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This is a long one so please bear with me!
We took out a 48month lease and service plan for a new Audi in February 2015.
On 27 February 2017 we contacted VWFS to enquire about how we would go about a VT. Explained that we didn’t want to instruct to go ahead just yet, but likely to do so in around a weeks time. We were talked through the process, all fairly straight forward. We asked what we had to pay in settlement and were told £2,125.
We raised two queries:
1) Would there be any excess mileage to pay, as we knew we had gone over the pro-rated annual mileage. We were categorically told no, not on a VT.
2) Our 1 March payment of £425 would be made between this initial enquiry call and instruction to proceed; would this change the settlement figure? We were told no, the £2,125 settlement fee was valid for 28 days however, we would receive a refund of the March payment less the number of days up to VT.
All good so far!
On 6 March we contacted VWFS to request going ahead with the VT. At this point we were told the settlement amount due was now £2,407. We were also told no, we wouldn’t receive a refund of the days in March that we had paid for in advance once the car was returned and that yes, there would be excess mileage to pay. We queried all of this and the operator was extremely rude, her response was basically “that’s the figures, if you don’t like it then submit a complaint”.
We said that we still wanted to go ahead with the VT but yes we did wish to make a complaint. The Operator then took all the details (or so we thought!)
8 March we received a letter confirming VT and amount due in settlement of £2,407. No mention in the letter of any excess mileage, not even to say it would be due and calculated once the car was inspected.
We paid the £2,407 as we had been told by the second Operator that if our complaint was upheld then the difference between this and the original quote we were given would be refunded, we didn’t want to risk any adverse affect on our credit rating by not paying.
Car was collected on 4 April (conveniently meaning we’d had the car a whole month since last payment/instruction to terminate so no refund of the advance payment!). There was also nothing found on the inspection that would warrant further payment.
Fast forward to 25 April and we received an invoice for £937 for excess mileage. We contacted the Financial Ombudsman for general advice as at this point we hadn’t received any contact from VWFS about our complaint, not even the acknowledgement that they are supposed to send within 14 days! Ombudsman advised us not to pay the EM invoice and not to contact VWFS again as by not acknowledging our complaint they had already broken FCA rules. We were told to wait until the 8 weeks was up and at that point if we had still heard nothing to contact the Ombudsman.
Surprise surprise we heard nothing from VWFS so escalated our complaint to the Ombudsman.
Oh but NOW VWFS want to talk to us! Complaints department contacted us full of apology, seemingly our complaint had not even been logged so they had no record of it, hence no response or acknowledgement.
They told us that they had listened to all of our calls:
1) Yes we had stated we wanted to complain and had our details taken, but Operator had not processed it.
2) Yes we were told no excess mileage on the original call. VWFS changed their Policy on 1 March 2017 - prior to this point they did not charge excess mileage on VTs but post 1 March they did. Our call to enquire and call to instruct were either side of this date hence the mix up (I shit not, this was their actual excuse!!) As a gesture of goodwill they were willing to cancel the excess mileage invoice for £937.
3) Yes on the initial call on 27 February we were told a settlement figure of £2,125 however, this was an Operator error and the £2,407 that we were subsequently told on 6 March (and had now already paid) was the correct figure. Sorry, no refund of the difference.
By this point it was May 2017 and we had had enough of it all so accepted their offer to cancel the EM invoice in settlement of the complaint.
Complaint closed with Ombudsman, end of story.
or so you’d think........
July 2017 we received another invoice for £285 excess mileage. What is going on??? We rang VWFS and were told “this is the excess mileage on the service plan, it’s a separate agreement to the lease”. Eh? It’s July, you’ve had the car back since April, why are you only just sending this invoice now and why has NOBODY either in writing or on the phone mentioned it during any of this sorry saga?
We were apologised to and told it would be looked into. No one rang us back despite us chasing it up at least 5 times, the person dealing with it was always “busy” or “at lunch” and would call us back. After a month of no response we assumed they’d decided that they’d cocked up and were just keeping their heads down.
Wrong again!
December 2017 we received a final reminder. As it was over Christmas we rang up on 3 January. Told again that the service plan was a separate agreement, excess mileage was to cover the extra services the car had received due to the additional mileage. We pointed out that it actually hadn’t had any extra services under the service plan, it would have only been due a third one had we not given it back. Over the period we had the car we paid £540 for the service plan. We have comfirmation from our local Audi garage that they only did two services under the service plan (they did a third gearbox service which we paid for cash) and that the invoices they issued to VWFS only totalled £456 (so in effect we’ve already paid £90 more than the cost of the services).
We raised a new complaint and queried why no one had told us about the excess mileage on the service plan until July, and why they wanted an additional £286 when the total cost of servicing was less than what we had already paid. VWFS responded by ignoring our questions and simply sent us a copy of the signed agreement saying “agreement says excess mileage is payable, so pay up”. I should also add that the letter referred to the excess mileage being calculated at the point we instructed them to terminate the agreement in July 2017. I’m now convinced they’re deliberately trying to wind us up!
We (again) contacted the Financial Ombudsman and escalated our complaint.
We have now received a letter from the Ombudsman saying that an agreement for a service plan is out of their scope so they cannot adjudicate!!!
Which brings me to this forum - where do we go and what (if anything?) do we do now?
(I’ve tried CAB and they were totally befuddled!)
My thoughts are that they cannot charge more than what the services have cost as they have to show that their charges are fair and reasonable and effectively any extra is like “interest”, but the service plan agreement is not one regulated by the FCA so therefore they cannot charge “interest” - anyone have any ideas ??
