Rip off finance companies

OUT OF HOURS BULLY'S TRUCKSTOP BAR (INTERACTIVE)
1

Hello Guys, It is I, El Rivits would be champion of the underdog!!!.Much is being made in the media of late and quite rightly so about these financial vultures operating under the guise of payday lenders who as we all know take in the most vulnerable and poorest people in society and bleed them dry with interest rates of up to 5000% APR not uncommon. These companies are nothing short of vultures and there is no place for them in a civilised society like we like to think the United Kingdom is.

However there are so called respectable finance companies out there who are operating in a similar money grabbing way by hammering customers with outrageous fees for the slightest thing and it is time these disgusting practices come to an end and believe me guys I am speaking from experience.

Most of the car stock in the United Kingdom that is either new, nearly new or still premium used generally speaking are financed through various finance agreements whether be outright purchase HP or this relatively new PCP lease plan my own car being no exception. I recently bought a 3 month old pre-registered Ford Mondeo from huge Car Supermarket Retailer, Motorpoint of Glasgow. The car is a high end Titanium X so cost a fair whack of cash. Well like most working class people my car is on the never never and I agreed a finance package with Motorpoint which saw me provided with Finance through a company I have never dealt with before . I must add Motorpoint have actually been good to deal with. The finance company on the other hand are a shower of vultures. My first payment had a totally unjustifiable ’ Documentation Fee’ of £195!!! yes thats right £195 for providing me with a few sheets of A4 paper. Not content with the £5k or so interest they are making on the agreement they shaft me for £195 for a few bits of paper. Then of course at the end of the agreement they are demanding an ‘option to purchase fee’ of £195 so basically you pay a car for in my case 5yrs then they shaft you for even more because you are hardly going to pay thousands for a car then say ’ oh just keep it’ a total disgusting rip off.

It gets better, when I bought the car, the supplier arranged at my cost, the transfer of my personalised number plate for a very reasonable £100 which I was more than happy to pay as it would have cost me as much to do it myself. Well today I receive a letter from The ‘Finance Company’ demanding a fee of £25 for the ‘costs associated with my new number plate’ so lets get this right, these vultures are looking for £25 to push a few keys on a computer keyboard. Greedy rip of rats is what they are. I have had other finance companies who when I transferred my number plate sent me a polite letter confirming the DVLA had updated them with my car details and certainly no demand for £25!!!. I am absolutely in shock at the way this company is blatantly ripping off its customers so I would urge any of you guys looking to spend some of your very hard earned cash on a new car to give this company a wide berth. Other companies I have used have certainly treat their customers better ( certainly in my experience they do ). However finance companies are always at this shoddy practice of hitting the consumer with shocking documentation fees , option to purchase fees and any other fees they can dream up as well as the interest they charge us. I am looking to petition the government on this matter of rip off fees and have already e-mailed the OFT and the FCA on this matter so I would appreciate as much support as possible from you guys as at the end of the day we are all being shafted by these companies.

It would appear that while so much attention is going on these shocking pay day lenders the other so called more respectable companies are constantly introducing charges for everything and getting away with it because the eye is of the ball. I think it is high time for a change to these practices don’t you guys■■?

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Scottie

2

This company is part of close bothers a large finance group in London

Many years ago I dealt with them as I could not get cheap money anywhere and there charges were always high although I have to say if they did not give me finance I would not have been able to build up my business

They should be treated as lenders of last resort

3

I take ya point but these fee’s must have been in the small print somewhere?
We all have a choice when it comes to financing what ever it is we want.
If you don’t like the these “fee’s”, choose some one else who charges less for the service or nothing at all (rare!).

4

Never buy depreciating assets on finance. You can buy a car - a perfectly serviceable, reasonably good car - for well under a grand. I pay cash for all my motors. If you must go down the finance route, go and see your bank and arrange a personal loan instead of taking out dedicated finance. I appreciate none of this advice is much good to you now …

5

The whole finance industry is a rip off, there is only one answer for working class people, don’t take finance out.

Only have one thing on finance, your home, and pay that off as soon as possible by increasing the payments as much as you can, and don’t borrow ever against it to fund cars holidays weddings furniture anybloodything.

Thing is, the finance owners live in places like Sunningdale in mansions, their bleached painted and heavily made up trophy wives run round in Range Rovers to beauty parlours hairdressers an exclusive gym and designer clothes shops between their equestrian actvities…and those who pay into finance pay for them to do it all for ever.

No working person should ever have finance on an item that depreciates rapidly, like a car, or instantly, like a holiday.

