Audi Finance Agreement error

PaulyH

Not sure if this is the right forum:

In June 2014 my wife and I took out a 4 year lease on a new Audi. We had just moved to the country and required a second, more economical car. We needed to get the payments under £300pcm in order for us to afford it. We managed to achieve an agreement where our payments were under £300.

15 months later all is going well. Love the car and despite having a baby a month ago payments are not an issue. One nagging issue is that we did 20,000 miles last year. This is 2,000 more than the 18,000 miles I had agreed with Audi. It looks like we also on track to do 20,000 in the second year too. So I dug out the paper work to calculate how much extra we would need to find at the end of the lease. Whilst scanning through the paper work I found that we need to pay 7.2p per mile over the agreement, except that agreement was not for the 18,000 I had asked for, but for 12,000.

Clearly Audi made a mistake on the contract and I made an even bigger mistake by not spotting it. However, this will leave me with a bill in the region of £2,400 in just under 3 years time. Do I have a leg to stand on? I've signed the contract but missed the millage as I was probably more interested in making sure the payments were what had agreed.

12,000 miles doesn't even cover the commute to work. I'm thinking that when they were trying to drive the monthly figures under £300 for us they played with the millage to get it to fit and I just missed it.

It could be that the extra we need to pay is equivalent to the extra depreciation on the vehicle but that's almost beside the point. We would not have taken out the agreement on the car if payments were over £300. By my calculations we now need to find an extra £70 a month between now and the end of the agreement, which, with my wife currently on maternity pay for a year, is going to be very difficult.

Are there any avenues we can pursue?

Pixie5740

No there aren't any avenues for you to explore. You signed a contract with a mileage limit of 12,000 per year so you can't wriggle out of that and you haven't been mis-sold.

What are you going to do at the end of the 4 years? If you keep the car it won't make any difference how many miles you've done. If you are planning on trading the car in for another "economical" car at £300 a month then you'll need to take the hit.

PaulyH

We don't know what we're going to do. That's why we took a flexible agreement out. We have a few choices.

The car is great. 15 months in, and not a single issue with it. Whether that stays the same or not then so be it. If it does we will probably keep it. However, as the car is a new model we had to go off estimates of it's worth at the end of the lease as there is no history against the range. That might work in our favour. It may not.

Double_V

I believe mileage limit only comes into effect if you hand the car back and walk away.

If you keep the car or trade the car to a newer model it doesn't matter.

I could be wrong. But that's what I think.

WellKnownSid

If it's a proper lease where you hand back the car at the end - ask them to re-calculate based upon the new anticipated mileage.

Mileages do change, it's not an uncommon request.

It's possible that the additional figure will work out less than the 7.2p quoted in the paperwork.

mrsammyp

As above, and if it is not a true lease (PCH) but instead you have the option to return, exchange or buy the vehicle (aka PCP), you can either keep the car and refinance the bubble payment (personal loan or again via Audi) or take it to a couple of dealers and get them to make you an offer to buy it in on its own or as part of a part-exchange deal.

We did this recently and just had to pay the dealer the difference between their cash offer and the bubble payment, this was still a lot less than the excess mileage charge.