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The importance of using a broker rather than a bucket shop for lease cars has been highlighted again this week following the consolidation of the leasing industry. Where your lease provider may have been merged or taken over by another provider you may find yourself subjected to end of lease charges that you may not have received by the original provider who may have been fairly relaxed about defleet recharges. Read more »

It has been estimated that there are in excess of 1 million businesses in the UK considered to be running ‘small fleets’ of company vehicles (25 or less). It would seem that the vast majority of these businesses don’t see themselves as running a ‘fleet’ of vehicles but they should be aware that the same rules and regulations regarding duty of care, health and safety and the Corporate Manslaughter Act along with Read more »

A couple of weeks ago the Telegraph, like most of the media tend to do from time to time, headlined an ill informed, inaccurate and misleading article about ex daily rental cars suggesting that buyers of these cars had not been told that when buying these cars from dealers that they had been ex rental cars. The article suggested that the cars, most of which were well under a year old and usually with no more than 5,000 miles recorded, were considered to be sub standard and Read more »

Finally, it’s happened, a company has brought out an insurance policy to cover the ever growing end of contract refurbishment charges for cars and vans that will be returned to the leasing company at the end of the lease. The cost of the policy will range between £290 and £350 for a standard family sized car and it will cover vehicle damage over and above fair wear and tear up to £1,500. This may seem like Read more »

 Contract hire is still by far the most popular method used to finance vehicles according to members of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association. Contract hire of cars has remained pretty static over the last 5 years, consistently hovering around 1.3 million mark. LCV’s (vans) have dropped slightly over the years from 180,000 to 176,000. Contract purchase and personal contract purchase have both dipped over the last year. So it seems that businesses and consumers continue to understand the benefits of contract hire, long may it continue. By Graham Hill

One of the huge benefits to buying or leasing a new car is that you will be driving a car with all the latest safety equipment fitted. Even the most modest cars have more equipment than they had fitted even just 3 years ago. The most significant for me is the wider fitting of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) also known as ESP. This system has been proven to save more lives than ABS but isn’t mandatory until Read more »

 If you are a regular reader of my articles you will know that I don’t regard those expert advisors that write in the media about car finance very highly. In fact I regard most as being daft as a house brick. But whilst an article that appeared in the Independent didn’t really change my views there were a couple of points over which I had to agree, as painful as it was! The reporter suggested that the scrappage scheme cash may run out by mid October which is a feeling shared and hoped for by Read more »

One of the effects of the recession is that apparently greenhouse emissions are substantially down as a result of cost savings and people traveling less miles in their cars and vans. Whilst this is great news for the environment and has helped to stabilize fuel prices it may also have a positive effect on the lease cost of cars on either contract hire or contract purchase. If you find that you are now traveling substantially fewer miles in your car you should Read more »

Following on from the warning about crooks a warning has been issued by the Finance & Leasing Association regarding another fraud that is on the increase. Bogus rental and lease companies are being set up that provide criminals with access to what appear to be legitimate insured and taxed vehicles. The vehicles are obtained fraudulently on finance then sublet with Read more »

On my soon to be released blog I talk about the way that the media misleads the public about, amongst other things, car finance. For some reason when it comes to anything vehicle related they put out reports that are poorly researched then draw conclusions that are either ill informed or simply inaccurate. This week we saw The Telegraph with headline news about the way that motorists are conned into Read more »