We do not have to buy into their scam, we do not need new cars, designer clothes and silly electronic toys like the latest phones…dear Lord it makes me cringe when middle aged working blokes…who really should know better…show off their latest bloody fancy phone, when the last bugger was only a year old but obsolete already…do middle aged lorry drivers really need trinkets like this to make their lives complete?

Oh and while i’m on a rant whats with every girl and their dog now entitled to a celebrity wedding, why do young people put themselves and their parents in hock because they must have a big flash wedding with all the bollox costing anything up to £50k and more if they’re stupid enough.

At one time a bloody stag night or hen party was a session down the boozer, with possibly their mates clubbing togther for a stripper.
Now these ordinary working people go to bloody exotic countries for a stag/hen do and then another bloody £5k ■■■■■■ up the wall with an equally outrageous honeymoon.

Whats going on, they’re not footballers on £3m a year, they’re ordinary working people who have been duped into a lifetime of keeping the aforementioned trophy wives in the latest Range Rover and Calvin Klein.

Why voluntarily sign up to keeping these bloody sharks in the manner they and their leech families think is their divine right.

Don’t do it, don’t get on their treadmill.

I’ll let you into a secret, liberation true liberation is not that new shiny car to join all the other shiny cloned cars on the estate, its not the latest electronic crap, its not holidays crammed like sardines with other Brits-on-finance on the charter flight to some hot island.

Liberation is the not paying interest, and true liberation is the day you pay that last mortage payment…from that moment forward THEY do not have you by the bollox.

6

^^ Yes indeed.

7

Juddian:
The whole finance industry is a rip off, there is only one answer for working class people, don’t take finance out.

Only have one thing on finance, your home, and pay that off as soon as possible by increasing the payments as much as you can, and don’t borrow ever against it to fund cars holidays weddings furniture anybloodything.

Thing is, the finance owners live in places like Sunningdale in mansions, their bleached painted and heavily made up trophy wives run round in Range Rovers to beauty parlours hairdressers an exclusive gym and designer clothes shops between their equestrian actvities…and those who pay into finance pay for them to do it all for ever.

No working person should ever have finance on an item that depreciates rapidly, like a car, or instantly, like a holiday.

We do not have to buy into their scam, we do not need new cars, designer clothes and silly electronic toys like the latest phones…dear Lord it makes me cringe when middle aged working blokes…who really should know better…show off their latest bloody fancy phone, when the last bugger was only a year old but obsolete already…do middle aged lorry drivers really need trinkets like this to make their lives complete?

Oh and while i’m on a rant whats with every girl and their dog now entitled to a celebrity wedding, why do young people put themselves and their parents in hock because they must have a big flash wedding with all the bollox costing anything up to £50k and more if they’re stupid enough.

At one time a bloody stag night or hen party was a session down the boozer, with possibly their mates clubbing togther for a stripper.
Now these ordinary working people go to bloody exotic countries for a stag/hen do and then another bloody £5k ■■■■■■ up the wall with an equally outrageous honeymoon.

Whats going on, they’re not footballers on £3m a year, they’re ordinary working people who have been duped into a lifetime of keeping the aforementioned trophy wives in the latest Range Rover and Calvin Klein.

Why voluntarily sign up to keeping these bloody sharks in the manner they and their leech families think is their divine right.

Don’t do it, don’t get on their treadmill.

I’ll let you into a secret, liberation true liberation is not that new shiny car to join all the other shiny cloned cars on the estate, its not the latest electronic crap, its not holidays crammed like sardines with other Brits-on-finance on the charter flight to some hot island.

Liberation is the not paying interest, and true liberation is the day you pay that last mortage payment…from that moment forward THEY do not have you by the bollox.

Agree with every word you wrote there

8

Documentation and option to buy fees have existed for some years now, it goes back to the days when interest rates dropped and it was a way of screwing more money out of the punter.

It is similar to insurance companies charging an arm and a leg for alterations to policies.

9

What Juddian says is really good advice,though it should be common sense.I have a penny phone bought it about 5 years ago,initial top up was £10.the other penny was for the phone.

10

The last time i bought a new car, I hammered the price right down. The salesman did all the paperwork, Then got the finance forms out (He makes more from the finance than the sale of the car). You should have seen his face when i said i’m paying cash. I thought he was going to burst out crying. :laughing:

11

I could afford (on finance) to get myself a decent car (£7/8k) and my wife or the family car one for about £12/13k, but why stick myself with payments of around £500 per month for decent cars so she can go shopping, take my daughter to nursery 3 days a week and to her mum’s once a week and for me to go to and from work twice maybe three times a week?

