Apparently motab have banned this from happening now according to the salesman but not sure if he was fibbing or not!
It’s true that Motability don’t like dealers doing it, but all decent ones will. It makes not a penny difference to the amount that the dealer earns from the car. As my BMW dealer said to me when the AP dropped just £150 the quarter after I ordered “that £150 is better in your pocket than Motability’s” (I hadn’t even asked them to do it as it was such a small amount, so I was very impressed).
It’s less than 5 minutes on the computer for the salesperson and doesn’t affect the actual order (some lazy sods will say that they will have to cancel the order and re-order and it will cause a delay to you receiving the car – this is completely untrue. The actual vehicle order is between the dealer and the manufacturer and is unaffected. They don’t touch that. All they do is cancel and re enter at the lower AP on the Motability portal).