I guess I don't understand why everyone seems to be against the lienholder?
It's not so much that folks are against the lienholder, we're FOR the innocent guy who gets shafted.
The lender should be going after the borrower, not the guy who (as sometimes may be the case) who got lied to buy the deadbeat borrower.
If something like this is going to be secured and protected in such a manner, than the manufacturer or creditor should be forced to adopt some kind of legal and transferrable title to the goods that has a specific transfer process so that everything is above board.
Personally, the lack of said title is my big hangup on this - it's unconscionable to me that goods can be secured in such a manner, and that, in order to cover myself, I have to jump through hoops and look up a filing that may or may not even exist in my state, lest I be accosted by an agent of the creditor who wants to take away from me the goods that I purchased with my hard earned money.
Real property has title. Motorized vehicles (mostly) have titles. Trailers (mostly) have titles. A secured interest in the context we've been discussing should, ultimately, have a title. No title? Then it's a shady deal, and you reap what you sow. I mean, I've bought an old car without the seller having the title, and I filed a lost title application. I took the risk that the car could be taken from me because the title wasn't present, but because of the title process, I knew that this was a risk.
Perhaps my frustration in this manner should be directed more towards my Secretary of State and Legislature for not mandating titles for goods secured thusly, but it's hard for me to be sympathetic to someone trying to, in my view, shaft the poor guy who thought he was getting a deal, and did seem to do his due diligence by calling his dealer and trying to verify things were legit.