added.

“My mother already had the car, and I didn’t feel right telling her she needed to give it back,” Dampeer said. “I feel like Chrysler pulled one over on us, telling us we were pre-approved for low rates, then pulling the rug out from under us.”

“I am sickened to learn that they judged me not on my credit history, but because I am black and live in an black neighborhood,” Dampeer added.

“We should all be judged on our merits, not on some antiquated, bigoted set of standards,” Dampeer said. “When a company as big and important as Chrysler demonstrates this sort of behavior, it makes me wonder whether our country has made any progress at all.”

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ED NOTE: Information in this document is drawn from the lawsuit filed against Chrysler Financial Company.