Excess Mileage and Reasonable Condition

[charliesdad79]

I am by no means legally minded but something struck me last night about the VT issue of regarding excess mileage as not meeting reasonable condition and wondered if anyone had ever argued this point.
Since the finance companies use the BVRLA documents to determine reasonable condition then is it possible to argue that since the document does not include mileage as an indicator of condition then excess mileage should not be classed as affecting this?
To my knowledge the CAP guidelines that [MENTION=71570]R0b[/MENTION] suggests are more applicable also exclude mileage as an indicator.
Interested in any thought on this one.

[thedirtyhound]

Re: Excess Mileage and Reasonable Condition

Over the years I have had numerous cars on lease/contract hire.

The terms are always set out at the beginning and the prices quoted vary according to the mileage you intend to do. The more miles you know you are going to do, the more you will have to pay. This is absolutely reasonable, because the more miles the car has when it returns to the owner at the end of the lease/hire period, the less it is worth.

At the outset, you elect what mileage you do and if you understate it purely to keep the cost of the lease down, you have no right whatsoever to complain at the end if they charge you the difference. The return mileage will be a straightforward matter of fact and nobody would have any valid grounds for complaint.

Obviously, this is different to the condition report, when they try and squeeze extra money out of you for alleged faults that the eye can't see. That happened to me with Mercedes Finance. I returned a car to them in what I thought was tip top condition. In fact, I had taken such great care of it that I was proud to hand it back that way. Nevertheless, they managed to come up with all sorts of photographs showing dents and indentations that the eye could not see. They also wanted me to pay about £980.00 in total. It was astonishing.

So I literally told them to f*ck off (honestly!) and I never heard another thing about it.

The two scenarios are entirely different, for I disputed the condition, but it would be very difficult to dispute the mileage had I exceeded the agreed number.

[charliesdad79]

Re: Excess Mileage and Reasonable Condition

I agree in part in that if there was a deliberate intention to do a VT from the offset under understate the mileage then that's unfair. In our situation however we were advised by the salesman to put in 5k miles instead of the 12k we requested as he stated we would never have to pay it unless we got to the end and didn't carry on with a new car again and walked away. Being our first PCP and given the salesman was actually a friend we took the advice in good faith. It wasn't until later that I realised this was nonsense. I contacted VW in order to try and increase our mileage and was told I wouldn't be able to. With the VT of this car we are taking a new PCP at 12k miles and also changing our 2nd car for another with 12k miles. In our case there was no intent to cheat the system but bad advice from a VW trained and approved salesman has left us in this position. Yes we should have maybe known better but we also should have received honest and accurate advice.