Lease car charges on return of vehicle after voluntary redundancy

KendalBoardGamer

Re-posting here as originally posted in Motoring category and was told this is more of an employment issue.  Let me know if it's still in the wrong place please!  :-)

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Hi all,

I recently left my job where I had a lease car through my employer. 

I am having to paying an early termination fee for exiting the lease 18 months into a 3 year contract, the fee is just over £3000 (frustrating but expected). 

I also have to pay the lease charges from my last payment through to the date the car was returned (also as expected). 

However, I've also been told that I need to pay ~£700 lease charges for the first month's rental 18 months ago, which I can now see from looking at my payslips was never charged to my salary.  The car was provided on the 6th of the month and my salary is paid on the last day of the month, so there was more than enough time to charge the rental for that month to my salary.

It seems unreasonable to me for the lease company to present a bill 18 months after the fact, without any warning or notification that they would do this.  I suspect I'm just going to have to pay this on top of all the other charges and fees, but I thought I'd sound out you lovely folks first.

Do the legal principles of laches and/or estoppel apply here, as I was not aware of or expecting these charges?

Thanks in advance,
Andrew.

Alderbank

KendalBoardGamer said:

It seems unreasonable to me for the lease company to present a bill 18 months after the fact...

Which country are you in?

If in England & Wales they have 6 years to present a bill.

Is your complaint that your former employer should have paid you that ~£700? If so then that is indeed an employment issue and you need to take it up with your former employer. You also would have 6 years to pursue that debt.

Hoenir

KendalBoardGamer said:

The car was provided on the 6th of the month and my salary is paid on the last day of the month, so there was more than enough time to charge the rental for that month to my salary.

Payroll departments generally don't work in the fashion you are assuming.  If you wish to dispute matters then I'd suggest obtaining a timeline from your employer. The most critical date will be by when payroll must receive data for it to be proccessed in that month's run. This is often surprisingly early. As payroll departments have all manner of matters to deal with.