I’ve never had HP for a car and I hope never to do it, even when our car went bang we still brought for cash, just got the best we could afford. I got a bank loan for my first car which was £2600, every other car we’ve brought cash, if we had the money to buy outright a £10k car we would and to be fair I should think we will in a few years, just at the minute would rather get a new fence and windows for the house.

As exciting as it is to get a nice new car, you should always read the small print, the cheeky ■■■■■ always stick a few hidden extras in. You won’t get them to take out the charges, but at least you’re make an ‘informed’ decision.

12

So do I take it then if anyone such as myself buys a car on finance it is quite acceptable to be ripped off right, left & centre?

13

rivits:
So do I take it then if anyone such as myself buys a car on finance it is quite acceptable to be ripped off right, left & centre?

Close Finance are expensive, I have some finance with them on my truck because as a new start it was all but impossible to get finance elsewhere. However, I wasn’t “ripped off” because all of the terms and conditions were laid out before I agreed to the contract, and so it would have been with your deal.

It’s a given that if you buy a car and arrange finance through the dealer then it will be more expensive than borrowing it from your bank, especially if you have a good credit rating.

14

Juddian:
The whole finance industry is a rip off, there is only one answer for working class people, don’t take finance out.

Only have one thing on finance, your home, and pay that off as soon as possible by increasing the payments as much as you can, and don’t borrow ever against it to fund cars holidays weddings furniture anybloodything.

Thing is, the finance owners live in places like Sunningdale in mansions, their bleached painted and heavily made up trophy wives run round in Range Rovers to beauty parlours hairdressers an exclusive gym and designer clothes shops between their equestrian actvities…and those who pay into finance pay for them to do it all for ever.

No working person should ever have finance on an item that depreciates rapidly, like a car, or instantly, like a holiday.

We do not have to buy into their scam, we do not need new cars, designer clothes and silly electronic toys like the latest phones…dear Lord it makes me cringe when middle aged working blokes…who really should know better…show off their latest bloody fancy phone, when the last bugger was only a year old but obsolete already…do middle aged lorry drivers really need trinkets like this to make their lives complete?

Oh and while i’m on a rant whats with every girl and their dog now entitled to a celebrity wedding, why do young people put themselves and their parents in hock because they must have a big flash wedding with all the bollox costing anything up to £50k and more if they’re stupid enough.

At one time a bloody stag night or hen party was a session down the boozer, with possibly their mates clubbing togther for a stripper.
Now these ordinary working people go to bloody exotic countries for a stag/hen do and then another bloody £5k ■■■■■■ up the wall with an equally outrageous honeymoon.

Whats going on, they’re not footballers on £3m a year, they’re ordinary working people who have been duped into a lifetime of keeping the aforementioned trophy wives in the latest Range Rover and Calvin Klein.

Why voluntarily sign up to keeping these bloody sharks in the manner they and their leech families think is their divine right.

Don’t do it, don’t get on their treadmill.

I’ll let you into a secret, liberation true liberation is not that new shiny car to join all the other shiny cloned cars on the estate, its not the latest electronic crap, its not holidays crammed like sardines with other Brits-on-finance on the charter flight to some hot island.

Liberation is the not paying interest, and true liberation is the day you pay that last mortage payment…from that moment forward THEY do not have you by the bollox.

Abso-bloody-lutely!

If there was more of this then there’d be less grief in the world!

15

rivits:
So do I take it then if anyone such as myself buys a car on finance it is quite acceptable to be ripped off right, left & centre?

Unfortunately YES
Im guessing you must’ve weighed up the options before you signed on the dotted line.
So regrettably your stuck with the concequences of your actions once you signed
Caveat emptor …

16

Some real good stuff on this thread. Rhythm Thief - Totally agree with your comments about used cars. Genuine bargains are always out there if you have the time - and patience - to trawl through the tired old crap to get to them. I recently paid a modest grand for my latest motor - fully loaded, full history, all repair/service receipts, faultless condition in and out, 12 YEARS OLD, 73,000mls. Cant fault it. I can also vividly remember "splashing out" just over 3 grand on a Merc that ate its own head before I even got it home!

alamcculloch - Love your phone ethos! I paid £30 s/h for my Nokia PAYG mobile. I`ve had it for years (3 or 4 replacement covers so far) and it does everything I could ever reasonably want it to.

Juddian - Wonderful writing, mate - more, please! Your reference to 50k weddings reminded me of an article I read the other day about one of little, wizened Bernie Ecclestones detestable, plastic daughters, who effortlessly racked up a bill for her wedding day in excess of £13M! As Im sure you`re aware, Messi, Ronaldo, and now of course our own celebrity granny-shagger, mr Rooney, all now enjoy contracted salaries of over £15M annually.

