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As the spec of new model year cars start to include DAB digital radios as standard the Government seems to be stalling over the final switch off date of analogue signals. The initial deadline was 2015 but culture minister, Ed Vaizey refused to provide a timeframe when asked during the recent Go Digital Conference in London.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Currently only 40% of new cars have DAB radios fitted as standard with the figure set to increase to 50% this year. The switchover will only take place when more than 50% of all broadcasts are digital, it currently stands at 35%. Mr Vaizey said, ‘I absolutely believe that the future of radio in this country is digital.

We cannot go back. We’re not there yet, so now is not the time to switch.’ How long have they had to get this sorted out? Piss ups and breweries spring to mind.

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• Ed Vaizey ‘won’t be pushed’ into digital radio switchover date (theguardian.com)

New moan started, a few years ago a journalist with about as much knowledge about all things financial as a garden fork started a blog. In fact it was started about the same time as I started mine.

The difference was that I didn’t allow every John Henry and his mate to post things on my blog, unlike my charismatic friend. If anyone wanted to post anything on my blog I would mediate and if what they wanted to post was incorrect or simply trying to sell their pet insurance policy I would trash it.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

On the other hand many other blogs would allow complete (but often well intentioned) doughnuts to express opinions online which others would then take as absolute gospel. For example I have seen someone desperate because they are facing a £1,500 charge to repair a PAS pump, 3 weeks after the manufacturer’s warranty has run out on his car, seeking advice because he’d been told the repair was outside the warranty and therefore fully chargeable.

As you know from postings on my blog this isn’t unusual. In this case the car had only covered 15,000 miles but some numbnuts said, oh dear, sadly as you are outside the warranty there is nothing you can do, chat to your bank manager and arrange a loan. Which is what the poor sod did!! So this ill informed do-gooder just cost the driver with the problem £1,500.

The truth is that under the Sale of Goods Act the driver had a legitimate claim against the supplying dealer as the goods have to be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. The ABS pump should last as long as the car, at least 8 years, so the dealer should make at least some contribution towards the cost of repair as the item concerned would appear to not be of satisfactory quality.

Oh and notice I said dealer and not manufacturer, the claim is against the company that sold you the goods, not the manufacturer. It’s up to the dealer to seek compensation from the manufacturer. This is just one of many pieces of advice given by ignorant subscribers with no legal knowledge whatsoever.

Sometimes on this and other blogs the advice has been accurate at the time it was given in say 2009 but the law has since changed and the advice is now wrong. So if you are one of those people that searches through blogs for accurate information, tread very carefully, the advice you follow could cost you a fortune.

It’s about time that blogs were properly policed before too many people catch a serious cold. 2^nd moan over! By Graham Hill

The RAC has brought itself up to date by fitting out their patrol vehicles with state of the art diagnostic technology in order to increase the number of roadside fixes it can carry out.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

The RAC has invested £6 million in Scan+ diagnostic software that will enable patrols to interact with a broken down vehicle’s own diagnostic system and on-board sensors to identify faults.

The technology will allow technicians to do a repair on parts that often need electronically adapting before they will operate – even battery replacements need computer ‘coding’ after replacing. No I didn’t know that either!

RAC Technical Director, David Bizley said, ’The RAC has always utilised the latest technological advances to ensure we offer the very best repair for motorists.

RAC Scan+ will give our patrols the very best information from the vehicle’s own diagnostic equipment to enable them to repair the car.’ Over to you the AA!

For years I have campaigned for the inclusion of ‘personal finance’ into the National Curriculum. It is tragic to think that our youth are now expected to stay on at school till they are 18, an age when they can legally sign a contract, without the slightest knowledge as to how the finance systems work and how to manage their debt.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

They are seduced into taking out loans and HP for all sorts of goods from phones and computers to cars and even mortgages without fully understanding the commitment they are entering into and the consequences.

In my book Car Finance – A Simple Guide I have a whole section relating to ‘when things go wrong’. It shows you what your rights are and how to deal with debt, something that most lenders would prefer you didn’t know. But it is important that everyone knows, especially school leavers.

So I am delighted that personal finance has now been included in the new National Curriculum for England. This move means that financial education will be included in Mathematics and citizenship education lessons in all maintained secondary schools from September 2014.

This will make a huge difference to the future lives of millions of youngsters. The only downside is that it isn’t compulsory in all schools. Academies and free schools are not bound by the National Curriculum, we need to work on them to complete the circle and encompass all of our youth.

