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Consumers should be alarmed by two independent reports that accuse pharmacy benefit managers, the influential middlemen in our health care system, of deploying anticompetitive pricing tactics that jeopardize patient care and undermine local pharmacies. The reports by the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability echoed concerns long voiced by consumers, doctors, pharmacists […]

After building a following at Tower Grove Farmers' Market, as well as Such and Such Farm, Ryan McDonald and Ashley Batiste look to expand their business.

The tropical depression will bring beneficial rain to a parched region from Thursday night into Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

With plenty of great barbecue restaurants around the St. Louis area, James Beard award winning chef Gerard Craft knew it didn’t make sense to compete--so instead, he’s charting a different path with the new Niche Food Group restaurant, Expat BBQ, opening today at City Foundry.

St. LOUIS - We have high clouds expanding into our region from Tropical Storm Francine and the rain has made it almost to Memphis. Thursday we'll see increasing and thickening clouds continuing to lift in from the south. Temperatures reach the mid 80s. Rain from this system will impact our region from southeast to northwest [...]

Mayor Ron Counts said he will arrange a meeting for Arnold officials to explain how the proposed road project was developed and why it wasn't announced sooner.

by Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Earlier this summer, Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media and a former California congressman, touched down just outside Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.

He and a small group of other North American executives were there to talk business. But they weren’t there to meet with representatives from another company. A high-ranking official from the Macedonian government greeted them on the tarmac outside their private jet. Then a police escort ferried them from the airport. They were there to meet with the Balkan nation’s newly elected prime minister.

At the time, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, the leader of the country’s conservative nationalist party, offered little in the way of specifics about the meeting’s purpose: “For now, I would not reveal this type of details,” he told local reporters in the Balkans who covered the meeting at the time.

In a recent earnings call, Chris Pavlovski, who accompanied Nunes on the trip and who is the CEO of Rumble, a video streaming company and close partner of Trump Media, revealed that he had discussed a cloud technology services deal with the Macedonian government.

The meeting is the first known instance of the former president’s media company dealing directly with a foreign government — and in this case one that is eager for a future Trump administration’s assistance on a wide range of security, economic and diplomatic issues.

In his public comments, the prime minister boasted about the visiting delegation’s political connections. He described Nunes and another attendee as “two of the closest associates of former president of the United States Donald Trump.”

As Trump runs for a second term, ethics experts have warned that his valuable stake in Trump Media and its Twitter-like platform Truth Social presents opportunities for influence. Advertisers, vendors or investors who have political agendas could use their business relationships with the social media enterprise to seek favorable treatment from a Trump administration.

A Trump Media spokesperson didn’t respond to detailed questions, including about what role the company might play in such an agreement or whether one has been reached.

The spokesperson provided a statement saying only, “The ProPublica geniuses, much to our dismay, have discovered Devin Nunes’ secret plan to reconstitute Alexander the Great’s empire and get Chris Pavlovski named King of Macedon.”

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign, Rumble and the Macedonian prime minister didn’t respond to questions.

Trump’s term in office was marked by concerns that foreign governments sought to curry favor by patronizing his businesses, including his Washington, D.C., hotel. Trump’s businesses had numerous dealings abroad even after his attorney pledged he would not enter into new foreign deals while he was president. If the Macedonian government makes a deal with Trump Media or its partners and Trump is once again elected president, it could be another instance in which his private business interests intersect with U.S. foreign policy.

“They want an in with Trump,” said a U.S. government official who has been involved in Eastern European issues, noting that North Macedonia seeks U.S. support in diplomatic disputes with its neighbors. “We have enormous leverage.”

Nunes, front row right, arrived in North Macedonia by private jet with two other businessmen in Trump’s orbit: Wall Street executive and Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick, far left, and Chris Pavlovski, center, CEO of the video streaming site Rumble. (via the LinkedIn page of Macedonian official Stefan Andonovski)

Trump Media launched just a few years ago, in 2021, but Trump’s nearly 60% stake in the company now represents an important chunk of his personal fortune.

Trump Media’s stock is trading at about a quarter of the high it hit in March soon after it went public, but the company’s value remains around $3 billion, based in part on hype and speculation fueled by Trump fans. The company has little revenue and Truth Social has yet to catch on as a threat to the major social media platforms. Trump’s stake is currently worth around $2 billion. In one week, he will be able to sell his shares for the first time.

Joining Nunes on the July trip were two other figures in Trump’s orbit: Pavlovski, the Rumble CEO, and Howard Lutnick, a Trump donor and Wall Street executive who helped Rumble go public and was recently named the co-chair of Trump’s transition planning team.

Pavlovski, a Canadian whose parents are from North Macedonia, has long been a booster of the country. He also co-founded an IT outsourcing firm that employs software developers in North Macedonia and that has provided services to Trump Media. ProPublica previously reported that Trump Media has contracted with Pavlovski’s outsourcing firm in the country and secured a special visa for a Macedonian coder who is now chief technology officer of the company.

In a quarterly investor call last month, Pavlovski said he met the Macedonian prime minister “multiple times” and that they “discussed the possibility of Rumble Cloud’s direct involvement in their country’s digital transformation.”

“To our delight, Prime Minister Mickoski recently publicly shared his enthusiasm for the possibility of a partnership with Rumble, an exciting sign for all of us at the company,” he added.

