my lease ends in April I have asked for an extension and I have been refused because of the criteria which I do not know when this criteria came into play i.e. the mileage adoptions on the contract I signed it says you can extend for another 24 months. Can anything legally be done or just leave? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you
They are all over the place with this. The policy changed last year (I think) and extensions are now only permitted if the car is very low mileage (from memory, less than 20,000 miles in 3 years) or has adaptations. However, there are two potential ways around this;
1) Many forum members have found that when they have logged in to their online Motability account, there is an option to extend the lease without the need to talk to anyone. Quite a few people have successfully managed to extend their leases this way, even though they don’t meet the criteria. So try this first.
2) If, like me, this option was not available to you, call Motability and refer to the wording in the contract that you agreed with Motability when the lease commenced. They initially refused to extend beyond 3 months (which they will do for anyone) but I pointed out that the terms of a lease agreement cannot be varied mid-lease unilaterally without the customer first being notified (which we weren’t) and by giving the customer the option to terminate the lease without penalty. Unsurprisingly, when I pointed this out they changed their position and authorised a lease extension.
As it happens, I didn’t need the extension in the end, but there was a point of principle for me, as they should have phased this change in with all new leases and not applied it to existing leases. Bizarrely, the lease on our new car (delivered August last year) still has the same wording with the option to extend by 24 months, so either the policy has reverted back or incompetence still rules!
