I was surprised that Motability are now asking for contributions for hand controls, too.
But, just as a small point of balance: I’ve been using Motability for nearly 25 years, and ‘back in the good old days’ (as so many want us to believe), I had to pay full price for my simple push-pull hand controls. £500 was about average.
Not only that, Motability required that you had these removed before handing the car back. That was a massive pain. In my instance I had to get a friend to book a day off work, add him to insurance, drive to Essex (from Surrey) and then had to co-ordinate getting my car to the dealer for hand over.
If Motability go back to that, then I’ll be upset. But my current hand controls would now require about £80 contribution. Not great, but a world away from what it used to be.
We also had to pay for hand controls back in the 1990’s. But Motability didn’t have the £2 billion cash reserve back then. Also, they weren’t making a fortune due to the massive increase in used car prices. Whilst I’m all for seeing both sides of the argument, I don’t see Motability as the cuddly charity here to help disabled people, I see them as a profiteering company taking around £9800 from disabled peoples benefits during the term of a lease.