POLITE REPOMAN
The polite repo man
Kinder, gentler version of repossession game works in Siouxland
By John Quinlan, Journal staff writer
Meet Jim Oien, the kinder, gentler repo man.
Sixty years old and battling cancer, the owner of Sioux City's Talon Agency has been a repo man for 20 years. He and his assistant, Donna Peterson, a repo vet only a little younger than Oien who also works as his downtown office manager, continue to do what many would consider dangerous work, recovering motor vehicles and other property reclaimed by banks and credit unions.
Oien, in fact, is a Sioux Falls high school classmate of Peterson's husband, which is how they became acquainted and Oien offered her the job five years ago.
Most people when thinking of a "Repo Man," picture the Emilio Estevez movie of that name with its sleazy characters or the leg-breaking antics of Sylvester Stallone in the first "Rocky." Films are full of "collection agents" sneaking around in the middle of the night stealing cars or flashing guns as they reclaim property in the daylight hours. Even then, there is no real "stealing" involved because the repo men have a legal right to do what they're doing.
Jim Oien has seen those characters and their real-life counterparts. Some still work the streets of Sioux City, he noted. He simply chooses not to emulate them.
Nationwide, auto repossession is a billion-dollar industry with some 5,000 firms in the United States working out of their homes and small offices, according to the Web site of one regional company which declined an interview request.
Oien says he has never been threatened by anyone. When facing a belligerent person, he walks away.
He started out with a partner in a collection agency that did a few repossessions, but gradually the number increased. "Then we got into them, and we started doing them nice, clean and quick," he said.
He owns a collection agency and a private investigation service, but repo work continues to provide a steady income.
"When I started doing repossessions, I took a little different tack," he said. "Instead of scouting people out and hitting their cars in the middle of the night or stealing them when they're at work, I'd typically go out and I'd talk to the people. I'll explain the situation to them, and of course they're pretty much understanding of what's happening."
He explains that the people have 10 days to reclaim their vehicle, the worst-case scenario being that they would have to come up with another loan somewhere to pay for it. The biggest problem people have, he said, is that they just don't contact their creditors to work something out.
"Most generally they can work out something with the bank if it's not a big problem. Sometimes it's such a small thing as their insurance lapsed, and of course a lending institution isn't going to leave an expensive piece of equipment like a car out there with no insurance on it. Their business is to force the insurance on it; and in the meantime they'll repo the vehicle if the insurance isn't put on it," he said.
Oien chose the more polite business route because he concluded that most of the people he was dealing with weren't deadbeats. If they were deadbeats, Peterson said, they never would have gotten the loan in the first place. And they probably would have disappeared.
"Most of them are upright citizens," Oien said. They've just fallen on hard times. And they're not in hiding.
Why the repossessions?
There are three reasons, he said, why people get their vehicle repossessed: a major illness, divorce or losing a job.
Most of the vehicles he gets back are in pretty good shape, and they are returned to the lenders in better shape than they would be if he had to break into and hot-wire them. With Talon's service, the lenders even get the keys back.
"I serve papers for the courts, too. And most of the time when we leave somebody, whether we've taken their car or left papers with them concerning whatever, they say 'thank you' when we leave," he said. "We always give them an opportunity to get their personal belongings out of the car. We explain to them that they need to contact the lending institution and talk to them, and they've got 10 days to do that.
Oien said one banker told him that since Talon had been repossessing vehicles for him for about three years, the bank has never had a claim of damage or a claim of missing items "and most importantly the people don't come in here screaming. They come in here and they're just in a business mode to do business."
He often has a repossessed car back on the banker's lot within two or three hours. In one piece.
The gentler, kinder approach might not work in the bigger cities, like New York or Chicago, he admitted. And it doesn't always work in Sioux City. People going through bankruptcy proceedings or other hardships are sometimes recalcitrant.
"I had one guy tell me if I ever came back, he'd turn his dog loose on me," Peterson said. "And he wasn't joking. When we run into a situation like that, we just leave."
That hostility wasn't entirely unfamiliar. Peterson noted that she used to work in the city and county assessors' offices.
Peterson is the first to admit she doesn't look like the traditional repo man. "I think that's kind of an advantage," she said. "I always tell Jim they think I'm the Tupperware lady. So they just open the door to me."
Most Siouxlanders are reasonable and understanding of what these repo folks do, Oien said, and they cooperate as long as they are treated with respect and allowed to maintain their dignity. They lack the mindset of a criminal who feels that because a car is in his possession, it's his.