Pavlovski compared Rumble’s possible role in North Macedonia to a $500 million tech services deal announced last year between El Salvador and Google.

Trump Media’s business is closely intertwined with Rumble, which provides the former president’s company with ad sale services and cloud services that are “immune to cancel culture.” Rumble also has a deal reported to be worth seven figures with Trump Media board member Donald Trump Jr. for his show “Triggered.”

Trump Media established its headquarters in Sarasota, Florida, a short drive from Rumble’s U.S. headquarters. The companies are so close that Rumble staffers actually worked out of Trump Media’s offices for several months in 2022 while its own office was being renovated, according to a person familiar with the companies.

Scenes from the group’s trip to North Macedonia show the media executives being greeted almost as visiting heads of state, beginning with what Pavlovski described in an Instagram post as a “pretty cool … legit police escort” from the airport.

Nunes met with the Macedonian prime minister in July. It later emerged that Rumble, a close business partner of Trump Media, sought a cloud technology services deal with the Macedonian government. (via the Facebook page of Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski)

Images posted by the Macedonian government, members of the nationalist party that came to power following May elections, show Nunes seated across from the prime minister one day and beside the country’s president the next, meeting under an enormous tile mosaic depicting scenes from Macedonian history. The government minister in charge of “digital transformation” also hinted in a LinkedIn post at potential business dealings, saying that the “investment potential that these world-leading companies offer can revolutionize our digital infrastructure.”

North Macedonia, a landlocked country roughly the size of Vermont with a population smaller than Houston’s, declared independence amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. It relies on the United States for support, including millions in foreign aid from Washington.

The U.S. has also been one of its most influential diplomatic backers. The country was admitted to NATO in large part due to U.S. support. Its neighbor to the south, Greece, had objected for years to allowing the Balkan nation into the military alliance, asserting it was appropriating classical Greek heritage with its name. The U.S. backed a deal to resolve the dispute in which the Macedonian legislature changed the country’s name in 2019 from Macedonia to North Macedonia.

The U.S. has also been advocating for North Macedonia to be welcomed into the European Union — a process that’s been stalled because of demands from another neighbor, Bulgaria, that North Macedonia has been reluctant to satisfy.

"Everyone in the Balkans wants the Americans on their side,” said Daniel Serwer, a former State Department official and Balkans expert now at Johns Hopkins. From the Macedonian government’s point of view, he said, “You’re much freer to do what you want if you have goodwill from the United States.”

The recent election of Mickoski as prime minister marks a return to power for North Macedonia’s right-leaning nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE. Experts in the region said the party sees Trump as a natural ally and as someone whose support may give them leeway to buck European demands.

Mickoski’s party has been able to rely on Republicans in the U.S. before. In 2017, VMRO members blamed political unrest in the country on the American embassy in Skopje meddling in internal politics and favoring left-leaning groups. The party’s allies successfully lobbied several Republican members of Congress to take up their cause. The lawmakers demanded answers from the State Department, which denied the allegations, then called for an investigation from the Government Accountability Office, which found that aid was properly distributed.

The Balkans have become a focal point of activity in the dealings of former top Trump officials in their years out of office.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is pursuing a pair of real estate development deals — one in Albania and one in Serbia — for his new investment firm, which is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and other Mideast nations. Both deals have drawn criticism because of the involvement of foreign governments and the perception that helping Kushner’s business could be a way to gain favor in a second Trump administration.

Another former Trump official, Richard Grenell, has been working with Kushner on the Balkans deals, The New York Times reported earlier this year. When Trump was in the White House, Grenell was ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, as well as a special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo. In the years since, Grenell has become a semi-official envoy for Trump, meeting and seeking to help foreign officials with right-wing parties around the globe.

Last month, just a few weeks after the Trump Media and Rumble executives’ visit to North Macedonia, Grenell arrived in Skopje where he, too, met with the new prime minister. Among the topics discussed was the desire for more foreign capital in the country, in particular the potential for U.S. investment in a massive hydropower project.

There’s no evidence Grenell’s trip was connected to the Trump Media visit. Grenell didn’t respond to questions.

Do you have any information about Trump Media or its partners that we should know? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217.

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by Byard Duncan, Ryan Gabrielson and Lucas Waldron

This story works best on ProPublica's website, where you can use our free Car Loan Deferment Calculator. You can also read our investigation into Exeter Finance and get in touch with ProPublica reporters to share your own experience.

Have you taken out a car loan and struggled to pay it back? You’re not alone. Borrowers like you owe more than $1.6 trillion in auto debt, and many are falling behind. Your lender might have given you the option to move payments to a later date, also known as a “deferment” or “extension.”

We’ve collected advice from borrowers, consumer finance experts, auto dealers and more to help people make more-informed choices about deferring car payments. Our reporting shows lenders aren’t always up front about how much these deferments will cost you in the long run.

In 2018, one lender got into trouble for allegedly misleading borrowers about them. We found another company, Exeter Finance, using similar extension practices, driving struggling people deeper into debt. These deferments especially affect those with bad credit, who often must pay sky-high interest rates to borrow money.

Exeter Finance responded to our story saying it is “fully committed to transparency in its lending practices” and follows all relevant laws. But in dozens of interviews, people told us they did not understand how much more they would owe after they took deferments. At the end of their terms, some ended up with thousands of dollars in unexpected charges. Some defaulted and lost their cars anyway.

