PCP

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I've worked in car sales at a large well known main dealer my background is sales, lettings, property management and sourcing development sites. I hold a number of certifications from NFOPP. Thinking how much I love cars this would be great if I could combine the two.

How wrong was I! Main dealers are imo the biggest crooks going. You would be shocked if you knew what went on behind the scenes and how the repeat customer is thought of... basically rip them any way you can and up sell everything even if not required even on their px offer them cap low on the splat even if the car was alot better. I did 6 months and left. Worst job I have ever had. Yes car sales needs tighter regs even with the FCA they still floundered the rules day in day out.

Not for me being ordered to rip off genuine hard working people.
 
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PCP as a means of finance should be your last option when you have exhausted everything else.

My recently deceased MIL had her Honda on a PCP, and the 3 before that we have now discovered, and we havehad to VT the agreement after 2 years and pay nearly £2k to do it! What is frustrating me is that she used thesame dealer for all 4 cars and every time was put on a 4 year PCP even though she changed cars every 2 years. The dealer even sold a 5 year maintenance plan and a 4 year smart repair plan both paid upfront with no refund.
That smacks of a lack of oversight and governance.

The dealer bonus scheme is obviously set up in such a way that the sales staff are incentivised by selling the most profitable products rather than the most suitable for the punter.

This kind of behavior would be curtailed by a robust quality review programme coupled with a quality hurdle to be passed before qualifying for bonus.
 
They just want to throw everything at you and if it sticks.. great. The salesman bonus and what the dealership were making the difference was laughable.. I.E £10 bonus for selling supa guard or like most of my ex colleagues not mentioning it and rolling into the figures.. no incentive and cheeting people.

Imo main dealer directors - crooks with veneer teeth and BOTOX!
 
PCP as a means of finance should be your last option when you have exhausted everything else.

My recently deceased MIL had her Honda on a PCP, and the 3 before that we have now discovered, and we havehad to VT the agreement after 2 years and pay nearly £2k to do it! What is frustrating me is that she used thesame dealer for all 4 cars and every time was put on a 4 year PCP even though she changed cars every 2 years. The dealer even sold a 5 year maintenance plan and a 4 year smart repair plan both paid upfront with no refund.

MIL signed the papers and agreed to it. Customer is responsible for its own decisions. It's possible that financing was spread over 4 years, so the monthly payments were lower.

If you read MoneySavingExperts forum you will see plenty of people complaining how something was mis-sold but they never read or understood documents, just signed them. Then couple of years later realised that they will be penalised for their lack of interest and suddenly product is mis-sold.
 
MIL signed the papers and agreed to it. Customer is responsible for its own decisions. It's possible that financing was spread over 4 years, so the monthly payments were lower.
I'm running the risk of repeating myself but this is even more reason for motor finance to be more vigorously regulated.

Customers need some protection, vulnerable ones need lots of protection.
 
But where is the limit of protection? It's just general dumbing down of population, people don't read documents, just shout: "mis-sold!"
 
But where is the limit of protection? It's just general dumbing down of population, people don't read documents, just shout: "mis-sold!"
In it's current form the regulation of financial products is unequal.

The FCA are responsible for regulation of motor finance but are currently taking a soft approach, in my opinion Flowrider's MIL could have been mis-sold a financial product because the term was inappropriate. Effective QA reviews could have spotted this and corrective action/re-training would help prevent it becoming a regulatory problem.

I don't see it as dumbing down, your average punter hasn't a clue about financial products. I speak to people regularly who don't have any credit because 'the car on PCP/Lease doesn't count does it?'

Flowrider's MIL might well have been classes us vulnerable under the FCA:
'A vulnerable consumer is someone who, due to their personal circumstances, is especially susceptible to detriment, particularly when a firm is not acting with appropriate levels of care.'
 
MIL signed the papers and agreed to it. Customer is responsible for its own decisions. It's possible that financing was spread over 4 years, so the monthly payments were lower.

If you read MoneySavingExperts forum you will see plenty of people complaining how something was mis-sold but they never read or understood documents, just signed them. Then couple of years later realised that they will be penalised for their lack of interest and suddenly product is mis-sold.
I understand that but MIL was 82 years old.
 
