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I’ve mentioned on several occasions that you are able to have your car serviced at a non franchised dealer but you have to be extra careful about warranty claims as manufacturers will try to squirm out of them. A recent case involved Ford and a young lady with a 4 year old Ford Ka. She suddenly found that the car had developed rust Read more »

Lots of lenders and brokers are starting to quote lease rentals based on 6 rentals in advance in order to make the monthly rentals appear low. It also helps with underwriting as the higher the initial rental, the lower the risk. However, I still try to stick with 3 rentals in advance which may make the monthly cost look high but it makes the initial rental Read more »

Buy or lease a new or used car and you’re pretty much guaranteed a 3 year period of fairly low cost motoring, subject to the car of course and your annual mileage. But you have a new car that will have on average maybe 2 services, that can be carried out by a non franchised dealer and maybe a couple of tyres. Compare that with the rocketing costs of Read more »

This is now getting bloody monotonous! Every week I seem to read something about warranty claims that aren’t being honoured by the dealer or manufacturer because the claim has been made just outside the warranty period or mileage. Last week it was the Guardian, this week it’s What Car that have made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end! Read more »

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Following from my previous article there has been much confusion for years about warranties provided on used cars. It has been a much held view that a car warranty is an insurance policy and therefore falls within the control of the Financial Services Act. In other words you have to be a regulated advisor to discuss the product and the product itself Read more »

When is a lifetime warranty not a lifetime warranty? When it’s a Vauxhall it would seem. When Vauxhall announced the warranty to a fanfare of press support other manufacturers that had extended their warranties to 5 years were shocked. But after careful examination it was found that the warranty only applied to the owner of the car and not the car as it only covered the car if it was still owned by the original buyer. So as soon as the car was sold the warranty became null and void. Enter the Read more »

With new car deliveries stretching out all the time and 4 month delivery becoming the norm rather than the exception, many are tempted to go the used car route, often paying over the odds for a car less than 12 months old simply to get a fairly new car. I’ve mentioned the dangers in the past but with so many people being forced to take a used car because their current leased car cannot be extended, it’s worth mentioning the dangers again. I explained that servicing costs increase with age but Read more »