Here to help!
If you have any questions or queries, you can call our team on 01902 939 000 we would be more than happy to help.
FAQs
Car Finance FAQS
We understand the claims process can be challenging, so we have provided answers to the most common customer questions below:
If you bought a car, van, or motorbike with a personal contract plan (PCP) or Hire Purchase (HP) between April 2007 and January 28, 2021, you might be owed compensation.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which oversees the car finance industry, launched a major investigation into hidden, and unfair car finance commissions, as some car dealers were often paid a commission by the finance companies. The higher the interest rate on the finance, the higher the commission the dealer would be paid, leading many buyers to overpay without knowing it. This mis-selling practice, known as ‘discretionary commission arrangements’ is now banned, and means millions of people could be entitled to compensation.
The FCA’s investigation is likely to finish by May 2025 with lenders being given up to December 2025 to respond to claims. This means there will be a delay in finding out if your claim is successful. However, it’s still important to act now and file your claim to avoid missing out.
Yes, you can also claim for any used vehicle where you had finance in place.
Many of the claims will be against the banks or lenders who have agreements with the car dealerships. It is thought that ‘discretionary commission arrangements’ were commonplace and may involve a variety of finance providers including:
- Black Horse Ltd
- BMW Financial Services (GB) Ltd
- CA Auto Finance UK Ltd
- Close Brothers Ltd
- Clydesdale Financial Services Ltd
- FCE Bank PLC
- FirstRand Bank Ltd (London Branch)
- Hyundai Capital UK Ltd
- Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK Ltd
- Moneybarn No. 1 Ltd
- MotoNovo
- NIIB Group Ltd
- PSA Finance UK Ltd
- RCI Financial Services Ltd
- Santander Consumer (UK) PLC
- Startline Motor Finance Ltd
- Toyota Financial Services (UK) PLC
- Vauxhall Finance PLC
- Volkswagen Financial Services (UK) Ltd
If your finance provider is not listed above, don’t worry, we’ll check your finance agreement to establish whether if you have been affected.
Typically, you could make a claim if you took out a car finance agreement between April 2007 and January 28, 2021. It’s important to act now and file your claim to avoid missing out on compensation.
You have a maximum of six years from the ‘event’ being complained about, or three years from when you become aware that you had a cause to complain. The ‘event’ being complained of, is the ‘discretionary commission arrangement’, i.e. the start of the finance agreement. So, you would have six years from the start of your agreement.
If your agreement is older than this, then you can still claim providing you only became aware of the right to complain within the last three years. As there has been widespread media coverage of this type of mis-selling since January 2024, it could be reasonably argued that you should have been aware from this time, and therefore you would have up to three years in which to bring your claim.
You can claim if the finance agreement is already paid off, or if it’s still active. We can check any car finance agreement you had from April 2007 to 28th January 2021, which is when the discretionary commission model was abolished.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to make a claim if you took out a loan as it’s a different type of finance. A loan is provided directly by your bank for purchasing a car, unlike PCP (Personal Contract Purchase) or HP (Hire Purchase) agreements, which are secured against the car and typically arranged through the dealership, involving different terms regarding ownership and repayment.
No, lenders cannot blacklist you, and it will not adversely affect your credit rating.
Yes, you can claim for any separate finance agreements you may have had at any time between 2007-2021.
Yes, you can still make a claim. This is a typical situation for many people, so don’t worry, our law firm partner will still be able to act on your behalf to pursue compensation.
Yes, you can still submit your claim to us as we can locate finance agreements using vehicle and dealership details. Our claim specialists will investigate and identify any finance agreements you may have had.
Once it’s been identified that you may be eligible to claim, we will transfer you to our law firm partner who will submit the claim to your lender(s).
Ordinarily, your lender(s) would have 8 weeks in which to respond. However, due to an ongoing investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) which is scheduled to complete in May 2025, lenders have been allowed to pause responses until December 2025
However, it’s important to act now and file your claim to avoid missing out on potential compensation. Lenders will be chased as soon as possible, and our law firm partner will keep you informed of any progress.
Our checking service is free of charge. If we find you may be eligible to make a claim, we will refer you to one of our law firm partners who will liaise with your lender(s) on your behalf. If your claim is successful, the law firm will charge a fee of between 18% to 36% (inc VAT) of the amount recovered, plus an admin fee of up to £36.00 (inc VAT) per claim. The law firm may charge a fee if you cancel after the 14-day cooling off period. Their fees and cancellation policy will be included in the information we will send to you, and you can find further information in our Key Facts and Terms & Conditions.
You can shop around or make a claim yourself for free and, if not successful, you can refer your claim to the Financial Ombudsman Service. However, we believe our service is good value. We will refer all potential claims to one of our law firm partners who will manage the claims process on a no-win, no-fee basis. This will include the preparation of claims documentation, proactively liaising with lenders on your behalf and, if necessary, liaising with the Financial Ombudsman Service.
The compensation you could potentially receive depends on several factors including:
– Loan amount: Typically, the greater the loan, the more you will be owed.
– Agreement duration: Longer repayment periods often mean you’ll be owed more.
– Discrepancy in Interest rates: Compensation is influenced by the variance between the quoted rate and the rate you should have paid.
Marriage Tax Allowance FAQS
Please Note: We are no longer accepting any new claims; However, we are continuing to resolve any existing claims for our customers.
How much you receive will depend on how much you and your partner earn. The maximum amount available for the tax year 2022/2023 is £252. However, you can also backdate your claim by up to a maximum of four tax years, meaning you could get up to £1,242!
Yes, married couples or those in a civil partnership are entitled to marriage tax allowance. But you must be one or the other; just ‘‘living together’ doesn’t count.
