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In reply to: Motability question? We can answer it.
I’ve got a private number plate that I want to put onto my next vehicle that I ordered yesterday.I was told by the dealer that the new vehicle has to have the original number on it and I have to retain my private plate and change it myself.Now when I had the vehicle I’ve got now it never came with a registration number on it.How do I find out what number I have to put on and how do I do this.Also when do I start doing all this as my dealer is about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.
As an alternative, I let the dealership assign a normal registration number and I get the private plate assigned at a later date (usually once the reg is no longer the ‘current’ one
). I have adopted this approach with both private and Motability cars and it’s worked really well for me When I want to get the private plate assigned I drive to Halfords (with the required documentation) and when parked in their car park I unscrew the original plates and hand them to the technician so that they can drill the holes in the same places on the private plates.. I then pop the new plates on before I leave. The advantage of this approach is that whilst it’s more work up front, it makes it very easy when I’m about to sell the car (if private) or hand it back (Motability). I simply put the private reg on retention and the DVLA automatically re-assign the original reg number, which I already have the original plates for, so it’s a 5 minute job to swap the plates over. Job done. Repeat process with next car!Good call too. Although in my case I simply tell the new dealer to apply my personal number plate and they do the rest. I know there’s an option on Motability website to remove personal number plate, but never used it.
Sent from a mobile device.
Apologies for briefness and spelling mistakes.Motability Skoda Enyaq SportLine 85x April 2024 (unhappy customer - Ombudsman pending)
Motability Mazda CX-60 July 2023 (unhappy customer - early termination on mechanical grounds)
Motability VW Touran Family Pack May 2019 (happy customer)In reply to: Motability question? We can answer it.
I’ve got a private number plate that I want to put onto my next vehicle that I ordered yesterday.I was told by the dealer that the new vehicle has to have the original number on it and I have to retain my private plate and change it myself.Now when I had the vehicle I’ve got now it never came with a registration number on it.How do I find out what number I have to put on and how do I do this.Also when do I start doing all this as my dealer is about as much use as a chocolate fire guard.
As an alternative, I let the dealership assign a normal registration number and I get the private plate assigned at a later date (usually once the reg is no longer the ‘current’ one 😂). I have adopted this approach with both private and Motability cars and it’s worked really well for me
When I want to get the private plate assigned I drive to Halfords (with the required documentation) and when parked in their car park I unscrew the original plates and hand them to the technician so that they can drill the holes in the same places on the private plates.. I then pop the new plates on before I leave.
The advantage of this approach is that whilst it’s more work up front, it makes it very easy when I’m about to sell the car (if private) or hand it back (Motability). I simply put the private reg on retention and the DVLA automatically re-assign the original reg number, which I already have the original plates for, so it’s a 5 minute job to swap the plates over. Job done. Repeat process with next car!
Yes @Glos-Guy it was in the current format, they had a 15 plate on a 2 month old car as it maybe had their initials or something. The site seems to be dependant on the format of the number to work, anything other than 2 letters – 2 numbers- 3 letters appears to throw it. I found it interesting that it stated “tax paid in full by Motability” rather than “disability exempt”, it suggests a deeper infiltration of the data than just registered as disability vehicle.
Thanks. As my private plates are the older style (less digits) I’m hopefully OK of if I assign one of them to a Motability car.
As for the “tax paid in full by Motability” comment, that is all the evidence that we need to expose the fact that this site is designed to be incendiary and cause hatred against Motability customers, in spite of its faux claims to the contrary. Standard DVLA checks would not use such wording.
Out of curiosity I checked a car in the disabled car park in town today that had a private plate, it came back as 99% Motability – Tax paid in full by Motability. The plate was in the normal format though so that’s probably why it worked.
Out of interest, when you say it was in the normal format, do you mean that it was a current style reg (two letters, followed by two numbers and then three letters)? If so, I doubt that any database would recognise those as private plates. in the true sense of the word, as they are really just normal current style plates that people have paid a premium to get their initials etc.
The old style suffix and prefix plates are now at least 24 years old, so when you see them on modern cars they are obviously proper private plates, as the style of reg is out of sync with the age of the car. I wonder, has anyone with a personalised plate of the suffix or prefix style currently on a Motability car run a check and found that it flags as likely to be Motability?
