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Manheim, the large auction house and end of lease vehicle inspectors have identified over £12 million of end of lease damage charges over 90,000 inspections during 2009. 38% of the vehicles that were assessed had damage in excess of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association fair wear and tear guidelines resulting in an average charge of £350 per vehicle, up by 14% on 2008. Some of this was blamed on Read more »

As more companies understand the risk attached to allowing employees to drive their own cars on company business, many have decided to avoid the risk of the car not being in roadworthy condition or the driver driving a car that isn’t properly insured by renting cars as required. Avis have recognised this and has also turned its attention to businesses for its growth. They are not only targeting the large fleets but also Read more »

Toyota finally looks as though it is seeing some light at the end of the tunnel after what must have been the worst start to a year in its history. So far this year 188,500 cars have been recalled, the majority of which require replacements to their accelerator linkages (180,000) and 8,500 Prius require modifications to their braking systems. The accelerator linkage repairs take about 30 minutes to complete. Whilst Read more »

According to tyre provider, Protyre, pothole damage is increasing whilst local authorities are unwilling to carry out repair work until the bad weather is over, for fear that any work done now will be wasted if the cold weather continues and re-pops out the filler. Protyre suggest that 300 new potholes are being identified in Britain every day with hundreds of pounds of damage being caused to tyres and suspension. Read more »

What is the benefit in kind tax position of an employee who is provided with a hire car? I could go into lots of detail as it depends on whether the employee has a company car provided and whether he has it for 30 days continuously. Whether the car is better or worse than his company car and if it’s not to replace a company car then how much of the mileage is private! Oh this is so boring, If you really want to know look it up on Google or something! I’ll just move on before I bore myself to death! By Graham Hill

I am grateful to Jo Tacon, Editor of the journal Motor Finance for which I write a regular (and clearly the most popular) column. Jo forwarded a couple of articles that appeared in the Sun newspaper, written by Kelvin MacKenzie. In the articles he complains about the end of contract charges imposed upon him by Mercedes Benz Finance (MBF) after returning his end of lease car. The charge was £1,800 and I Read more »

There has been an increase in the number of employees who have either opted for cash for cars or been expected to use their own cars for business in exchange for a cash payment. Either way there is a responsibility on the employer to ensure that the vehicle is roadworthy and properly maintained as well as properly insured for business use. There is a grey area for employers who, in the event of an accident, in Read more »

Mobile phone use, whilst driving, has increased to levels reached before legislation was introduced in 2003, according to observers working for the Department for Transport. I don’t mean hands free I mean using a handheld phone. The observations were made between 2008 and 2009 and show an increase of 27%. The worst offenders are van and lorry drivers. Observations were made at various sites in the south of Read more »

My Mercedes is being a bit of a pain. Since I got it a year ago the dealer has had two tries at sorting out two warning lights that came on unexpectedly, one related to the tyre pressures and the other the ESP system. I asked if I could drive the car safely and they pointed out that as the warning lights were orange and not red, as long as I checked my tyre pressures all should be ok till I could get the car in for repair a Read more »

There has been an upsurge in companies known as claims management companies who claim to rid you of credit card and loan debt by claiming that contracts are ‘unenforceable’. In an investigation the BBC found that some firms were claiming very high success rates as high as 93% but when pushed could not provide evidence of anything like that. They were also accused of using misleading statements by Read more »