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Returning car after redundancy
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mazzer13
Forumite 7 posts
Hi there, I was made redundant last week and my redundancy letter states I have to return the company car etc on of before the 20th of this month. The options they have given me is to take it to the head office (5 hours away) or a satellite office (3 hours drive away) Both are remote locations and there is no offer to help me get back home. The anxiety of going to any of the offices is weighing on my mind as I have no one who can pick me up from either location and I don’t want to see any of my old colleagues. It’s it common that that one would have to return the car after they made me redundant spot should they be making provisions to retrieve the car? There is a ,local manager who I can drop the laptop and work phone off with but delivering the car back is just too much given the distance and no assistance to get back. I only git two weeks notice. Any help greatly appreciated!
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Replies
and we will never, ever return.
and we will never, ever return.
Years ago I remember going in from Braintree's A120 to Loughton to be told within the hour of getting into work, we were being made redundant on a Monday morning, always kind of wondered why they didn't write to everyone recorded on the Saturday morning but that would have been to easy. After all they needed the parking fobs from us.
Darren
Eat properly
Sleep properly
Save some money
What fleet Dpt would say is that if you were within a 3 hour drive you were required to return the car and only those people who were more than 3 hours away would get a one-way hire car back (I lived within 1 hour of head office). Anyhow I got lucky, when I was made redundant and was having my meeting with HR + my line manager I asked if they would kindly organise me one-way hire back home and my manager said yes because it was the company making me redundant). Fleet dpt then cross-charged the money against his annual budget.
Another colleague who was in a different sales team and who also was within 1 hour of head office had to arrange their own hire car and organised the hire company to collect him from head office and drive back to their depot and then drove home and the car was collected by the local car hire depot from his drive (think he paid £35).
Might be worth you speaking to your line manager or HR or fleet Dept (otherwise your going to need to organise a hire car / look into trains / other options.
Have you tried talking to someone appropriate at the company to explain the problem and see if they'll compromise?
I'm wondering if the letter that you cite might be in a standard form that doesn't consider unusual siuations. It's possible that the letter just gives the standard requirement, and that the company might be willing to be a bit more reasonable in your case.
The only time I've ever been involved in a situation like this was many years ago, when I was a very junior member of staff in a branch office. My manager took me out to another town, from where I had to drive my former colleague's car back to the office. (The car in question was a Morris Marina, which'll give you some idea of the date!) Maybe something of this sort could be arranged for you?
If you have to see a solicitor to discuss the redundancy in general (e.g., for advice on a compromise agreement), it'd be worth raising this issue with them then.