Most likely someone with a beef who works in the motor trade I suspect. As it is clearly designed to cause hostility towards Motability and their customers, I wonder if someone at Motability Operations might be able to flag it to DVLA? Maybe if they determine thaing t the information is being accessed for illegitimate purposes, they might be able to block access or at least identify where it has originated from. If it’s a rogue employee of a dealership or manufacturer, their employer might have a view on it!
To All and in response to GG’s earlier 2 posts this morning.
The site is focusing on vehicles tax class, particulary those that are exempt, but thats as accurate as it gets, in that it can’t define it can’t define Motability vehicles from privately owned vehicles with exemption and possibly emergency vehicles that are also exempt and therefore has an accuracy of 97-98% it’s a Motability vehicle.
IMO the data is coming from either, the Anonymised data set, possibly rogue employee who has copied the CD set the information is available onto USB drive OR somebody with insider knowledge from Motability or the DVLA and have copied the information for their own needs.
The website claims to access data through the DVLA public data API’s, but without doubt is attained through block information requests, rather than singular requests i.e carrying out a vehicle check yourself.
The websites Privacy policy, is minimal in comparison, but cleverly laid out, as well, as stating the site does not use cookies, collect, store, or process any personal data YET hosts 2 tracking sites by JsDelivr, thus agains’t GDPR.
Similarly the websites Anti-Harassment and Anti-Hate Policy, is similarly minimal and cleverly put together.
The website does not provide any form of “contact you” information, thus agains’t UK GDPR rules.
We can therefore say the website is not legit (which we gathered) and needs to be taken down. The question is how!
1) If to Motability, its better directed to the CEO of Operations or CEO of the Foundation:
a) Individually write using a similar template.
b) Group (Forum) letter, but only if @wmcforum is willing
2) Similar to above, but directed to Work and Pensions Minister Baroness Sherlock
3) Directly to the ICO, but this would have to be more specific
In reply to: Here we go again.
To be honest I surprised why Motability vehicle are not all fitted with trackers and or Motability on the no plates, there has to be a way of stopping all this abuse, as previously with all this publicity genuine disabled people will suffer.
Both suggestions would be highly problematic.
The cost of putting trackers on all vehicles would be phenomenal (easily over £100m) and that cost would have to be paid for by scheme members through higher APs. On top of that, Motability would need to employ hundreds more staff to monitor them (again, extra cost, passed on to scheme members) and what would they be looking for? Short of movements that clearly indicate a taxi, they would have no way of knowing what the car was being used for, who was in the car and whether or not the disabled person would benefit.
As for marking the car in some way to designate it as a Motability car, that would be the tipping point for many legitimate users to leave the scheme (my wife included). Aside from being a generally bad idea, it would create no end of problems. You only have to glance at some of the comments online from the ignorant Neanderthals who weigh in every time the scheme is mentioned to know that marked cars would become targets, as would the people in them. I’d suggest that there would be targeted vandalism (especially against the better cars like BMWs) from the green eyed mob who would love the car but not the disability that goes with it. Someone with an i4 posted the other day that they now felt uncomfortable enough as it was parking in a blue badge bay (incidentally, you can always tell if an i4 is a Motability car as it will be the 35 model – 90% of private buyers get the 40 and 50 models 😉). Also, Motability would be inundated with disgruntled workmates ‘reporting’ able bodied colleagues who turn up at work every day in a Motability car. These people would have no idea that if the benefit recipient can’t work and their partner is the breadwinner, then the partner using the car for commuting every day is perfectly within the scheme rules.
For the above reasons, and others, neither idea makes much sense. I’d argue that if Motability removed cars from 5,300 people last year due to abuse, then they are already doing a great job in that regard. By far the bigger problem is people getting the qualifying entitlement who shouldn’t, and last weeks announcement is the first step in addressing that, although I’m surprised that they didn’t tighten up the mobility criteria of PIP as well as daily living. The ‘ability to follow the route of a familiar journey without assistance’ question remains an obvious area that many will exploit and is difficult to disprove, but that’s a government issue and nothing to do with Motability.
In reply to: I ordered a car that was not as I was expecting
Every car ive had on motorbility since 2001, i test drive before order and really test drive on collection day,which to me is far more important due to that being the car i will have for 3years.Surpsies me that people test drive then order ,then look round it on collection day but dontt re test drive it.
