We hear so many stories its hard to get to the truth but what I’ve read in the past is Motability don’t benefit from our extra donations? Take my current car as an example, VW Tiguan that only has one option of IQ Lights I paid for at £425. The car when I’m done with it will be handed back to MB who in turn will send it to an auction dealer in most cases. My understanding is that MB will be looking at a price suitable for the car for its age and mileage in this case VW Tiguan in R-Line trim. They will not say to their buyers “it’s a Tiguan R-Line with optional IQ Light”, they will pass it on simply as a Tiguan R-Line model with no mentions of any options though of course when a dealer buys the car from MB and sales it will have the car plastered with banners in there showroom high lighting all the options the car has and why its worth the extra £’s they will be asking for. My guess is that MB don’t even know that my car has the option of the IQ Lights in it unless they scrutinise the invoice but would have no interest in doing so and its the dealer who buy and sale the car on who benefit however, again I’m guessing a bit, all the bidders for the car will know what options are in the car if there worth their weight so would have bidders prepared to go over the market price for the car so in turn MB will benefit in that way but have no control over the cars final value. Just my thinking but yes it would be nice if there was a possible way to filter a bit of that extra cash back to the individual customer but would be too much bother for MB who are quite happy I’m sure with the way things are and would of course say that everyone benefits.
I’m sorry but that’s nonsense. Motability sell in auction to the trade. 90% of trade buyers can recognise upgraded and optional parts from half a mile. They look in numerous vehicles every single week and it’ll take one hell of a lot of persuasion to convince me otherwise. We all know that these options will make the car more desirable when selling to the next owner, which usually means that the competition for these cars will be higher and, with it being an auction, that means the limit for bids will be slightly increased. For example (and these prices are completely fabricated!!) Motability offer 2 Enyaqs, both Sportline Plus, one with the Advance package on without. The Skoda buyers all flock to the Enyaq knowing it’s a solid car and will sit well at their forecourts. This price is £10,000. However the Advance Pack is going to put the sales price up by £1,500 so the limit for bids will be £10,750. Alternatively, there are a bunch of cars where the base model are virtually unsalable. Nobody wants one, they all want the next model up or packs added. Therefore the most the buyer will bid would be £8,000 in the hope that someone else will outbid them and it’s not sat on their forecourt OR they choose not to bid unless it’s an absolute gift. However, the version with the packs added are highly desirable, in fact the options chosen by Motability’s customer was exactly the same as most private purchasers but with a few extras on top. The price for that has risen to £11,000 because the buyer knows full well that the sales team will have people interested as soon as it lands on the forecourt, if not before. Now tell me there’s no commercial gain for Motability.
Is that not what I said ? The buyer at an auction would recognise the extra value of the options but Motability will not take that value on board when selling the car but as I said the car will attract a higher price because of the options so yes MB benefit.
Going back to to the OP original question of we the customers and being a beneficiary of the option we pay for is simply can’t happen because how would MB know in advance how much those options are worth when its in an auction.