UPDATE ON NEW LEASE EXTENSION POLICY
I had to call Motability this morning about an unrelated issue and the person I spoke to was extremely helpful and informative. I mentioned that we might be forced to leave the scheme at renewal due to the poor choice of larger vehicles and Motability’s obsession with EVs and PHEVs. I’ve updated on that bit of the discussion on the quarter 1 thread, but the operator said “of course, you have the option to extend the lease”. I replied that I wasn’t keen on lease extensions, as they were a very poor deal financially for the customer (sacrificing the same level of benefits for a 3-5 year old car) but that at least by extending for two years we could order at any time within that window.
At this point, the operator said that they needed to inform me that the policy had changed and the lease extension now would be restricted to 6 months. They would consider exceptions to this on a case by case basis, but these exceptions would mostly be where there are adaptations to the car and possibly (but less certain) very low mileage. The cost of the AP or level of options added wasn’t mentioned as a factor.
So it is true, and those who order a car with a high AP and /or add a lot of optional extras may wish to be aware that thinking that they can ‘depreciate’ that outlay over 5 years may not be able to do so. Of course, there’s nothing stopping people from making a case on that basis, but the automatic right to extend for 2 years seems to be going. Interesting as I’m sure I read that @POPS said that he’d just extended by 2 years?