In my opinion financial health is as important to kids as physical health, both can destroy you if you don’t take good care of it.

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• ‘Money’ to be taught in schools – with lessons on state spending (telegraph.co.uk)

I have to say that my enquiry levels are up a little at a time when I normally expect them to be dropping off as we find ourselves in the midst of the holiday period. I must have had a million ‘out of office’ bouncebacks following deal of the week last week so it isn’t the fact that many aren’t taking holidays so maybe it is that shard of light we’ve all been waiting for, moving us up from a glimmer of light.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

OK I lied about the number of bouncebacks, maybe a million is a bit of an over estimate but the point is the same. I then read that July saw the fastest growth in the service sector since late 2006.

Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ index for the UK Service Sector climbed to its highest since December 2006. Underlying demand was stronger with market conditions improving both home and abroad.

They pointed to good weather and a pick up in the housing market as reasons why the upward trend continued. New business growth lead to an increase in backlogs with the highest backlog of work reported since February 2000.

July’s survey marked the 7^th month of growth and with payroll numbers increasing also the panellists suggested there are plenty of reasons to start feeling a little more optimistic about the future as businesses start to make longer term plans. Hear hear to that one!

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• Growth of services sector bodes well for economy (thetimes.co.uk)

Call me old fashioned but I still find it amazing how easily individuals part with their personal details to companies they know nothing about. I write about this time and again and still people are dopey enough to part with every piece of information a crook needs to open a bank account in your name or take out a credit card.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

If I wanted details from a number of high net worth individuals I would offer a great car deal on say a BMW X5 or M3, either car for say £299 + VAT per month. Absolutely impossible to get to those figures. I would then set up a dummy web site and wait for the enquiries to flood in.

I would have a very believable person answering the phone explaining how the boss has committed to a number of cars in order to achieve the very low rates on offer, all we need to do is take a finance application from them and away we go.

I would ask for some proofs such as a copy of a driving licence and passport along with a few bills and for good measure a copy of the front and back of a credit card. Oh and by the way last 3 months bank statements wouldn’t go amiss when applying for credit!

It would be that simple as people are greedy, they want everything on the cheap and that is what the crooks rely upon. Oh and by the way the scenario I described isn’t far fetched, it actually happened!

This leads me to the latest figures released by fraud prevention service, CIFAS. In the first 5 months of this year nearly 60,000 people were victims of identity fraud. There were more than 46,000 cases of impersonation over the period where fraudsters used individual identities to open new accounts.

They also showed that more than 13,500 were victims of ‘takeover’ when an existing account is broken into and hijacked. Around 96,000 confirmed frauds were reported to CIFAS in the first 5 months of this year.

By the way the identity theft I referred to earlier was on BMW X5’s, the same company carried out the same fraud when advertising Vauxhall Astras at well under the market rate, so you don’t have to be a high net worth individual.

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• European Study Reveals ID Fraud To Be Rife In UK (misco.co.uk)

Tonight those lovely old ladies that present the BBC 1 programme called Rip Off Britain had a piece about Log Book Loans. In most respects, contrary to my usual complaints about the press and consumer programmes, it was surprisingly accurate but it missed a few very key pieces of information.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

First of all Log Book Loans, as pointed out in the programme, are what are known as Bills of Sale, regulated not by the Consumer Credit Act but The Bill of Sales Act 1878 and the amendment act of 1882. This Victorian act was created in the days when rights were with the lender, not with the borrower, as they are today.

A loan is secured against a car at a high APR, normally around 300% – 400%. In a case highlighted a lady had a recovery company call late at night to recover a car which they said had money owed on it on a Log Book Loan. The collection at a late hour was questionable but in a panic the lady handed over the keys and having already bought the car in good faith was later told that she would have to settle the outstanding finance if she wanted the car back.

The fact is that the finance company was acting within the law. In fact contrary to much of the rubbish written on the Internet, on various consumer sites, by people who have no knowledge of the law, they don’t even need a court order, which is the case once you have paid off a third of the debt on HP.

They can even enter your property, break down the doors of your garage and remove the vehicle. Unless of course, as one very smart chap suggested on a famous consumer blog, you remove the battery and two of the wheels! Nice idea unless you actually bought the car to drive – you dope!