“If I would have known,” said Chassidy Smith, an Exeter borrower living in Georgia who received six extensions in the course of her five-year auto loan, “I probably would have done something different.”

What’s ProPublica? Why should I trust your research?

We (Byard Duncan and Ryan Gabrielson) are reporters at ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization. We write stories that hold powerful institutions accountable. We’ve been reporting on car loans for more than a year. In that time, we reviewed thousands of pages of lawsuits and complaints, and we spoke to dozens of borrowers, consumer finance experts, auto lending specialists, former Exeter Finance employees and more. All of our stories are rigorously fact-checked, nonpartisan and free to read. We do not profit in any way off of tools such as our loan extensions calculator. See our Code of Ethics for more.

The Car Loan Deferment Calculator

To calculate what you could owe at the end of your car loan, all you need is your contract, your monthly statement and the dates that you received deferments. Click here to use the free car loan deferment calculator on ProPublica’s website.

This is a screenshot of the calculator. Click here to use the calculator on ProPublica's website. (Development by Chris Zubak-Skees for ProPublica. Design by Lucas Waldron.) Where to find information about your car loan:

Contract: If you don’t have a hard copy of your auto loan contract, you should be able to download a digital one from your lender’s website.

An excerpt of an Exeter borrower’s contract. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Dates of deferments: This should be the months covered by the deferments. Lenders sometimes send you written notices when they grant you deferments. You can also contact your lender’s customer service team and ask if you don’t remember.

Monthly statement: Our auto loan calculator is most accurate when you use your loan’s interest rate, which can be slightly different from the APR, or annual percentage rate. You’ll sometimes find the true interest rate on your monthly billing statement.

Got more questions? There’s no shame in feeling overwhelmed by the process. Even the experts sympathize.

“Auto transactions are notoriously complex and confusing,” said Rosemary Shahan, president and founder of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, an advocacy organization. “There is nothing in life that prepares you for that transaction. It’s unlike any other transaction you ever enter into.”

Here are answers to some of the most common questions about car loan extensions that came up in our reporting.

Frequently Asked Questions about Car Loan Deferments What is a car loan deferment?

A car loan deferment is when a lender allows you to postpone one or more payments to a later date. Some borrowers said they chose to defer car payments when they faced unexpected expenses, like an illness, hurricane or death in the family. Others simply couldn’t afford their loans. Not all lenders allow you to defer payments, and different lenders have different rules. Some, for example, require you to make a certain number of on-time payments in a row before they will grant you a deferment.

Ask your lender what its specific deferment policies are. Get them in writing if you can.

What’s the difference between a deferment and an extension?

There is no difference. In fact, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog agency, uses the terms interchangeably. “Deferment,” “deferral” and “extension” all mean basically the same thing: You’re pushing one or more loan payments to a later date.

How do car loan deferments work?

To understand what deferments do, you first have to understand how car loan interest is supposed to work.

Most car loans use a “simple interest” formula. This means that although you usually make a car payment once per month, you technically owe a little bit of interest for every single day of the loan. As a result, paying late can cause you to owe more later on.

On the other hand, paying early can reduce your balance faster. Imagine you won the lottery tomorrow and paid off the whole loan immediately. That would save you money because you’d pay a lot less in interest over time.

Let’s say you have a $15,000 loan with a hefty 25% interest rate that you will pay back over 72 months.

If you pay exactly on time, a typical daily simple interest car loan will look like this:

Note: This chart assumes that the borrower always paid on time and did not accrue late fees. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)

When you start off, more of your payment will count toward interest than principal (the amount you owe excluding interest) each month. That’s normal. Over time, this dynamic switches: By the loan’s endpoint (also known as its “maturity date”), you’ll pay mostly principal until you owe nothing at all. Then you get the title and own the car outright.

Deferments can change this equation. Let’s say you move a $404 monthly payment to the end of your loan several years from now. If your lender charges interest on the extension, as many do, you will owe more than $404 at the end of the loan: You will have to pay higher interest charges for the rest of the loan, so your remaining payments won’t be enough to eliminate your debt. You will still owe hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.

Note: This chart assumes that the borrower always paid on time and did not accrue late fees. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)

This leaves some people with a “balloon payment” — a large lump sum, due when your loan term ends. These balloon payments caught a lot of Exeter borrowers we spoke to by surprise and caused them financial pain.

Who decides if I can defer a car payment?

It’s important to remember that the company selling you the car is often different from the company that will be collecting the payments. In fact, several experts told us that If you decide to take out a loan, you’re under no obligation to choose financing at the dealership, even if you buy the car there.

If you’re making monthly car payments, there’s a good chance the dealer “assigned” the contract to an auto lender like Exeter Finance (or Santander Consumer USA or Capital One) after you signed on the dotted line. The lender is the entity you’re now paying back — and the one that might grant you a deferment.

Will deferred car payments cost me money?

Deferments can cost you more money in the long run, but the exact amount is not always obvious to borrowers. As mentioned above, deferments provide a temporary break from monthly payments. But if interest continues to accrue during that reprieve, you will end up paying higher interest charges and then owing more in a lump sum at the end. For Exeter borrowers who received multiple extensions, the final payment totaled thousands of dollars.

