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According the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) we are about to see and increase in the number of banks re-entering the car finance market which would be great news for all. Although this optimism is not shared by all including me. I have seen some funding enter the vehicle finance sector, not from banks but from investment Read more »

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When I was training as an accountant one of the subjects I had to cover was statistics. At the start of the course we were shown a graph of the stork population in Sweden over a 5 year period. We were then shown a graph of the baby births in Sweden during the same period and the two graphs were virtually identical. As more storks were born more Read more »

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Even though we know the Government is hell bent on converting us to electric cars I’m still not convinced. When it was announced that the Government was going to put £5,000 across the bonnet of electric cars to encourage drivers to buy them and Boris was going to put a free electric charging point in every parking bay making it the world’s leading Read more »

Do you know how long points stay on your licence for? Most people think 3 years but in fact speeding offences stay on there for 4 years and others stay on for longer. For example drink driving points remain on your licence for 11 years. Even though speeding points stay on your licence for 4 years they are only valid for 3 years.

So if you have 9 points on your licence after 3 years but clock up another 3 points in the 4^th year you wont lose your licence under the totting up system. The expired points can be removed from your licence by the DVLA but you will have to pay a fee of £20 for a replacement ‘clean’ licence. Are you confused by the points system, let’s discuss? By Graham Hill

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Years ago when run flat tyres were introduced they seemed like a great idea but drivers were then told that they couldn’t mix up run flats with conventional tyres and you couldn’t get a puncture repaired. Once the tyre had been punctures, whilst the run flat would get you home the bad news was that you then needed to replace the tyre. However, I have found out that this isn’t necessarily the case. It was highlighted recently when a lady driver managed to get a nail in her run flat tyre fitted to a Read more »

A few weeks ago I had a bet with an old friend of mine over one of the critical sectors that I believed had been omitted from the new EU Consumer Credit Directive (CCD) which came fully into force from 1^st February. The question was over Hire Purchase. I knew that the sister product, known as Conditional Sale, was included but it was my understanding that Hire Purchase was excluded and was therefore simply controlled, as it always has been, by our existing Consumer Credit Act. Confused? It gets Read more »

A good friend of mine reports on the crooked activities of the motor industry and has recently expressed his concerns over the direction that many of the online (bucket shop) advertisers as well as even some lenders are going. The latest scam revolves around delivery of your new car. The driver turns up with your car and an invoice for £250 delivery charge. They even carry with them a GPS credit card terminal on which you can make the payment. They point out the charge was included in Read more »

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Drivers are travelling less miles according to figures issued by the Department for Transport for 2010. Provisional figures show that vehicle use is down by 3.3% since 2007 which means that we drove a massive 8.3 billion miles less last year. From 1993 to 2007 car use continued to rise peaking at 251 billion miles in 2007. However, 2010’s total of 242 billion car miles means that we are back to 2002 levels. If you include in the figures all vehicle types the total is 306.6 billion miles in 2010, also Read more »

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Hello John, wanna buy a motor? Well actually a motoring school, the biggest in the UK, BSM. So how much you gonna pay for this luverly motoring school? A quid – done John! Sold to the AA at the back of the room. That’s actually how much the AA paid for BSM after going into administration at the end of January. The company went through a management buyout in 2009 when it was bought for £10 million but according to reports has struggled ever since. The company has 2,100 instructors Read more »

There is another web scam going about as revealed by the DVLA. The email which includes a few spelling mistakes (bit of a giveaway) asks the recipient to click on a Department for Transport web address and fill in some details. It goes on to warn that if you fail to do so it will cause you to lose your drivers licence and you will have to re-take your test. The URL (web address) isn’t obviously a DVLA address but the template used for the site looks genuine and includes links to agency pages in the Read more »