Rivits - havent forgotten that its your thread, mate! I fully understand your frustration and indignation regarding these money extorting oxygen thieves, but I too believe that the only sure-fire way to eradicate them as a species is to change our collective attitude to this “must have” consumerist brainwashing that so many have succumbed to. As long as people are signing on the dotted, they will only ever thrive and proliferate.

17

rivits:
I am looking to petition the government on this matter of rip off fees and have already e-mailed the OFT and the FCA on this matter so I would appreciate as much support as possible from you guys as at the end of the day we are all being shafted by these companies.

If i was you i would not rely on email, i would be sending a letter but i would do some research first. I would look for some advice on CAG (Consumer Advice Group) forums, they’re into all that stuff. You may have a case for “Unfair Terms In Consumer Contracts”. £195 for some documents does sound excessive.

18

TBH Mike it was the £25 demand for changing my reg no , I really feel like wiping my bottom with their letter & sending it back to them. The deal involving my plate transfer was nothing to do with them.

19

rivits:
TBH Mike it was the £25 demand for changing my reg no , I really feel like wiping my bottom with their letter & sending it back to them. The deal involving my plate transfer was nothing to do with them.

From what you’ve said, it looks like the £25 was the straw that broke the camels back. I 'd imagine they could justify the 25 nicker on paperwork change, due to registration (they’d have to update their records?). I’d be more concerned at paying £195 for documents? If it cost £25 to make new ones, how come they where £195 in the first place?

20

Juddian:
The whole finance industry is a rip off, there is only one answer for working class people, don’t take finance out.

Only have one thing on finance, your home, and pay that off as soon as possible by increasing the payments as much as you can, and don’t borrow ever against it to fund cars holidays weddings furniture anybloodything.

Thing is, the finance owners live in places like Sunningdale in mansions, their bleached painted and heavily made up trophy wives run round in Range Rovers to beauty parlours hairdressers an exclusive gym and designer clothes shops between their equestrian actvities…and those who pay into finance pay for them to do it all for ever.

No working person should ever have finance on an item that depreciates rapidly, like a car, or instantly, like a holiday.

We do not have to buy into their scam, we do not need new cars, designer clothes and silly electronic toys like the latest phones…dear Lord it makes me cringe when middle aged working blokes…who really should know better…show off their latest bloody fancy phone, when the last bugger was only a year old but obsolete already…do middle aged lorry drivers really need trinkets like this to make their lives complete?

Oh and while i’m on a rant whats with every girl and their dog now entitled to a celebrity wedding, why do young people put themselves and their parents in hock because they must have a big flash wedding with all the bollox costing anything up to £50k and more if they’re stupid enough.

At one time a bloody stag night or hen party was a session down the boozer, with possibly their mates clubbing togther for a stripper.
Now these ordinary working people go to bloody exotic countries for a stag/hen do and then another bloody £5k ■■■■■■ up the wall with an equally outrageous honeymoon.

Whats going on, they’re not footballers on £3m a year, they’re ordinary working people who have been duped into a lifetime of keeping the aforementioned trophy wives in the latest Range Rover and Calvin Klein.

Why voluntarily sign up to keeping these bloody sharks in the manner they and their leech families think is their divine right.

Don’t do it, don’t get on their treadmill.

I’ll let you into a secret, liberation true liberation is not that new shiny car to join all the other shiny cloned cars on the estate, its not the latest electronic crap, its not holidays crammed like sardines with other Brits-on-finance on the charter flight to some hot island.

Liberation is the not paying interest, and true liberation is the day you pay that last mortage payment…from that moment forward THEY do not have you by the bollox.

I’m in the same Club as you, every thing is paid for, we’ve saved like mad for the last ten years & are now reaping the rewards.

Yesterday I paid for a second hand motor home with my Debit Card £17,000 & not a penny in interest (admittedly I’m not getting any interest on it any more) but if I’d gone down the finance route, it would have cost about 3 grand more !

Vultures is one of the right terms for these ‘Parasites’.

The trick is to save like mad for a few years, don’t go on exotic holidays, buy second hand or third hand vehicles (never ever buy brand new off the forecourt) over pay your mortgage (don’t rent & pay a Parasite’s mortgage) if you have to rent try to go Council or Housing Association, (although you probably need to be an Immigrant, Disabled or a Single Teenage Mum on benefits to get a look in)

I had a few loans up to when I was in my late 30’s, went through a divorce, remarried, then the penny dropped, after I finished paying for my children, the saving started big time.