Moving Abroad with Blackhorse car finance

[fchristensen]

Hi Everyone,

I think i might be in a bit of a pickle regarding the car finance I took out a few months ago with black horse finance. I currently pay £425 per month as part of a personal hire contract with Black horse finance. My personal situation is that i've just been made redundant and have huge rent and bill obligations which needs to be met. Luckily, we are not in a position right now where we cannot afford to make the monthly repayments, due to our savings. This will tie us over until I can manage to find a new job (a few months). The more pressing problem is our need to move abroad to Germany. My partner's mum is ill and will require care for the foreseeable future, we have therefore decided to move to Germany within the next 6 months.

I have not yet contacted the leasing company with this news and I've done some research and found that these contracts are extremely / near to impossible to get out of. We would be very happy to take the car abroad and re-plate it in Germany, but I don't believe the leasing company allows this. I am also not in a position to be able to pay off the remainder of the contract value.

What do people do in these kinds of situations?

Happy to provide more information.

Thanks in advance.

Fred

[R0b]

Hello

You are right to think that you're in a pickle because hire contracts are notoriously difficult to get out of because you don't really have much rights.

The first thing to do is to consult the contract and see what it says about taking the car abroad. I would expect to have the basics in there about being able to travel in the EU for no more than 30 days at a time but worth double checking.

In the absence of anything else, the best option may be to simply write to BH, explain your situation and present them with some options. The risk for BH is that they will have a car in a foreign country which is on hire and at the end would need to be returned to them - what happens if you decide you don't want to return it? BH will then need to spend time and costs in seeking to recover that car which may ultimately cost more than its worth. Then you've got the brexit issues and working out how that affects the contract, recovery etc.

I can imagine their first response would be absolutely not, which I think would be fair and reasonable. One other option could be to agree to return the car prior to leaving the country and paying a percentage of the outstanding amount under the agreement. This would take into account the early return of the car and therefore BH making some saving as a result.

It wouldn't surprise me if BH refused to agree to anything but then you can make a formal complaint and then onto the Financial Ombudsman. They have obligations and duties when someone could potentially be in arrears and they should assess and take steps if necessary to assist you in that.

Alternatively, you could argue there's an imbalance in the rights between you and BH and their blanket refusal to agree to any of the options presented means the contract and/or some of the terms might be regarded as unfair. If the Financial Ombudsman doesn't agree with you on that, then your only other option would be to go to court and argue it but then that's further time and cost.

What you are looking for is a big ask from BH and if I were in their position I would probably say no as it's too much of a risk. That's why it miught be best to go in with your preferred option but if that fails then have one or two backup options which might be considered more reasonable.

If you're thinking of simply taking the car and not telling BH then the risk is all on you but be aware, sometimes they engage the police for assistance in recovering the vehicle from a foreign country - I doubt the police have any powers as such in that situation but it does happen. At the same time, if you plan on returning to the UK at some point then you could be faced with a judgment against your name plus any other liabilities such as theft if the police/BH wished to take it further.

All in all, you need to work out what's best for you in the long run and see whether BH can work with what you are proposing.

[fchristensen]

Thanks for the reply.

I just thought i'd give an update for any future beaglers that might find themselves in the same situation.

I spoke to BH finance who were actually quite accommodating. They generated a settlement figure which was very reasonable and allowed me to sell the car. The settlement figure was bang on in terms of market value and once the vehicle was sold, the contract was terminated with nothing further to pay.

I hope that is useful to anyone else who might find themselves in the same situation.

R0b - thanks again.

Fred

[R0b]

Thanks for the update - glad it was resolved in the end