Car Leasing Blog

A fully maintained lease offers complete peace of mind and financial security as the monthly figure you pay incorporates the total cost of routine servicing and maintenance. This way all servicing, tyres (normally excluding punctures), brakes and exhausts are covered with no additional cost. Should you go over your mileage allowance the pence per mile penalty will also incorporate maintenance. Therefore you should have no unexpected costs over the duration of the lease.

This is extremely beneficial to high mileage users, typically 20-30k per anum.

Lower mileage users, up to 20k per anum, should also consider non-maintained contracts on their own financial merit. This is due to one main factor:

Recent changes in European law (Block Exemption) mean you have the right to take your vehicle anywhere you choose for servicing. Providing the servicing garage use OEM parts and adhere to the manufacturers servicing schedules.

This greatly affects lower mileage leasing customers as dealership prices can be higher than other smaller or local garages.

Therefore my advice would always be to measure up the money saved from having the vehicle maintained yourself, to the peace of mind of a fully maintained contract. Higher mileage users may find the convenience aspect of a maintained contract appealing, whereas lower mileage users would see benefit in the money saved.

GENERAL INFORMATION

PERSONAL CONTRACT PURCHASE (PCP) was designed specifically to be a personal contract for private individuals. By entering into a PCP plan, which is classed as a conditional sale agreement, it offers you protection under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and the Financial Services Regulations 2004.

Seen as a way to avoid the depreciation trap, a PCP agreement allows you the option to set up a contract term, with monthly payments. At the end of the term, you then have the option to purchase the vehicle, or simply hand it back to the contract provider. The Title of the vehicle does not change until the final ‘baloon’ payment is made.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

You should receive the log book for your vehicle within six months of the delivery date. It is therefore your responsibility to tax the vehicle when it next becomes due .

 Your car is covered by the usual manufacturers warrantee, and can be taken to any dealer should you have any issues with manufacture of your vehicle.

What Happens if I do not receive my log book? 

You should contact the supplier to request it to be sent on to yourself, if your Road tax is due soon or you have been unable to obtain the log book you should apply to the DVLA for a V62 form. This will allow you to transfer the log book into your own name and enable you to tax your car. There is a charge of around £25 for this but its still cheaper than the fine for driving with no tax! It is also worth taking into account that this can take up to six weeks to complete so make sure you allow pleanty of time before your tax is due to expire.

If you go for a PCP contract, there is a fantastic way to benefit financially at the end of the contract, I will go through it step by step:

With a PCP Lease, there is an optional final payment at the end of the term, which is fixed by the finance company.

One of the benefits of this is that you can hand the car back to the finance company, another is that you can buy the car, then sell it.

When they set the MGEV (Final payment), they usually use around 85% of the predicted future value of the car (to cover their back). This means that if you play your cards right, you could make this 15% yourself (or even put it toward a new vehicle)

I always try to ring PCP clients before the end of the term to make an assesment of the value of their vehicle vs the sale price of the vehicle. I have even known clients take their car to the local dealership and get £300 - £1000 more than the final payment figure on the contract.

Food for thought isnt it?