We took out a 48month lease and service plan for a new Audi in February 2015.
On 27 February 2017 we contacted VWFS to enquire about how we would go about a VT. Explained that we didn’t want to instruct to go ahead just yet, but likely to do so in around a weeks time. We were talked through the process, all fairly straight forward. We asked what we had to pay in settlement and were told £2,125.
We raised two queries:
1) Would there be any excess mileage to pay, as we knew we had gone over the pro-rated annual mileage. We were categorically told no, not on a VT.
2) Our 1 March payment of £425 would be made between this initial enquiry call and instruction to proceed; would this change the settlement figure? We were told no, the £2,125 settlement fee was valid for 28 days however, we would receive a refund of the March payment less the number of days up to VT.
All good so far!
On 6 March we contacted VWFS to request going ahead with the VT. At this point we were told the settlement amount due was now £2,407. We were also told no, we wouldn’t receive a refund of the days in March that we had paid for in advance once the car was returned and that yes, there would be excess mileage to pay. We queried all of this and the operator was extremely rude, her response was basically “that’s the figures, if you don’t like it then submit a complaint”.
We said that we still wanted to go ahead with the VT but yes we did wish to make a complaint. The Operator then took all the details (or so we thought!)
8 March we received a letter confirming VT and amount due in settlement of £2,407. No mention in the letter of any excess mileage, not even to say it would be due and calculated once the car was inspected.
We paid the £2,407 as we had been told by the second Operator that if our complaint was upheld then the difference between this and the original quote we were given would be refunded, we didn’t want to risk any adverse affect on our credit rating by not paying.
Car was collected on 4 April (conveniently meaning we’d had the car a whole month since last payment/instruction to terminate so no refund of the advance payment!). There was also nothing found on the inspection that would warrant further payment.
Fast forward to 25 April and we received an invoice for £937 for excess mileage. We contacted the Financial Ombudsman for general advice as at this point we hadn’t received any contact from VWFS about our complaint, not even the acknowledgement that they are supposed to send within 14 days! Ombudsman advised us not to pay the EM invoice and not to contact VWFS again as by not acknowledging our complaint they had already broken FCA rules. We were told to wait until the 8 weeks was up and at that point if we had still heard nothing to contact the Ombudsman.
Surprise surprise we heard nothing from VWFS so escalated our complaint to the Ombudsman.
Oh but NOW VWFS want to talk to us! Complaints department contacted us full of apology, seemingly our complaint had not even been logged so they had no record of it, hence no response or acknowledgement.
They told us that they had listened to all of our calls:
1) Yes we had stated we wanted to complain and had our details taken, but Operator had not processed it.
2) Yes we were told no excess mileage on the original call. VWFS changed their Policy on 1 March 2017 - prior to this point they did not charge excess mileage on VTs but post 1 March they did. Our call to enquire and call to instruct were either side of this date hence the mix up (I shit not, this was their actual excuse!!) As a gesture of goodwill they were willing to cancel the excess mileage invoice for £937.
3) Yes on the initial call on 27 February we were told a settlement figure of £2,125 however, this was an Operator error and the £2,407 that we were subsequently told on 6 March (and had now already paid) was the correct figure. Sorry, no refund of the difference.
By this point it was May 2017 and we had had enough of it all so accepted their offer to cancel the EM invoice in settlement of the complaint.
Complaint closed with Ombudsman, end of story.
or so you’d think........
July 2017 we received another invoice for £285 excess mileage. What is going on??? We rang VWFS and were told “this is the excess mileage on the service plan, it’s a separate agreement to the lease”. Eh? It’s July, you’ve had the car back since April, why are you only just sending this invoice now and why has NOBODY either in writing or on the phone mentioned it during any of this sorry saga?
We were apologised to and told it would be looked into. No one rang us back despite us chasing it up at least 5 times, the person dealing with it was always “busy” or “at lunch” and would call us back. After a month of no response we assumed they’d decided that they’d cocked up and were just keeping their heads down.
Wrong again!
December 2017 we received a final reminder. As it was over Christmas we rang up on 3 January. Told again that the service plan was a separate agreement, excess mileage was to cover the extra services the car had received due to the additional mileage. We pointed out that it actually hadn’t had any extra services under the service plan, it would have only been due a third one had we not given it back. Over the period we had the car we paid £540 for the service plan. We have comfirmation from our local Audi garage that they only did two services under the service plan (they did a third gearbox service which we paid for cash) and that the invoices they issued to VWFS only totalled £456 (so in effect we’ve already paid £90 more than the cost of the services).
We raised a new complaint and queried why no one had told us about the excess mileage on the service plan until July, and why they wanted an additional £286 when the total cost of servicing was less than what we had already paid. VWFS responded by ignoring our questions and simply sent us a copy of the signed agreement saying “agreement says excess mileage is payable, so pay up”. I should also add that the letter referred to the excess mileage being calculated at the point we instructed them to terminate the agreement in July 2017. I’m now convinced they’re deliberately trying to wind us up!
We (again) contacted the Financial Ombudsman and escalated our complaint.
We have now received a letter from the Ombudsman saying that an agreement for a service plan is out of their scope so they cannot adjudicate!!!
Which brings me to this forum - where do we go and what (if anything?) do we do now?
(I’ve tried CAB and they were totally befuddled!)
My thoughts are that they cannot charge more than what the services have cost as they have to show that their charges are fair and reasonable and effectively any extra is like “interest”, but the service plan agreement is not one regulated by the FCA so therefore they cannot charge “interest” - anyone have any ideas ??