I’m staggered that any dealership allows this. As @Injector says, in order for you to be able to drive the car it has to be registered. From that point, and certainly once you drive it, it becomes a pre-registered used car which the dealership could make a loss on. The only exception would be if they allow you to run it on trade plates but, in that scenario, they would only let you drive it for a few miles, which would tell you nothing. Whenever we have picked up a new car (private and Motability), we look over the car in detail before accepting it. Once we have said that we are happy with it, the sales person contacts their department that registers cars and it is immediately registered. If, for some reason, we rejected the car, they wouldn’t do this and they would sell it to someone else as a new car. Are you saying that you ‘test drive’ the car before you input your PIN?
In reply to: Personal Plates…
The process that you have been through will automatically amend Motability’s records and the insurers. I phoned both just to be sure, but they said don’t worry it happens automatically. After 5 days the online account still showed the private plate (which I had removed, but the process is the same) so I called Motability and the lady I spoke to sent a chaser to the relevant department and it changed later that day.
I was also concerned about being stopped by the Police, but apparently their systems communicate with the DVLA and will know that a change is in progress. Besides, normal police cars tend not to have ANPR, it’s just the cars they use for motorways / armed response etc, so your chances of it ‘pinging’ are very remote and even then they would only stop you if they had nothing to do, which is almost never these days!
In reply to: Dealership not registering private plate
Yes, my dealer hinted at similar when I placed my XC40 order back in December too.
When I signed up for Mercedes CLA this week the salesman wasn’t too sure but that was because he was new to the job and1st day of doing Motability. I phoned Motability in front of him to check and they said no problem at all and also (I didn’t know this) that so long as you have a plate on a retention certificate you no longer have to ask Motability whether you are allowed to do this as they’ve removed that age old restriction from the scheme. Any customer can now put any plate they want on their car so long as it’s not rude. 😁😜 As above, easy to do yourself but yet another thumbs down to Volvo for playing silly beggars.
My Mercedes Salesman checked with his manager and he confirmed no problem for Mercedes to register a new Motability car on a private plate. 👍
In reply to: Problems with Europcar
I got nowhere with europcar, couldn’t get through to the garage that delivered the original car and they haven’t called me back. I managed to get hold of the garage at the airport but they had nothing available, when I called and they knew it was a Motability customer the girl on the phone had to go and as their Motability expert what was available!! So that was a swift no. I called Motability and direct line said it was down to europcar and the terms and conditions don’t guarantee a suitable car! I’m sure if I was a private customer and they gave me a car that was faulty and assault me they would be falling over themselves to help and a suitable replacement car would have bean found within the day.
It Grey and in the northwest, so a different car but a 21 plate with 60000 miles
Hello,
New to the forum. I just wanted a place to muse the potential of purchasing my motability car.
It is the first time I have considered this, but I wanted to an impartial view to weigh up the pros and cons and to check if I had missed anything.I have had my current car, a citroen c4 grand spacetourer (picasso) for 5 years now. It is an 18 plate car. It has done around 16k miles total in that time (covid having a slight impact). No “out of the ordinary” issues in that time. It is the low spec option of the car with no bells and whistles. Nor does it have any accessibility specific modifications.
One reason I am potentially considering a purchase is the flexibility of this car. Entry is not too low or too high (easy to get into). Where as many current options are either SUVs with high cills or smaller cars. But, that is only one consideration. Not a deal breaker. But, a car similar to this style (MPVs) are no longer really available on motability.
Anyway, that is the context, here are the numbers.
Car: Citroen C4 Grand Spacetourer (Picasso)
18 plate – 16k miles – no issues
Motability Purchase offer price: £13,200 (I don’t think they are flexible on their offer)
Additional info: one or two dents, one insurance claim (prang, my fault).Now, I have factored in the following costs for a further 3 year private ownership:
Annual Insurance: £984
Annual Service: £300
Annual Misc Repairs: $25
MOT: £54
Tax: £180
Known One-Off costs: Tyres x4 – £450
Additional One off costs buffer £400Estimated Cost Over 3 years of ownership (approx): £5100
Including purchase cost: $18300
Approx Motability payment over 3 years: £8640Total Cost: £10,060
Car value after 3 years (pessimistic) £6000
Total cost (if car is sold) £4060.
Now, I appreciate that is a rough calculation and guesses. If I have missed anything, or you think the numbers need adjusting, let me know.
This is obviously set against the Motability option of a new car:
Down payment: £500 (max)
3 years of Motability payment: £8640Total: £9140
Additional factors, I know the current car history no issues thus far and no sign of issues. It offers good level of accessibility and flexible options (size etc) that is no longer really offered.