The strange thing is that in 2010 the Government carried out a review of the act and amazingly did nothing to it leaving ‘innocent buyers’ in the cold. If you buy a car on HP or PCP, i.e. a loan secured against the car, and you buy the car not knowing that the car had finance secured against it, having asked the owner, title still passes to you as an ‘innocent buyer’.

So until log book loans raised their ugly head you didn’t need to fork out for an HPI check that tells you if finance is secured upon the car. The HPI guarantee covers you up to £30,000 against losses as a result of the finance not being recorded.

This was in fact a bit of a sleight of hand because as a consumer you were covered up to £30,000 under the Consumer Credit Act anyway so when the debt collector comes calling for the £15,000 worth of finance outstanding on the car you bought and HPI save you this money they simply phone the HP company and explain that you were an innocent buyer and the finance company, in most instances, will simply go walkies. But now that you have log book loans recorded also we are in a different ball game.

It is now worth paying for an HPI check (the full online check) if you are to protect yourself against the fraudulent selling of a car to you that has a log book loan secured upon it. What they didn’t make at all clear in the programme was that you should never simply hand over keys to anyone who turns up at your door with a piece of paper, that could be a forgery, saying they are the owners of the car.

And if the paperwork does not mention ‘bill of sale’ then the chances are that they are trying to recover a car that was on HP or PCP and as long as you don’t hand anything over you will be considered as an innocent buyer of the car and entitled to keep it. Once you forfeit the car you give up your rights.

Remember, if you feel at all intimidated call the police. I award 8 out of 10 to the kindly ladies of Rip Off Britain.

For years my blog, www.thebestcarfinanceblog.co.uk has remained at number 1 on Google. Search Car Finance Blog and you will find my blog at number 1 out of 342 million (as of today, 5th August 2013). This is no mean achievement but it must say something about the quality and quantity of information that I post.

Even after being off line for several months whilst recovering from a hip operation I still remained at number 1. My next target is to take my book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide to number 1 in the best selling finance book list on Amazon. So if you would like to help and gain some insight into car finance please click the link below to get yourself a copy. You can buy the book as a downloadable Kindle or an old fashioned paperback book. Best wishes Graham Hill

English: Google Logo officially released on May 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Highways Agency Traffic Officers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It would seem that the Government is being a little bit sly. There is a bit of a hole into which the Government is going to have to pour a ton of cash before too long. In fact there isn’t just one hole there are thousands of them and not just any hole but pot holes.

It is a real headache for the Government but it will have to be addressed if the whole of the roads infrastructure isn’t to come to a halt or it causes a major catastrophe. The Government seems to have a solution because many of the delays don’t seem to be the lack of funds but unworkable civil service rules.

So Stephen Hammond, Transport Minister, announced that the Highways Agency will become a publically owned corporation. This move will free it from red tape and ensure funding going forward.

As a publically owned company it can be scrutinised more effectively. It can also offer better incentives to staff. The move is part of £28bn funding for UK roads and accounts for 8 years of funding up to 2021 ensuring at least 6 years of financial certainty.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

In the past funding has been on an annual basis, not good for making plans into the future, so this will allow them to plan ahead. The funding will also be protected against future governments wanting to cut this allocation.

There are fears that this could ultimately lead to the further privatisation of the Highways Agency and eventually lead to toll roads and other road charges so we need to keep an eye on this one!

Oh and in order to sort out the pot holes £12bn of the funding is set aside for re-surfacing and maintenance, half of which will be spent on Motorways and A Roads. It sounds good but as always the proof is in the eating. By Graham Hill Car Finance

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Peugeot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If the financial problems weren’t enough it would seem that Citroen and Peugeot need to sort their cars out, or more importantly their electrics, according to a new report prepared by BBA Reman – a specialist in remanufacturing problematic electrical components (no I don’t know what that means either), based in Rochester, Kent.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

They say that they dealt with more Citroens than any other make of car among its 43,500 UK customers. The most common fault was within the ECU’s fitted mainly to C4’s and C5’s.

The same issue caused Peugeot to fall into 2^nd place with the same problem occurring in 206, 307 and 407. Whilst some would say that this isn’t surprising given the difficulties faced by the manufacturers, they may be surprised to learn that contrary to belief that Germans are the most reliable VW and Audi were 3^rd and 4^th respectively. Maybe a bit of a wakeup call there! By Graham Hill Car Finance

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