Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

[frobisher]

Hi all,

Have terminated a car with VWFS on contract hire about 6 months early. Have paid 55% of outstanding monthly payments to do so. Had a minor charge to pay for one small dent.

Contract is for 30,000 miles and it was 24K-ish on return. They now say that on a pro-rata basis I have exceeded the mileage on my contract as it should, at the point I terminated, have only done 22,500 or thereabouts! They want about £132.

Although this isn't a massive amount, on principal I'm peeved and I'm wondering if it is worth fighting or whether that's only worth doing on PCP VT? They've got back a car early (i.e. in better condition than it would have been and worth more than it would have been in 6 months time), with less mileage than it would have in 6 months and have been paid about £1K for me doing so and now they want even more money on top.

If I reply to say, "get lost, the car was under contracted mileage on termination so I'm not paying" are they likely to come after me do you think? If it went to court can they just point at (now terminated) contract or do they have to prove the "excess mileage on a pro rata basis" has materially affected the value of the car?

[R0b]

Re: Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

Excess Mileage is well address on here. For the sake of £132, they may or may not go to court over it, and if you can afford to pay that much within 30 days of judgment if you lost you could still have your day in court, should you want to argue out of principle.

See this thread which is ongoing but excess mileage massively higher than yours, the argument is the same however.

http://legalbeagles.info/forums/show...es-court-claim

[frobisher]

Re: Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

Thanks R0b. I've seen numerous threads, just didn't know if the same thing applied to Contract Hire as it did with PCP. Also as I've technically not exceeded my mileage and it's being charged on a pro-rata basis, I wondered if that affected the argument.

What I will do tonight is check my contract to see what it says about early settlement. If it doesn't mention pro rata mileage at all then I suspect I may well write back to them to tell them to go whistle.

[thedirtyhound]

Re: Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

Its all a question of are you prepared to gamble losing a case to save £132.00? If you did, you would have to pay the hearing fee and the travel costs of the other side. Sometimes a court will offer you the possibility of a judge deciding the case on paper, but if that happened you would probably lose as VW would rely on the written agreement. ON the other hand, Mercedes once tried it on with me over bodywork. I was proud of the condition in which I returned the car in after having it for three years, but they still wanted to charge me £980.00. I got a series of photos with light fringes around them- highlighting the slightest of dents that I never even noticed with my own eye. So I told them to f*** off and I never heard from them again. Also, I don't think they could treat it as part of the finance deal, even if it was part of the contract. I got no default whatsoever registered against my name. Personally, I don't think they will bother for such a small amount, but you can never be sure!

[R0b]

Re: Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

Well if your agreement is a contract hire then you can't VT as that right doesn't exist in the same way as it does with HP agreements.

Based on what you've said it might be a PCP/HP agreement because PCH or other hire agreements don't allow you to terminate early and you have to see the contract through to the end - or some contract will allow you to leave early but you must have paid something pretty close to the full amount.

If it is a HP type agreement, I'm pretty confident it will contain something about pro-rata mileage, unless its an old agreement.

[frobisher]

Re: Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

Sorry, I'm probably confusing things a bit. It's definitely a contract hire agreement, no doubt about it. I agreed early settlement with them, which is easy to arrange with vwfs. All I need to do now is find out what the situation is with early settlement and pro-rata of mileage.

[frobisher]

Re: Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

Dammit. Clause 10.5 has got me I think:

10.5 If this Agreement terminates early, we will reduce the Maximum
Total Mileage in the proportion which the actual period of hire
bears to the period of hire originally agreed. Any Excess Mileage
Charge will be calculated using the reduced Maximum Total
Mileage.

I don't think I can be doing with the hassle to be honest. Not for the sake of £132!

[R0b]

Re: Pro-rata excess mileage charge on early terminated contract hire (not PCP)

Well there you go, I’m afraid with pure hire agreements, you’ve got less rights than you would have under a HP agreement. I’m afraid your out of luck with that one - excess mileage charges are pretty much common these days and I doubt any lender doesn’t have a clause to that effect in their agreement

Strictly speaking, you can VT a hire agreement but it’s a bit more onerous than under HP and generally doesn’t apply to hire cars because one of the criterion is that you’d need to be paying less than £1,500 per 12 months.

Pay up now before they start adding charges on top