Motability benefits: Peace of mind and all inclusive solution.
I appreciate any thoughts on the above.
Kind Regards
Ben
In reply to: 54% increase in fuel can you run your car
I wonder if a lot of people will leave Motability when their lease expires and do as millions of others do and run a cheap second hand car? Even with zero AP, a Motability car costs £10k over 3 years or £16k over 5 years, which is a huge outlay for anyone, but especially if money is tight. I know plenty of people whose expenditure on private cars is way less than that and they don’t even contemplate buying or leasing brand new cars because they simply can’t afford them. I guess it will boil down to where having a brand new car ranks in peoples priority order of where they spend their money. For millions, especially in the current climate, it’s right at the bottom of the list, if at all.
Most of us couldn’t be without a car, but do we really need a brand new one, especially if we don’t need adaptations? I’ve run several quite old private cars over the years and by comparison to what we pay for our Motability car they were a fraction of the cost to run. It’s nice having brand new cars, but it comes at a big cost, even through Motability.
In reply to: Private Plate
Loads of posts on this topic @DumfiesDik. Simply use the forum search engine located on the right habd side under the off topic badge. Entering “Private plates on motability cars will get you this. Click link.
https://forum.whichmobilitycar.co.uk/forums/search/private+plate+on+their+Motability+car/
Joss
Current car: Peugeot 308 GT Premium 1.2 Pure tech Petrol.
Coming soon...BMW X2 sDrive 20i M Sport 5dr Step Auto In November 2025Topic: Private Plate
Has anyone stuck a private plate on their Motability car?
Was it a simple process and how much did that cost??
Skoda Enyaq Race Blue
RPI vs CPI inflation the gap only gets bigger and bigger 1/4 by 1/4 and the tiny rise the pip allowance will get in 2021 is not keeping up with Ap’s also and there’s not much Mb can do about that at all..
Yes, this is mainly thanks to the decision of then Chancellor, Gideon Osborne, back in the ’emergency budget’ of 2010 to change benefit increases from RPI to CPI. In the very early years there wasn’t much difference between the two (CPI and RPI), but as time has gone on, the difference between the two has widened markedly and will continue to widen year on year given RPI is much closer to ‘real’ inflation. So, when you take Motability’s more or less set formula when working out the advance payments: Vehicle plus other costs over 3 years including real inflation – (minus) allowance received over 3 years including CPI rises + (plus) expected return on sale of vehicle = Advance Payment. The advance payment is the only variable which Motability can use to price in real inflation. Thus, there will always upwards pressure on the advance payments so long as CPI trails behind real inflation, compounded year on year. I sometimes think Motability get a lot of stick when the real villain of the piece was the then Chancellor changing benefit/allowance rises from RPi to CPI over 10 years ago. Its effects are now beginning to bite very hard indeed.
BigDave – You forgot two critical components in your calculation of AP’s and those are the net profit that Motability Operations makes on each and every lease, which is substantial (it was exposed in the review of them a few years ago and discussed at length on here) and the cost to provide their gold plated salaries and benefits packages to their staff, which are completely out of kilter with any other commercial organisation that I know. They still provide a defined benefit pension scheme and several other perks and benefits that the vast and overwhelming majority of organisations were forced to ditch many years ago. I know someone who works for them, is not in a senior position yet has just received a bonus of several thousand pounds. ALL of this is paid for by disabled customers through their surrendered PIP and AP’s. I think it’s morally wrong. They should be a ‘not for profit’ organisation, with pay and benefits that are comparable with charities. That way all AP’s could probably be at least £1k lower.
Glos Guy,
Also knowing someone who works for Motability Operations, I would not say their package was excessive or ‘gold plated’. It is more in line with other ‘government contractor’ private companies of a similar size and turnover (which indirectly all taxpayers pay for). Thus, staff receive the remuneration package commensurate with working for such a large organisation If benefits such as private health insurance were not offered, staff (particularly senior staff) would leave very quickly to go to other companies that do offer it within the overall package.
Having recently taken early retirement from my ‘second career’ day job, I can say that defined benefit pensions are not the holy grail’ that they are often portrayed as. Albeit I had enough service and seniority to be on a ‘final salary’ basis, most now are based on a ‘career average’ salary base as operated by Motability Operations.
