Car finance and final payments

londonboi1985

Good evening all you lovley people and happy new year to you all.

Looking for a bit of advice please.

I have had a mini cooper on finance for 3 years now and have got a statement dated 4th January 2016. IT shows a outstanding balance of £152.58 which is due on the 29th January which is fine.

I have just caled up the finance company to make sure that is my last payment to which the girl said no i have another payment of £246 for a insurance cover to pay.

Now i can remember agreeing to take a insurance cover thingy out when i signed the agreement but for the life of me i cannot find the origional paper work (put it somewhere safe 3 years ago lol)

Now problem and question. I am happy to pay my total balance of £398.58 tomorrow when they open again not a problem however this is the long part so please bare with me and tell me what you think.

basically 6 months after i got the car it started to go wrong. the steering was getting really really heavy and pulling to the left alot i took it toa garage he lifted it and showed me the steering rack was going on the car. So i took it back to the dealer who gave me warranty and he basicaly fobbed me off until the warranty expired telling me it did not cover that etc. I called the warranty company up the told me it would have covered it but because it had expired 3 days before i called (silly on my part i now know) there was nothing they could do.
I then called up the finance company to explain i had this insurance thing i paid for that covered the car breaking down ( i can remember it covered that part and also if the car was in a accident and a write of this insurance i had woudl clear the outstanding finance i remember the person telling me that on the phone) They were ok to help me out etc until they found out thsi dealer who sold me the car had closed up shop and moved to somewhere else. (I later found out thsi dealer had done what he done to me with the warranty to loads of other people in the past as a quick google found out so he was well known for the tricks and selling cars like that)
Once the finance company found this out they basically told me to go away and were not willing to help me. Resulting in me finaclly restricted at the time due to helping family out each month with money i had no option but to cut my losses i sorned the car when road tax ran out have for the last 2 years i have paying £60 a month to rent a lock up garage to keep the car of the road so i can keep paying my monthly finance payments as i could not afford to have the car repaired and could not afford to pay the finance off in one go in a final payment settlement.

Now my questions are this.

1. where do i technacally stand with this insurance thing they sold me for £246.00 if it did not cover what they said it did ie parts and write off etc why did they not help me at the time i was in a long dispute with the finance company over this they sent a "mechanic" out who when arrived did not have a clue how to plug his tool in to the on board computer to find faults i had to show him that as soon as it started to rain he jumped in his van and left he told the finance company he was here for about an hour which was a lie was 15 minutes if that when i told the company this they just fobbed me off said there mechannic was good enough etc etc and he wrote allot of rubbish in his report because stuff he said he checked he did not my mother and me were there the whole time again we got told it was rubbish and we were lien.

2. why is this insurance not showing on my paperwork statement it is only showing a balance of £152.58

3. if i pay the car off tomorrow can i then get someoen to come and collect it as there are people wanting it to repair it in there own time or do i need to wait a few days after paying it before i can sell it.

sorry for the long post wanted to cover as much as possible to help you answer me rather than bits

thank you once again for your help.

Ectophile

My thought would be.

1. Raise a formal complaint. Ask for the cost of the insurance back.
2. If they don't respond to your satisfaction, look at raising a complaint with the financial services ombudsman. Read up on the process on the FCO web site.

rich13348

It sounds like your insurance thing is GAP (Guarunteed asset protection) insurance. It basically makes up the difference between the market value your insurance pay if the car is written off and the amount you paid for it, or the amount of finance outstanding, whichever is higher.
When I got finance 6 years ago everything was lumped together and paid off monthly. You do sometimes have a balloon payment at the end of the agreement. You really need to find your paperwork and check that.

As for the other stuff, write a formal complaint and send it to head office. You may not get far and unlikely to get compensation but it's worth a go. You may want to check for spelling mistakes before you send your letter though.

Once the finance is paid off they should send you a letter saying it's fully paid etc. But in general terms once the DD has left your account or the card payment is accepted the car is paid off, but it will take a few days/weeks for everything to change on all the systems etc but you may find that people will take your word that the finance is paid.

Also just to be clear, do you want to drive the car, or sell the car. If you want to drive it, tax it online and make sure it's insured.
If you want to sell it and test drive it the same applies.