"I used to be in the rental industry. There was an axiom that went with that -- the longer people had a piece of rental equipment in their possession, the more they felt they owned it," Oien said. "It's sort of that same way with the cars."
That is why the Talon repo folks work discreetly. If they approach someone at their place of work, they ask to speak with them off to the side. They don't embarrass them and they let them remove their personal property from the vehicle. And on occasion, the admittedly soft-hearted Oien has offered displaced drivers a ride home, once even hauling a man to Correctionville. "If I see somebody in trouble, I'll help them if I can," he said.
He said he wouldn't take the Journal on a typical repo job because it would violate the privacy rights of the people with whom he deals.
Repossession firms don't always advertise. They contact banks and credit unions, as Oien did, and slowly build up a client base of regular referrals. Repo men and women are also sent into Siouxland from Sioux Falls, Omaha, Des Moines and beyond, Oien said. "There are several people in town who do repossessions," he said.
Occasionally, even the nice repo folks meet resistance, people who won't part with their vehicles come hell or high water.
"I've run into some of those," Oien said. "And I'll explain to them what a replevin action is. A replevin action is where the lender will go to court and get a court order to pick up their property. And a deputy sheriff will come out and pick it up usually. That costs $600 to $1,000, as I remember. And that gets added to the bill. So it's a better deal with me than to have it go one step further. They're going to acquire more debt."
The one vehicle Oien won't touch is the semi-truck.
"That's a whole new ballgame because you're talking about somebody's livelihood now," he said. "They typically aren't giving it up, and they have a whole different mentality about that vehicle. It's not the ride to and from work. It's the bread and butter on the table. I understand they have some real problems with those."
Peterson said she met a repo man who specialized in semis, traveling the country, occasionally stopping in Sioux City. That man carries a gun. "It's nasty work," she said. "It's not anything I'd want to do."
Some towing companies are also employed for repo work.
Oien tried to get one such company to tow a vehicle for him, but no matter how forcefully he explained that the vehicle owner was OK with the towing, that the car just wouldn't start, the towing company man declined. He told Oien, "Oh, no! I don't do repos. I've been shot at. I don't do repos."
The Talon Agency does.
Kinder, gentler version of repossession game works in Siouxland
By John Quinlan, Journal staff writer
Meet Jim Oien, the kinder, gentler repo man.
Sixty years old and battling cancer, the owner of Sioux City's Talon Agency has been a repo man for 20 years. He and his assistant, Donna Peterson, a repo vet only a little younger than Oien who also works as his downtown office manager, continue to do what many would consider dangerous work, recovering motor vehicles and other property reclaimed by banks and credit unions.
Oien, in fact, is a Sioux Falls high school classmate of Peterson's husband, which is how they became acquainted and Oien offered her the job five years ago.
Most people when thinking of a "Repo Man," picture the Emilio Estevez movie of that name with its sleazy characters or the leg-breaking antics of Sylvester Stallone in the first "Rocky." Films are full of "collection agents" sneaking around in the middle of the night stealing cars or flashing guns as they reclaim property in the daylight hours. Even then, there is no real "stealing" involved because the repo men have a legal right to do what they're doing.
Jim Oien has seen those characters and their real-life counterparts. Some still work the streets of Sioux City, he noted. He simply chooses not to emulate them.
Nationwide, auto repossession is a billion-dollar industry with some 5,000 firms in the United States working out of their homes and small offices, according to the Web site of one regional company which declined an interview request.
Oien says he has never been threatened by anyone. When facing a belligerent person, he walks away.
He started out with a partner in a collection agency that did a few repossessions, but gradually the number increased. "Then we got into them, and we started doing them nice, clean and quick," he said.
He owns a collection agency and a private investigation service, but repo work continues to provide a steady income.
"When I started doing repossessions, I took a little different tack," he said. "Instead of scouting people out and hitting their cars in the middle of the night or stealing them when they're at work, I'd typically go out and I'd talk to the people. I'll explain the situation to them, and of course they're pretty much understanding of what's happening."
He explains that the people have 10 days to reclaim their vehicle, the worst-case scenario being that they would have to come up with another loan somewhere to pay for it. The biggest problem people have, he said, is that they just don't contact their creditors to work something out.
"Most generally they can work out something with the bank if it's not a big problem. Sometimes it's such a small thing as their insurance lapsed, and of course a lending institution isn't going to leave an expensive piece of equipment like a car out there with no insurance on it. Their business is to force the insurance on it; and in the meantime they'll repo the vehicle if the insurance isn't put on it," he said.
Oien chose the more polite business route because he concluded that most of the people he was dealing with weren't deadbeats. If they were deadbeats, Peterson said, they never would have gotten the loan in the first place. And they probably would have disappeared.