Well I am amazed that a elderly woman has even gone down the route of PCP,and having 4 cars like this and then trading them in after 2 years of a 4 year deal,I am sure flowrider99 and members of his family have been asking themselves questions like how come we did not know what was happening,this women was taken by the Honda dealership and it's staff,I am a lot younger than 84 and I have no idea about PCP or any of the other ways of financing a new car,I doubt I will ever have it but if I did consider it there are enough guys on here who know everything about them I would ask,this old lady has been has been treated badly,she is now gone,I suppose flowrider99 and his family although shocked will accept that the matter dies with their relative,but it has shown that families have to make certain the elderly of their clan are protected as much as possible because the sharks are out there.
 
What about family members? No one took interest in her changing cars and taking new contracts?
No because we all thought she was buying the cars outright (she has plenty of money is savings) and had no idea she was getting them on PCP, we have now been through her personal documents and found the latest PCP agreement and when we questioned my FIL he said they have all been on PCP. We actually said to her when she got the last car that she didn't need to buy another car but she said it was only money. Now we understand why the dealer called her every 2 years :(.
 
Well I am amazed that a elderly woman has even gone down the route of PCP,and having 4 cars like this and then trading them in after 2 years of a 4 year deal,I am sure flowrider99 and members of his family have been asking themselves questions like how come we did not know what was happening,this women was taken by the Honda dealership and it's staff,I am a lot younger than 84 and I have no idea about PCP or any of the other ways of financing a new car,I doubt I will ever have it but if I did consider it there are enough guys on here who know everything about them I would ask,this old lady has been has been treated badly,she is now gone,I suppose flowrider99 and his family although shocked will accept that the matter dies with their relative,but it has shown that families have to make certain the elderly of their clan are protected as much as possible because the sharks are out there.
We had no idea the cars were on PCP. She never said anything about finance even when we asked her why she kept replacing her car, she had the money to buy the car outright. We have now found out that my FIL bought his car on PCP too and he also has the money sitting in savings earning ridiculously low interest (we are dealing with this situation at present).
 
We had no idea the cars were on PCP. She never said anything about finance even when we asked her why she kept replacing her car, she had the money to buy the car outright. We have now found out that my FIL bought his car on PCP too and he also has the money sitting in savings earning ridiculously low interest (we are dealing with this situation at present).

There it is in action, the old 'don't use your own money, put it to good use, you will earn more than the 8% our finance costs plus we'll bribe you with a contribution' ruse.

Car salesman's handbook chapter 2, following chapter 1 'how to bid your punter in the nuts for his part exchange'.
 
I've worked in car sales at a large well known main dealer my background is sales, lettings, property management and sourcing development sites. I hold a number of certifications from NFOPP. Thinking how much I love cars this would be great if I could combine the two.

How wrong was I! Main dealers are imo the biggest crooks going. You would be shocked if you knew what went on behind the scenes and how the repeat customer is thought of... basically rip them any way you can and up sell everything even if not required even on their px offer them cap low on the splat even if the car was alot better. I did 6 months and left. Worst job I have ever had. Yes car sales needs tighter The regs even with the FCA they still floundered the rules day in day out.

Not for me being ordered to rip off genuine hard working people.

You're not wrong there! I run a car finance brokerage and can honestly say dealer finance is the most expensive finance. Their interest is higher but the manufacturer finance always inflate the residual value the balloons are based on. They do this for two reasons, firstly, the higher ballons means the montly payments are lower, so even though they generally charge higher interest rates than we do the monthlies will be slightly lower giving the untrained customer to impression of a good deal. However, When you reach the end of your term you soon realise that you are in negative equity because they have deliberately inflated the true residual value of the car, they do this to attempt to trap customers into buying from them again and will then swap that negative equity into the next car hopefully trapping the customer with them indefinitely and scaring them with with potential settlement amounts.

I have had countless customers call me up asking me to refinance them out of their dealer finance due to higher interest rate charges only to find out we can't because we won't match the inflated residual figure. This is all done deliberately to try and trap you into having to buy your next car through them because going elsewhere will require you writing a cheque for the balance remaining.

Outside of the dealerships, lenders are actually cautious when it comes to residual values, it's the dealer finance that causes the majority of issues.
 

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