Like Solymar, I looked at the contract I signed at the beginning of my lease and it mentions 24 months following the minimum hire term. Not sure if this carries any weight, or if Motability can alter the contract retrospectively.
Mine says the same. Whilst I don’t necessarily want to keep our current car 5 years, I might want the added flexibility of the 2 year extension, given that you can change at any time within that period. When our order window opens in a few weeks time I’m going to try (again) to extend by 2 years, citing the contract and challenging their ability to change contracts mid-lease, especially as there has been no communication.
There’s a point of principle here, as some customers go for a car with a high AP and or costly options in the knowledge that they can effectively offset that cost over 5 years. With some APs now more than double what they were for comparable cars just 3 years ago, I suspect that a lot of Motability customers will struggle to raise these high APs every 3 years and that fact seems to be being completely overlooked.
There seems to be a degree of inconsistency and / or discretion being used at the moment, possibly because of the contract situation, but if this new rule is going to be applied rigorously on all new leases then I feel that Motability should make far more effort to alert people to this fact when their order window opens. I’ll be interested to see if they do when our order window opens in a few weeks time.