Should I take a deferment on my car loan?

Consumer finance experts told us it depends on several factors. Overall, you should think about it in terms of your broader financial health.

“It’s not just the cost of the monthly payment — it’s all of this other stuff,” said Dara Duguay, CEO of the nonprofit Credit Builders Alliance. “Can you afford gas? If — and especially if — gas is going to fluctuate up and down?”

“It’s tempting to just say, ‘Oh yeah, let’s just add it to the end,’” said John Van Alst, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Working Cars for Working Families project. But “if the numbers weren’t working before — unless something’s changed — there’s a real chance the numbers aren’t going to work as you continue to go forward.”

Some borrowers told us they regretted their decisions to accept deferments. Some didn’t. But nearly everyone we spoke to wished they’d had more information.

“I would have tried to make arrangements” like making extra payments, said Natosha Smith, an Exeter borrower living in Georgia whose eight car loan extensions led to a balloon balance of roughly $6,000. “I honestly did not understand the full complexity of the situation.”

What questions should I ask before taking a deferment?

If you’re considering deferring a car payment, experts say you need to get as much information about the cost as possible.

Pamela Foohey, a University of Georgia law professor who studies subprime lending, said lenders would ideally give borrowers a table explaining what they will owe each month until the end of the loan. She said the table should lay out “exactly what is going to be paid, broken down by principal and interest.”

Foohey also recommended asking for:

• Your new loan maturity date.

• An explanation of any fees or penalties.

• Any changes to your monthly payment amount.

• A breakdown of what will be going to principal versus interest for all future payments.

Get familiar with your other financial obligations, too, said Barry Coleman, vice president of program management and education at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. Ask yourself: Will I have to skimp on necessities to stay in the car? Is the deferment to cure a one-off problem, or am I postponing payment because the car wasn’t affordable in the first place?

“Do a budget,” Coleman advised. “Know what your expenses are and whether or not an extension is necessary. Maybe you’re able to make some adjustments in other parts of your budget, where you don’t have to get this extension.”

Will deferring a car payment hurt my credit?

In most cases, deferments do not negatively affect your credit score. This is because they are not the same as late payments. Instead, they represent a mutual agreement between you and your lender. But be aware that you can hurt your credit by failing to restart payments when they become due again — or by failing to pay off your balloon balance.

I can’t make my car payment. What can I do besides deferring a payment?

You may have options. Experts we spoke to said the first thing to do is call your lender. Different banks have different repayment policies, and trying to adjust your agreement proactively is often a good bet.

“View the extension offer as the beginning of a negotiation,” Foohey said. “It is not the thing that you absolutely have to take.”

The CFPB also lays out a few options to avoid deferring a car payment:

• Ask to change the date your payment is due each month. For some people, paying off a car loan consistently is all about timing. If it’s more convenient for you to be billed right after you receive a paycheck, tell your lender that. Ask if they can change your due date to better match the rhythm of your income.

• Request a payment plan. Rather than extend your loan, some lenders will allow you to pay a smaller monthly payment for a while, then increase your bill totals later to balance things out. If you choose to do this, make sure to ask your lender for a written breakdown of how the payment plan will work and how it would change the interest charges.

• Refinance your loan. Refinancing means looking for a bank that will buy the debt from your auto lender and continue working with you at a lower interest rate. Working out an arrangement like this can bring down both your monthly payment and the total amount you’ll owe in the long term. But be aware that refinancing often requires a steady payment history or good credit.

There are also lots of credit counseling nonprofits across the U.S. that can help advise you.

• The Credit Builders Alliance has more than 600 members and a handy map to find one near you.

• The National Foundation for Credit Counseling is the country’s oldest nonprofit “dedicated to improving people’s financial wellbeing.”

What should I do if I can’t afford to pay back interest on my deferment?

If you’ve made a lot of on-time payments in a row, there’s a chance you’ve improved your credit score along the way. In that case, consumer finance experts say it’s worth reaching out to a bank or credit union to see if they might refinance your loan.

Not everyone can do this, though. Once the true cost of car loan deferments became clear to some of the borrowers we interviewed, they saw no choice but to let their car be repossessed. Repossessions and late payments hurt your credit score, and damaged credit can keep you from getting a low interest rate on your next car loan.

One silver lining: If you surrender your car, it’s possible you won’t end up owing the total remainder of the loan. That’s because after a lender auctions it off, they’re usually required to charge you only the difference between what you owe and what they got at auction. But beware: If your loan remainder was bigger than the car’s actual value, there’s a chance you could still owe a sizable chunk of change after this.

I think my lender didn’t give me information they were supposed to. Is there anything I can do?

First, you can try to work something out with them. According to CFPB, “Companies can usually answer questions unique to your situation and more specific to the products and services they offer. Keep all the documents, messages, voicemails, and records of your interactions with the dealer or lender.”

If that doesn’t work, you have the right to file a complaint to state and federal regulators.

• The CFPB accepts complaints here.

• You can use this database to find your attorney general’s contact information. In addition to fielding complaints, your attorney general can sometimes help answer questions about your state’s car loan laws.

• If you’d like to find an attorney with affordable fees, CFPB maintains a state-by-state list of them here.

• CFPB also has a searchable “know your rights” database that answers lots of questions about car loans.