Yes, for marriage tax to work one of you needs to be unemployed or earning under £12,570 and the other partner needs to be earning between £12,571 and £50,269
No, one of you needs to be employed and paying tax in order to get the allowance as it effectively reduces the amount of tax you pay, so you need to be paying some tax to be entitled to a reduction.
Yes you can claim marriage tax allowance if you have savings providing the interest earned on them does not take you over the taxable income threshold of £12,570.
Tax Refund FAQs
Please Note: We are no longer accepting any new claims; However, we are continuing to resolve any existing claims for our customers.
You may be able to reclaim tax paid on a PPI refund going back up to 5 years. Whether you can claim depends on your personal circumstances.
One of the main reasons why it is essential to get your claim in as quickly as possible is due to the amount of time needed to make a claim. It’s important because of the tax years involved.
Where your tax claim is successful, we will be entitled to a fee of 40% plus VAT plus an administration charge of £15.00 plus VAT.
When you received a PPI refund you would have received interest on your payment. Your bank will have deducted tax from the interest element of the payment and you received the balance as redress. However, if the total interest you’ve earned from your savings and the PPI statutory interest is less than your personal savings allowance, you can claim all PPI tax paid during the last 5 tax years.
The marriage tax allowance lets you transfer £1,260 of your personal allowance (the amount you can earn tax free each tax year) to your spouse or civil partner if they earn more than you.
Recent studies reveal that it’s estimated that over 2.4 million couples are missing out on this cash by not claiming what is rightfully theirs. If you are married or in a civil partnership you could easily qualify.
If your claim is successful, it will lower the higher earner’s tax bill for the tax year, but you can also backdate your claim for a further four years.
A Civil partnership in the United Kingdom is a form of civil union between couples open to both same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples. It was introduced via the Civil Partnership Act 2004 by the Labour government. The Act initially permitted only same-sex couples to form civil partnerships, but the law was expanded to include opposite-sex couples in 2019.
Plevin PPI Claims FAQs
PPI was often sold to people when they took out credit such as loans, credit cards, store cards, overdrafts, & mortgages. It was sold to cover the monthly repayments in the event that the individual was unable to pay. This included things such as redundancy or illness & injury which meant they were unable to work. However, PPI was often mis-sold, and many people weren’t even aware it had been added to their credit accounts.
Mrs Susan Plevin was sold a PPI policy in 2006 to cover her secured loan from Paragon Personal Finance Ltd. She was not informed that over 71% of the PPI premium payment was commission paid to the them by the insurance company providing the cover. After discovering this Susan took her Claim to Court alleging that her relationship with Paragon was unfair due to the non-disclosure of the commission.
The Supreme Court ruled that failure by Paragon to disclose the commissions payable out of the PPI premium payment created an unfair relationship, between Susan Plevin and the Lender resulting in her being awarded compensation.
Plevin claims are also known and described as secret commission or unfair relationship claims.
You can claim back PPI if the commission the lender received for the sale of the PPI was not disclosed to you. This is known as a Plevin PPI claim and the result is a return of the PPI premiums plus interest. This was because your lender did not disclose that they were being paid a secret commission for selling the PPI policy to you.
The deadline for PPI claims ended 29 August 2019, however, this deadline is NOT relevant to a Plevin claim. These claims are based on the high levels of commission alone.
Whilst a Plevin PPI Claim is made in respect of the sale of a PPI policy, the basis of a Plevin claim is different to a Mis-sold PPI Claim. A Plevin PPI Claim does not consider whether the PPI policy was suitable, instead it looks at whether the Lender failed to disclose high-level commissions earned from the PPI premiums paid by consumers when selling PPI, If they did not this would make the relationship unfair.
Although the PPI deadline has passed, Plevin PPI Claims are not subject to a deadline. This is because the Claim is based on a different area of law, namely the Consumer Credit Act 1974.
Partial Refund – The commission that lenders received for selling PPI policies was on average 67%. Where customers made a previous claim for PPI, typically lenders only reimbursed customers over the first 50% commission threshold (i.e. in this example, 17% of the average commission of 67%). Therefore only partially compensating customers, when they should have fully compensated customers. If you received only a partial refund, you could be entitled to a further refund.
Rejected Claims – If you previously submitted a claim prior to the PPI deadline and it was rejected as not mis-sold, it can now be re-assessed enabling a new claim to be re-submitted if you meet the Plevin criteria.
Missed Claims: You may have thought that you were not sold or mis-sold PPI and have not submitted a claim. If this is the case, claims can now be submitted on the basis that you were not aware of the PPI or the high level of sales commission being paid.
To find out if you have paid PPI simply tell us the lenders you may have had borrowings with and we’ll take care of the rest for you. We will send a Subject Access Request to your bank which will disclose if you have ever PPI with your account.
Your Claim Matters will identify if you have paid PPI with the lender(s) that you tell us about. If you have, and if we believe you have a valid PPI claim(s) using the Plevin ruling, your claim will be referred to one of our panel of law firms who will legally challenge your lender to retrieve any monies owed to you and will issue legal proceedings against the lender if necessary.
When we refer you to a law firm you will be asked to sign their documentation and we will ask for your consent to pass on any details to the law firm or any other third parties involved in processing your claim. The law firm will then be able to answer any further questions you may ask about the claims process.
The law firm will represent you on a NO WIN NO FEE basis* and will charge you between 18% (inc VAT) to 36% (inc VAT) of the amount recovered, plus an admin fee of up to £15 per claim if your claim is successful. The law firm will explain their fees in the documentation they share with you. If you cancel after the 14 day cooling off period they may charge a cancellation fee.
Your claim may be settled out of Court, but if your case does go to Court, your law firm will support you through the process and represent you at any Court hearing.
ADDRESS DETAILS
Your Claim Matters
84 Salop Street
Wolverhampton WV3 0SR
NAVIGATION