Interestingly you compared Motability Operations to charities – have you seen some charity’s senior execs salary and remuneration packages? Now they do make one’s eyes water.
Yes, Mike Betts (the former CEO of Motability Operations) was employed on a very very generous remuneration package which I doubt the new CEO is in receipt of after the spotlight was shone during the commons select committee inquiry. However, I do not recall the committee rebuking Motability for the t&c’s of lower grade employees.
Their contact centre advisors for example, are currently recruited on a starter salary of £26k, rising to £30k pa, with remuneration ‘perks’ (phi etc) worth roughly £2k pa, which isn’t an excessive salary in this day and age. Particularly as they are given resolution authority and management far in excess of most other contact centre employees.
Infact most quality graduates looking at career opportunities would not get out of bed for less than £30k to £35k, bearing in mind nowadays they have RPI based student loans and tuition fee debt to pay back as well as live a little. More senior and technical staff accordingly demand a much higher remuneration package commensurate with their knowledge and experience. A view put forward more than once when I was recently interviewing candidates to fill my own role once I had retired (I wish I had been a bit like Oliver Twist and had previously asked for more)!
It boils down to the simple fact that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Motability Operations have to pay a remuneration package at least as good as other companies, else they will lose the calibre of staff they wish to recruit and retain. If they don’t, the quality and customer service will suffer accordingly.
Mutability Operations us a Private company abd, by law, has to bake a profit. it buys the cars, it doesn’t lease them, it buts them tgen leases them to Motability customers. They have to have a large profit to buy these xars in the first place and are subject to what they can sell them for at the end of the lease and if yiu have seen the mess some cone vack in, they have to cover those losses. As a public company, they pay their staff the going rate. It’s still within the pay tgat public companies and trades Unions pay their Cheif Executives and yiu shoukd look at the actual costs of local government senior officers. one thing I do think Motability the Charity shoukd do, is put the contract out to tender as it’s a closed contract
I’m afraid that you are factually incorrect in a number of respects. No private company has to make a profit ‘by law’. If that was the case, many thousands of companies in the U.K. would be operating illegally! Profits are, of course, desirable and required by owners (usually shareholders) but as Motability Operations derives all its income from state funded benefits, which are voluntarily surrender by the disabled people in receipt of them, I maintain that it is morally wrong that their business model results in such a big profit per lease.
Secondly, they don’t need ‘profit’ to buy cars, they need cash flow, which comes from the incoming PIP benefits and AP’s. They also need an operating surplus to aid buying but keep in mind that profit is what’s left after ALL of the things that you describe have been taken into account. They obviously need to cover all their costs, but they don’t need to be building up millions of profit that is over and above all their costs, yet that is what they do.
The next incorrect statement is that they pay the going rate for a public company. Firstly, Motability Operations is not a Public Company. I am also not talking about the CEO. I’m talking about ALL of their staff. Their pay levels, even for the most junior staff, are generous and their benefits package is another level altogether compared to what 90% plus of private sector companies provide nowadays. How many private companies still provide defined benefit pension schemes plus private health insurance plus bonuses etc etc etc? Very few. And, I repeat, that this is all funded by benefits surrendered by disabled people, very few of whom will enjoy such benefits themselves.
Don’t get me wrong. Motability is a great organisation and provides a great service for disabled people who, in most cases, would not be able to fund a new car. However, it is a fact that AP’s would be considerably lower if Motability Operations caught up with the times and reduced their remuneration package to something more ‘normal’. I don’t see why they need a gold plated package for every member of staff and I strongly feel that, given how they are funded, it is immoral that they do so. I do agree with your last comment though, that the Motability contract should not be a monopoly and should be put out to tender. No other company entering the market would be offering all their staff anything like the pay and benefits that Motability Operations have built up over the years and it should therefore follow that AP’s would drop. Any tender process would need to be robust though, ensuring that a key objective was that the customers should get a better deal than they do presently. It wouldn’t be difficult.
In reply to: Brace yourself – incoming.
I am all for people getting a decent wage and decent conditions but to get private healthcare a final salary pension which is non contributory seems ridiculous. My daughter is a school teacher and pays 8% of her salary towards a pension, so even local council “gold plated” pension isn’t as good as Motability’s.
Anyone can go onto their site and look under vacancies to see the conditions being offered, they don’t advertise the wages which seems strange to me.
The only person who got all his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
Anything i post over three lines long please assume it is an article lol.
Search Results for 'private plate on their Motability car'
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