Stupid question. If you reject the new terms and force Motability to take back the car, surely that can only result in you leaving the scheme? Im struggling to find a legitimate way that the change to the contract was unacceptable but agreeing to a new one with the same terms you’ve just rejected is ok.
It’s not a stupid question, but I’ll try to explain. As @kezo says, a contract cannot be varied mid term unless both parties agree to it. By changing the contract without consulting us and giving us the option to agree or disagree with it, Motability Operations are themselves breaching the contract, not us. Therefore you wouldn’t be leaving the scheme. Motability would effectively be terminating your lease.
What they should do is to impose the 3 year max rule on all new leases, but this isn’t the approach that they took when they first attempted to remove the ability to extend (in a cack handed, hit and miss manner) a year or so ago. Our request for a 2 year extension was refused, until I pointed out the basic aspects of contract law to them, when they backed down.
All of our current contracts state that we have the ability to extend beyond 3 years and we have done nothing to break that contract. A new contract would be under different rules (3 years max) and therefore you would have to agree to those terms to stay in the scheme. So we would have agreed to the terms of both leases at the times that we entered into them. I hope that makes sense?