• Finally, if you want to understand the federal laws that apply to your car loan, the National Automobile Dealers Association has an easy-to-understand primer.

AAuto contracts often include class-action lawsuit waivers and arbitration provisions. These can make it hard for people to sue lenders.

For this reason, a lot of recent legal action against auto lenders has come from the CFPB and state attorneys general. When those agencies sue a company, it can sometimes result in a monetary settlement for people harmed. It can also wipe away borrowers’ debt and prevent their cars from getting repossessed.

Common Car Loan Terms

Amortization: The process of reducing a debt through regular payments.

Amount financed: The amount of money you've borrowed.

Amount of payments: What you'll owe each time a payment is due.

Annual percentage rate: The cost of your loan, including interest rate and fees. It's usually expressed as a percentage.

Balloon payment: A one-time, lump sum charge including any money you still owe on principal or fees, due at your loan's maturity date. This is typically the result of extensions and late payments.

Debt-to-income ratio: The amount of money you owe for housing, credit card and all other loan payments divided by the amount of money you make each month (before taxes). 

Down payment: The up-front payment you put down when you buy your car. The more you can put down, the cheaper your loan will be in the long run.

Extension/deferment: A postponement of one or more payments on your car loan.

Finance charge: The total dollar amount of interest you'll owe if you make every payment on time.

Interest: The cost of borrowing money. This is usually a percentage of the unpaid debt that accumulates on a daily, monthly or annual basis.

Loan term: The amount of time it will take to completely pay off your loan. Usually measured in months: 48-, 60- and 72-month terms are common.

Loan-to-value ratio: The amount you borrowed to purchase the car divided by the car's current value.

Negative equity: When the amount you owe to your lender exceeds the value of your car. This is also called being "upside-down" or "underwater" on your loan.

Number of payments: This usually equals the number of months your loan will last. Occasionally, car loan payments are due every two weeks. You can make sure by checking for the term "monthly" under "When Payments Are Due" in your Truth-in-Lending Disclosures. 

Principal: The total dollar amount you borrowed, and have not yet repaid, before interest is calculated. If you bought a car for cash, you'd be paying just the principal.

Refinancing: The process of taking out a new loan — sometimes with your current lender, sometimes with a new one — to pay for your existing one. People often refinance to get more favorable terms, like a lower APR.

Repossession: When a lender seizes your vehicle because you've missed several payments, typically the equivalent of four months. Lenders have different rights of repossession in different states.

Total of payments: The combination of the amount of money you borrowed and what you'll owe in interest on the loan.

Total sale price: The total of payments plus the down payment you made.

Help ProPublica Investigate the World of Subprime Car Loans

More and more people are struggling to pay back loans on their used cars. Our journalists want to hear from the people who know the industry best. Click here to get in touch with ProPublica reporters.

Development by Chris Zubak-Skees. Research by Sophia Kovatch.

by Ryan Gabrielson and Byard Duncan

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This story is part of a partnership with Scripps News.

Jessica Patterson tensed as she tore open the letter from Exeter Finance. “This notice is being sent to you concerning your default,” the company wrote.

She didn’t need to keep reading to know she was in trouble.

It was January 2018. Seven months earlier, she’d borrowed $14,786.07 to purchase a silver Kia Rio. The interest rate was sky high — 25.17% — and the $402 monthly payment was more than a quarter of her take-home pay. But she needed the car to keep her job and support her three young children. For months she had skimped on groceries, eaten at soup kitchens and even skipped Christmas gifts to pay the car loan. But most of the time it wasn’t enough, and now Exeter was threatening to seize the Kia.

Panicked, she dialed the number in the letter. Can we work something out, Patterson asked.

Exeter’s response came easily, she recalled. It offered to extend her loan.

The company would simply move the December and January payments to the end of her five-year payment schedule, the representative told her, adding two months to the loan’s term. “It was instant relief,” Patterson said.

The extension seemed to be a courtesy from Exeter in a time of need. In fact, the company’s disclosures at the time stated “Extension fee: $0.00.”

The pause in payments, however, was anything but free. What Patterson didn’t know, and what she said Exeter didn’t tell her, was that every penny of her next five payments would go to the interest that built up during the reprieve. That meant she didn’t pay down the original loan balance at all during that time.

While the extension allowed her to keep her car, it added about $2,000 in new interest charges, which the lender did not clearly disclose.

Jessica Patterson at home with her husband and four kids in Olathe, Kansas (Greg Kahn, special to ProPublica)

Patterson’s experience with Exeter was not unusual. A ProPublica investigation has found that it’s an integral part of how the company runs its business.

Exeter is one of the largest auto lenders in the nation, specializing in high-interest loans to people with histories of not paying bills or defaulting on debt, a practice known as subprime lending. The company, which has more than 500,000 active loans and a partnership agreement with CarMax, the country’s largest used car retailer, casts itself as a provider of second chances. “We’re here to help,” it says on its website. In reality, Exeter’s practices often do the opposite.

When the company allows a borrower to skip payments, it typically adds thousands of dollars in new interest charges to the customer’s debt. Dozens of customers told ProPublica that Exeter didn’t tell them about the added costs.

When it’s time to make their final payment, many are faced with a huge bill, which they often can’t afford to pay.

Click here to find out how much used car loan extensions could cost with our free calculator tool.

