Finance deposit issue

taxigaz

With all the interest in car finance at the moment we found out that my daughters finance company is one of the ones involved, but while discussing this she told me that the salesman also talked her out of using a 1k deposit to buy her car, he told her that it wouldn't make much difference to what she was paying. She didn't realise at the time 5 years ago that this was wrong but now I have explained it to her and showed her the calculations she now realises it was wrong.
I have done the sums and it works out she has paid £254 more in interest payments just on the deposit issue alone. The question I have is do we include this complaint with the discretionary interest claim to the finance company or do we need to do a separate complaint to the car dealer? Is there any chance of success?

retiredbanker1

No as she could have asked you at the time for advice - as an adult she would have been able to come to her own conclusion.
Indeed she could have overpaid the £1000 to the finance company at any time.

taxigaz

retiredbanker1 said:

No as she could have asked you at the time for advice - as an adult she would have been able to come to her own conclusion.
Indeed she could have overpaid the £1000 to the finance company at any time.

Hmm, I respectfully disagree, going off your logic  no one is entitled to claim for any mis selling that they have experienced, because they are adults and they can come to their own conclusions? Many adults in my daughters situation would have listened to the advice of the salesman believing that the salesman is in a position of trust (sic) and what he is telling them is true. I could not advise her because I was not there. My daughter will be complaining about this but as in the question, we just would like to know who to complain to initially, the finance company or the car dealer, if it is the finance company we will include it in the discretionary interest complaint, if it is the dealership we will open a separate complaint.

retiredbanker1

Can your daughter prove any of this?
If the dealer says this did not happen what then?
Without proof this is going nowhere.

Fully appreciate you not agreeing with my point of view - that is the point of this forum - to exchange views.

taxigaz

retiredbanker1 said:

Can your daughter prove any of this?
If the dealer says this did not happen what then?
Without proof this is going nowhere.

Fully appreciate you not agreeing with my point of view - that is the point of this forum - to exchange views.

Again, my question is...do we complain to the finance company or the dealership? That is all I need to know, then we can present our claim to the right avenue.

DrEskimo

You second question was 'Is there any chance of success?' and I would suggest there is very little.

What proportion of the total amount of interest charged on the finance does £254 make up? It would have probably resulted in around £10-20/month difference in terms of monthly payments, and this is presumably what the salesman was referring to. It's all down to interpretation of 'wouldn't make much difference'. 

Now if they said 'it wouldn't make any difference', then you might have a stronger case...

Nasqueron

taxigaz said:

retiredbanker1 said:

No as she could have asked you at the time for advice - as an adult she would have been able to come to her own conclusion.
Indeed she could have overpaid the £1000 to the finance company at any time.

Hmm, I respectfully disagree, going off your logic  no one is entitled to claim for any mis selling that they have experienced, because they are adults and they can come to their own conclusions? Many adults in my daughters situation would have listened to the advice of the salesman believing that the salesman is in a position of trust (sic) and what he is telling them is true. I could not advise her because I was not there. My daughter will be complaining about this but as in the question, we just would like to know who to complain to initially, the finance company or the car dealer, if it is the finance company we will include it in the discretionary interest complaint, if it is the dealership we will open a separate complaint.

There are 2 different things here - something like the discretionary commission or PPI - there was miss-selling as it was out of the customer's control - they didn't know a salesman was inflating the APR as they didn't see the offer from the finance company for example. There you can complain because regardless of age or experience, you had no control over it and few people would risk multiple hard searches to see if other providers would give a lower rate.

In this situation, it's a he said/she said thing which you are basing on hearsay from what your daughter said happened. It is reasonable to expect an adult to know that paying less deposit means the finance deal would be larger so they would pay more interest overall and the terms and conditions would cover overpayments.

You can complain to the seller but a complaint based solely on a conversation in the dealership that isn't documented is doomed to failure - the salesman / dealer could just deny it happened and that's the end of it.

If you know for sure the lender used the DCA then you could complain but it's all on hold until September anyway and you can expect some firms who didn't use this model to automatically reject the complaints regardless