"Most of them are upright citizens," Oien said. They've just fallen on hard times. And they're not in hiding.
Why the repossessions?
There are three reasons, he said, why people get their vehicle repossessed: a major illness, divorce or losing a job.
Most of the vehicles he gets back are in pretty good shape, and they are returned to the lenders in better shape than they would be if he had to break into and hot-wire them. With Talon's service, the lenders even get the keys back.
"I serve papers for the courts, too. And most of the time when we leave somebody, whether we've taken their car or left papers with them concerning whatever, they say 'thank you' when we leave," he said. "We always give them an opportunity to get their personal belongings out of the car. We explain to them that they need to contact the lending institution and talk to them, and they've got 10 days to do that.
Oien said one banker told him that since Talon had been repossessing vehicles for him for about three years, the bank has never had a claim of damage or a claim of missing items "and most importantly the people don't come in here screaming. They come in here and they're just in a business mode to do business."
He often has a repossessed car back on the banker's lot within two or three hours. In one piece.
The gentler, kinder approach might not work in the bigger cities, like New York or Chicago, he admitted. And it doesn't always work in Sioux City. People going through bankruptcy proceedings or other hardships are sometimes recalcitrant.
"I had one guy tell me if I ever came back, he'd turn his dog loose on me," Peterson said. "And he wasn't joking. When we run into a situation like that, we just leave."
That hostility wasn't entirely unfamiliar. Peterson noted that she used to work in the city and county assessors' offices.
Peterson is the first to admit she doesn't look like the traditional repo man. "I think that's kind of an advantage," she said. "I always tell Jim they think I'm the Tupperware lady. So they just open the door to me."
Most Siouxlanders are reasonable and understanding of what these repo folks do, Oien said, and they cooperate as long as they are treated with respect and allowed to maintain their dignity. They lack the mindset of a criminal who feels that because a car is in his possession, it's his.
"I used to be in the rental industry. There was an axiom that went with that -- the longer people had a piece of rental equipment in their possession, the more they felt they owned it," Oien said. "It's sort of that same way with the cars."
That is why the Talon repo folks work discreetly. If they approach someone at their place of work, they ask to speak with them off to the side. They don't embarrass them and they let them remove their personal property from the vehicle. And on occasion, the admittedly soft-hearted Oien has offered displaced drivers a ride home, once even hauling a man to Correctionville. "If I see somebody in trouble, I'll help them if I can," he said.
He said he wouldn't take the Journal on a typical repo job because it would violate the privacy rights of the people with whom he deals.
Repossession firms don't always advertise. They contact banks and credit unions, as Oien did, and slowly build up a client base of regular referrals. Repo men and women are also sent into Siouxland from Sioux Falls, Omaha, Des Moines and beyond, Oien said. "There are several people in town who do repossessions," he said.
Occasionally, even the nice repo folks meet resistance, people who won't part with their vehicles come hell or high water.
"I've run into some of those," Oien said. "And I'll explain to them what a replevin action is. A replevin action is where the lender will go to court and get a court order to pick up their property. And a deputy sheriff will come out and pick it up usually. That costs $600 to $1,000, as I remember. And that gets added to the bill. So it's a better deal with me than to have it go one step further. They're going to acquire more debt."
The one vehicle Oien won't touch is the semi-truck.
"That's a whole new ballgame because you're talking about somebody's livelihood now," he said. "They typically aren't giving it up, and they have a whole different mentality about that vehicle. It's not the ride to and from work. It's the bread and butter on the table. I understand they have some real problems with those."
Peterson said she met a repo man who specialized in semis, traveling the country, occasionally stopping in Sioux City. That man carries a gun. "It's nasty work," she said. "It's not anything I'd want to do."
Some towing companies are also employed for repo work.
Oien tried to get one such company to tow a vehicle for him, but no matter how forcefully he explained that the vehicle owner was OK with the towing, that the car just wouldn't start, the towing company man declined. He told Oien, "Oh, no! I don't do repos. I've been shot at. I don't do repos."
The Talon Agency does.
posted by Dave at 8:28 PM
1 Comments:
Very seldom do I have to "steal" the collateral. Many times the response I get when I show up is "it's about time" or "what took so long" and very often thanked by them. I even had one give me a tip. Sometimes I need to let them know what replevin is all about and occassionaly I have to steal it in the middle of the night, but not often.
I done this job in to completely different areas of the country, both were small cities with a rural surrounding. I lived may years in and around Boston and could not imagin such an approach working there or any other big city where people tend to be much more jaded.
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