At that point, Exeter often repossesses a car and sends the bill to a debt collector, regulatory records show. In some cases, the company makes more money on loans that default than on ones in which borrowers pay on time, ProPublica found.

Critics, including some former employees, say the company’s practices are predatory. “I really hated extensions once I found out what they did to people,” said Tyhara Ross, who worked at Exeter for nearly nine years. “You think you’re getting something for nothing, and you’re not.”

Exeter’s top executives declined to be interviewed for this story, and the company did not answer detailed written questions. Instead, it issued a statement that said it’s “fully committed to transparency in its lending practices” and “has no reason to mislead customers.”

“Exeter’s mission is to enable Americans who otherwise may not be able to access financing the opportunity to own their own vehicle so they can go to work and take care of their families,” the company said. “We take that mission seriously as well as our commitment to our customers.”

It’s difficult to track just how many extensions Exeter gives out; the company is not required to report detailed numbers. But publicly available data shows they’re fundamental to Exeter’s business model. Lenders often describe extensions in the context of financial emergencies, like when a borrower loses their job, or national crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Exeter hands them out “like candy,” according to three former employees who worked in the company’s collections operation.

To examine Exeter’s practices and their effect on borrowers, ProPublica analyzed data on more than 10 million auto loans included in bonds issued in the past five years.

At first blush, Exeter’s portfolio looks dire: A majority of its loans — more than 200,000 — are at least three payments behind schedule — a degree of delinquency that is roughly twice that of any other subprime lender in the data. Many companies would be preparing to count those loans as losses, send them to a collection agency and repossess the cars.

But Exeter has turned what would otherwise be a financial crisis into a profit center. Each time the company grants an extension, it resets the clock and reclassifies the loan as being on schedule. ProPublica found that Exeter has done this as many as 12 times over the course of a 72-month loan, with borrowers continuing to make payments in hopes of catching up. Regulatory records show many customers paid the equivalent of the full loan or more, only to see their cars repossessed.

Federal law prohibits lenders from engaging in “unfair, deceptive or abusive acts,” and the chief enforcer of that law, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, took action against Santander Consumer USA, the nation’s largest subprime lender, in 2018 for practices similar to Exeter’s, such as offering loan extensions without clearly disclosing the financial impacts. CFPB forced Santander to pay nearly $12 million in restitution and penalties. But the agency hasn’t taken enforcement action against Exeter. Meanwhile, annual complaints to the CFPB about the company have grown threefold in the past five years, with nearly 900 in 2023.

Extensions that hide the consequences from borrowers “are taking a loan that is not working and ensuring that it’s just not going to work for a little longer,” said Pamela Foohey, a University of Georgia law professor who has written extensively about subprime lending.

Exeter said it made “voluntary revisions” in 2019 “to the way it communicates about extensions to ensure customers are fully informed on the costs,” notably in the scripts its agents use when talking to borrowers. It also said it created a dedicated team that year to handle extensions “with a focus on transparency to customers.”

“Customers are told clearly that interest will continue to accrue during an extension and are given the true cost of the interest accrual so that customers can make a decision on whether to choose an extension,” the company said.

But none of the customers that ProPublica spoke to said that was what they experienced. In fact, more than 20 borrowers told us they were not provided a dollar amount of what their extensions would cost before they agreed to them. “I just felt like that was so wrong,” said Natosha Smith, a former Exeter borrower living in Georgia.

She received eight extensions over the course of her loan. Each time, Smith said, an Exeter employee explained that it added additional months to the end of her loan term. Smith said she expected to pay a little extra interest, something akin to her $425 monthly payment. Instead, the cost was more than 10 times that.

“You guys have gotten double what this vehicle is worth, and you still want to take another $6,000 from me?” Smith said of Exeter. “I was appalled. I couldn’t believe it.”

When asked why it did not provide Smith and others with the exact cost of their extensions, Exeter amended its statement, saying, “Customers who request an extension are given the option before accepting the extension to immediately speak with an agent who can provide the cost of the interest that will accrue during the extension period. Some customers choose not to be transferred to an agent to receive the explanation.”

Neither Smith nor other borrowers could recall being given this option.

Loans With Extensions Result in Inflated Final Payments

The monthly payment for a 72-month, $15,000 loan with a 25% interest rate is $404. But with two extensions early in the loan, the borrower’s final payment will be more than six times higher.

Note: These charts assume that the borrower always paid on time and did not accrue late fees. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica) Targeting Struggling Buyers

Exeter has always specialized in the subprime market. But in the late 2010s, the company went after customers with poor credit more aggressively than it had in the past. It accepted borrowers with even lower credit scores, lent them more money — as much as $50,000 per loan — and gave them longer to repay it. Some agreed to schedules stretching longer than six years, making the loans more costly.

“We’re not your father’s Exeter Finance,” the company proclaimed in a 2019 blog post aimed at wooing new business from dealerships.

It also increased its prices.

ProPublica’s analysis shows that Exeter charges the highest interest rates of any lender in the publicly available data. Since 2020, the average interest rate for an Exeter car loan jumped from 19% to nearly 22%, regulatory records show.

Exeter Charged Higher Interest Rates Than Other Subprime Lenders

Rates for borrowers with the lowest credit scores were nearly 30%.

