Renault (Car) Finance – A Cautionary Tale

[Deleted User]

A couple of years ago we bought a prereg (petrol) car and part financed it as a Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) with Renault Finance (RCI Financial Service Ltd) in the UK. This meant either a balloon payment would be due at the end of the term or we would hand the car back in settlement. As we intended to keep it we paid the monthly due and saved an extra amount that would pay off the outstanding balance at the end of term.

Later a change of lifestyle meant we would be travelling a lot of motorway miles and a diesel car would suit us better. We logged onto our RCI account and it gave us a settlement in our favour of £1200. We looked and found exactly the same car, different colour, as a diesel prereg. So we bought it from an online branch of Renault Retail Ltd (RRL) who mostly sold commercial vans.

RRL as agent to RCI had logged onto their system to give us a settlement of £800 saying the original settlement applied only to a part ex in showroom condition. RRL had never seen the part ex which as it happened was in very good condition had helped themselves to £400 and for a vehicle that was going to auction.

We wanted the car so we used BACS to first send a test payment of £1 which they received and then sent the rest. Bit stressful all this money exchanging hands especially when we had not met anybody in person as everything is happening online. It all went well and we collected our new car and that we thought was the end of that or so we thought.

About a month and a bit later we get an SMS text from RCI asking us to contact them which we did. We are now speaking with a call centre and the women has an unmistakeable Indian accent. She tells us that because the direct debit was cancelled we were now in arrears by one month with the second payment due soon. She went on to say if we missed this we would as per agreement, be black listed, our credit score will drop and we may be taken to court. One of us taking the call is very upset and looses it. So I take over and try to calm things down.

I explained that RRL had acted as our agent and collected from us the settlement amount, which as per agreement was due immediately as a payment to RCI. Having said this I asked what the actual problem was. She explained that RRL had not paid them so I asked why she hadn't spoken with them. She said privacy laws prevented RCI from doing this. I said this was quite bizarre, your agent owes you money but you can't contact them with a view to collecting it. She insisted that this was the case and asked us to contact RRL on the behalf of RCI and get them to remit the settlement owed. We did and it turned out the difficulty was put down to an administrative error by RRL.

Toward the end of the month we received a letter from RCI confirming that we had paid in full all sums due under the agreement. On the same day another letter arrived from RCI dated two weeks earlier saying we owed them a month's payment. Renault customers are not it seems indemnified by RCI for failure of their agents to pay them. If it happens as it did in our case then the customer is still liable for the monies held back by the retailer. We were harassed and distressed by RCI and an email to them complaining about their behaviour was ignored.

Did RCI cancel the months payment as a favour out of the goodness of their heart for us chasing money owed. What was really going on?

BrassicWoman

[Deleted User] wrote:

We are now speaking with a call centre and the women has an unmistakeable Indian accent.

Yeah. Just no.