Whilst I agree with a lot of what is being said in this thread, most notably the fact that the pay and remuneration of ALL staff at Motability Operations (which we are paying for) is out of line with the market, I do not agree with the suggestion that dealers should be paid more in order to supply Motability customers.
Dealers have supplied cars to Motability customers on current terms without too many problems for decades. Yes, they make less money out of a sale to a Motability customer than the average private punter (most of whom are poor negotiators) but, as has been pointed out, they don’t just get the handling fee. Motability orders count as sales towards dealership, franchise and manufacturer incentives as well.
Whilst I fear that the severe cull in choice of vehicles on the Motability scheme isn’t solely down to the chip shortage, most of it is and this is a short term problem. The same with long lead times for Motability orders. This is a current short term issue for ALL leasing companies. Whilst it will take well into 2022 before this is resolved (I don’t see every car magically returning on 1st Jan), we will eventually get back to a situation where Motability customers will be able to get their cars in the same time frame as other customers, including private customers. In fact, we got our car (no longer on the scheme) earlier this year in just under 4 months from a dealer who had private customers who had waited longer than that.
If Motability start to pay dealers more than the current terms you can guarantee two things. Firstly, when the chip shortage is resolved (which it will be) they will be unable to reverse out of this arrangement without major problems, if at all. If they do, service to Motability customers will become worse than they are at present, and that won’t be a short term issue it will become permanent. Secondly, if the improved terms remain, you can be sure that the gilt edged pay and remuneration of all Motability Operations staff won’t be cut to offset the increased costs (they legally couldn’t do so without making the staff redundant and re-employing under new contracts). The end result of improved terms for dealers would therefore be hugely increased costs to the scheme and in order to maintain profit (which, whatever we might think about it, they will endeavour to do) guess who would pay for that? Us! Current AP’s would start to look like bargains.
So, whilst I am as critical of the scheme as anyone, writing to comedians or suggesting that scheme costs are increased aren’t two ideas that are going to resolve this issue IMHO and will replace temporary problems with permanent ones.