Note: Each circle represents the mean interest rate for all loans by that lender at that credit score between 2019 and 2023. Circles are generated only when the lender made at least 50 loans to borrowers with that credit score. The chart displays only lenders with at least half as many subprime loans as Exeter. Source: ProPublica analysis of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Finsight.com data. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)

Exeter’s loan volume exploded, bond data shows. And as borrowers got into trouble, the lender’s collections workers were rewarded with bonuses for getting loans out of delinquency, according to three former employees. Extensions were a common tool to accomplish that. Exeter denied the allegation, saying, “customer service agents are not incentivized or rewarded with compensation related to granting extensions.”

Either way, Exeter financial records show the number of loans with five or more extensions rocketed 80% between 2016 and 2018.

The company attributed part of a more recent uptick in extensions to the COVID-19 relief bill that Congress passed during the pandemic in 2020, saying the legislation “encouraged compassion from lenders.”

That “compassion,” however, led to confusion and anger among borrowers who began filing complaints with state attorneys general. ProPublica examined nearly 200 of them and found the most common problems involved how much of their payments went to interest and why they still owed so much.

The company has drawn the scrutiny of regulators in at least three states. In 2019, the attorneys general of Massachusetts and Delaware settled lawsuits against Exeter alleging it had violated consumer protection laws. The company said the settlements had nothing to do with extensions and contained no admission of illegality. The Georgia attorney general’s office confirmed it is now investigating Exeter, though it declined to provide more detail. Exeter declined to comment on the investigation.

The CFPB declined to answer questions about Exeter’s practices and its oversight of the company. Chris Kukla, a CFPB program manager supervising the auto finance industry, said that in general “it’s important for everybody to understand what’s going on in the transaction.”

“All the information should be shared," he added.

For years, Exeter failed to provide specific information in its written notices. They did not explain that a borrower’s next payments would first be applied to the interest from extensions, which would delay repayment of the original loan balance, known as the principal. These omissions were identical to those that federal regulators had targeted in their case against Santander years earlier, according to three consumer finance experts who reviewed them.

The company said it updated those disclosures in late 2021 but declined to provide copies or details about the changes.

Notices sent to borrowers earlier this year, reviewed by ProPublica, said that an extension would increase the borrowers’ interest charges as well as the amount of their final payment. However, the notices did not include the actual dollar amount. If borrowers wanted to know more, the letter directed them to call a toll-free number.

One employee said that lack of disclosure was intentional.

“The object was for the agent to keep the customer in the car no matter what,” said Ross, the former Exeter employee who worked with borrowers struggling to make their payments. “That’s the end game. Because as long as that customer stays in that car, guess what? They are getting that interest. And the interest brings them more money.”

Lender of Last Resort

A faded Carmax plate on the front of Patterson’s car (Greg Kahn, special to ProPublica)

Jessica Patterson encountered Exeter like tens of thousands of consumers do each year: via CarMax, which uses Exeter to make loans when borrowers don’t qualify for CarMax’s in-house financing.

In the spring of 2017, Patterson sat at a circular table in her local CarMax just outside Kansas City, Kansas, with $200 in her pocket. Around her was an open sales room nearly as deep and wide as a football field.

A salesperson had shown her a Kia Rio with low mileage and zero frills. At $15,000, it was “the best that I could do for what I had,” Patterson recalled.

As a receptionist at a hearing aid sales center, she made $12 an hour, below the federal poverty line. She’d just moved her family out of a domestic violence shelter and into a basement apartment of their own. Their life felt fragile.

Like most subprime customers, her credit history was rife with unpaid bills. The debts were mostly from her ex-husband, she said.

The CarMax employee said she had good news, though: Exeter would lend Patterson the full amount needed to buy the Kia. Then the employee read the loan terms aloud. A six-year loan. A 25.17% interest rate. ​​A monthly payment of $402.63. That would be a quarter of Patterson’s take-home pay, almost twice what consumer finance experts recommend.

She asked whether there were cheaper offers. None of the other companies were willing to give Patterson a loan, said the employee, who turned her computer monitor so Patterson could see. “Exeter was the only one there,” she said. According to rating agency reports, CarMax is the single largest source of Exeter’s business — responsible for some 50,000 loans per year.

Patterson agreed to the terms. To get to work and get her kids to school, she needed a car. Turning down the loan felt like giving up.

Exeter contacted her employer and landlord to confirm the details in her application. It knew how much money Patterson would get in her upcoming paychecks, how much would automatically go out and how little room for error she had.

For its part, CarMax said it is not involved with the loans Exeter and other lenders sell to its customers and declined to answer specific questions about its partnership with Exeter.

“Each of CarMax’s finance sources performs its own underwriting, servicing, and collection activity,” the dealership chain said in a written statement. “CarMax cannot speak to details about how our finance sources manage repossessions or extend financing.”

Truth in Lending?

The top of Patterson’s contract had a box detailing just how much she would pay over six years — a requirement of the federal Truth in Lending Act. It said she’d pay Exeter more than $14,000 in interest, almost as much as she would pay for the Kia itself.

While it would be tight, Patterson thought she could budget for the loan.

Within months, though, she fell behind. In January 2018, Patterson took her first two extensions. She used the time to reorder her finances so she could resume payments.

To save on food, she drove her family to free church dinners every Wednesday and Thursday night. Donations from a nearby food bank allowed them to keep grocery bills at a bare minimum.

Patterson sent payments to Exeter for February and March. But by late spring, she was in trouble again, resorting to sending a few hundred dollars at a time. By the fall, she was on the verge of default.

She called the lender’s collections department and asked for a third extension. The lender granted it over the phone without question, Patterson said.

Exeter agents could see the exact cost of the added interest on their screens during calls like this, but they did not share it with borrowers, said Clair Groves, who worked in Exeter’s collections department in 2019. The company does not include specific price information in the scripts it requires agents to read when giving an extension, Groves said, and urges them to finish calls in less than three minutes, leaving little time to provide more information.

Exeter did not respond to questions about Patterson’s account or Groves’ statements.

Extension practices like Exeter’s, experts say, undermine the utility of the Truth in Lending law, which aimed to eliminate financial surprises for consumers.

“If you can manipulate the payment schedule in such a way that makes the original disclosures meaningless, that’s a huge problem,” said Erin Witte, consumer protection director at the Consumer Federation of America.

For Patterson, the true cost of the extensions would become clear only after she remarried two and a half years later. Her new husband, Andrew Patterson, had found the Exeter loan odd. He had bought a more expensive car from the same dealership, but because he qualified for a loan from CarMax directly, his monthly payments were far lower. He decided to take a closer look.

The numbers on her statements were staggering, he said. Even when she made payments consistently, so much money went to interest that she barely made a dent in the original debt. If they made the 20 remaining payments, there was still no way they’d be able to pay off the car.

Using her loan statements, ProPublica calculated that Patterson had paid Exeter $17,097 over three years. About 80% of that had gone to interest, leaving her with more than $11,000 in debt.

“Just let them repo it,” Andrew told his wife.

The lender seized the Kia in the fall of 2021 and auctioned it off for $13,800. Exeter collected more from Patterson’s failed loan than it would have if she’d paid on schedule.

Patterson’s new husband, Andrew, helped her get out of the Exeter loan by letting the company repossess the vehicle. (Greg Kahn, special to ProPublica) A Giant Bill, Then Repossession

ProPublica’s analysis found that nearly a quarter of Exeter loans from 2020 and 2021 — more than 65,000 — ended like Patterson’s did, with borrowers stopping repayment early.

For people who take extensions and make it to the end of their loan, a large final payment typically awaits.

That news was crushing for Don Weaver, a disabled veteran living in Louisiana. In 2015, Exeter lent him $15,607.29 to buy a 7-year-old GMC Envoy. Over the next seven years, the company granted him 12 extensions by phone, Weaver said. Each time, the agent assured him he was “current,” he recalled.

The extensions had helped him navigate choppy economic waters, he said. He lived off VA disability payments, and unexpected expenses like a busted lawn mower or worn-down brake pads often made his $393.14 monthly payment difficult.

In September 2022, after Weaver had paid Exeter $29,125 — $819 more than his loan contract outlined — the company told him he still owed more than $9,000.

“I couldn’t get heads or tails about how much of that was actual payments and how much of that was fees,” Weaver said.

When he couldn’t pay, Exeter repossessed the Envoy, and today, a collections company is pursuing him for the $5,800.73 he still owes.

Don Weaver, at his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with the car he bought after Exeter repossessed his previous one (Greg Kahn, special to ProPublica)

Although their loan outcomes were different, both Weaver and Patterson felt certain that local authorities should know about their experiences. Exeter “has a huge role in allegedly financing unfair, subprime auto loans,” Patterson wrote to Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt in November 2021. “They are a predatory company.”

Weaver’s complaint was strikingly similar, citing the settlements Exeter had entered into with Massachusetts and Delaware: “They had to pay millions back to consumers due to predatory practices,” he wrote to Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. “I am wondering if that is happening to me.”

Kansas simply forwarded Patterson’s complaint to Exeter, which responded with a letter claiming that all the contract terms were properly disclosed; five extensions were granted “at Jessica’s request.” Months after it repossessed her Kia, Exeter added, it stopped pursuing her, “as a courtesy,” for the $51.63 she still owed.

Louisiana regulators didn’t press Exeter in Weaver’s case, either. After receiving a similar explanation from the lender, the attorney general’s office ended its inquiry, encouraging Weaver to hire a lawyer if Exeter’s response “does not result in a satisfactory outcome for you.”

The attorney general’s office confirmed that it did not investigate Weaver’s case. Landry, who is now governor of Louisiana, did not respond to requests for comment. The Kansas attorney general’s office also declined to comment.

In the fall of 2022, even with the bill collector after him, Weaver still needed a car. So, he headed to a nearby CarMax to start the process over. When the employee ran his information, he was told that Exeter had approved him for another loan.

“You’re telling me you got to charge me this extra interest and all this because I’m a bad risk,” Weaver said, “but you’re willing to risk it again?”

This time, he declined the offer.

Help ProPublica Investigate the World of Subprime Car Loans

Disclosure: The private equity firm Warburg Pincus owns a controlling stake in Exeter. Mark Colodny, one of the firm’s managing directors, is a member of ProPublica’s board.

Jeff Ernsthausen and Mollie Simon of ProPublica and Carrie Cochran and Patrick Terpstra of Scripps News contributed reporting.

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