Finance: Right to withdraw

[Whippy53]

Just to add a "me too". I paid 50% down, 50% on 4 year finance through Audi Finance (actually VW Financial Services).

After a week I rang them up, paid off the balance (plus £3.42 per day) no questions asked.

Assuming you have the cash, for an hour's work you can save a couple of grand.

And me.

[ukgroucho]

And me.

And me.. although mine did NOT go quite that smoothly.

I was in India on business - yeah I know, bad planning, pick up car one day, drive it for a bit an disappear off for 2 weeks on business.

So I call Audi finance (VWFS) and after some struggling (fight thru the call tree, wrong, place, retry, wait on hold yada yada) I manage to get to the right person and sort out the settlement fee.. this is maybe 2 or 3 days after I pick up the car. They really don't care about why you cancel , although for me... the 10k per year thing was not going to work... plus I had teh money in the bank. The settlement fee is basically what I took on finance plus £30 or so. I did the 50% finance which was the minimum... so max downpayment, min finance.

Next I try to pay the balance online... bank cannot do it. I phone 'em. Because it is more than £10k they cannot do it as a single payment because of anti money laundering regs. But the very helpful lady (NatWest) says she will do it as three payments ... 2 x £10k plus the remainder - over three days and that is OK. Fine I am happy with that do it.

I get home after my trip the world is all fine and after a week I get a letter from Audi finance telling me I have not paid the outstanding balance on the finance and if I do not pay within a week or so then, without further communication, they will take steps to "recover my vehicle".

***!?! I check bank statements.. money has gone. I phone NatWest and check the payee references.. they confirm that VWFS received the payments an acknowledged them... ARGH!

So I then spend (over the next 2 or 3 days) an hour or so on hold trying to talk to someone at VWFS... no joy.
I hit their web site and emailed.. no response.
By this stage I am getting a bit .. annoyed, desperate.. I really don't want to have a discussion with a guy who turns up with a car transporter about how he wil be stealing my car if he insists on loading it (and that would NOT have happened).

So I get onto LinkedIn and get the MDs email and send him an email that basically spelled out where I was at and what I was going to do next which involved the national press and a headline about stealing cars ..
To their credit they got back to me the following day with an apology and an explanation .. they were going thru system upgrades on their help-desk and I guess, finance systems so the connection had not been made between the payments I made and my contract. This had resulted in a huge swell of help-desk calls so they were overloaded (hence the delays and they were hiring more help-desk staff).

Bottom line.. they seriously PEE'D me off with the duff letter saying I had not paid.. but when I finally (finally) managed to contact someone they were responsive... and they threw £100 into my bank account to cover the inconvenience and all the calls I has made

[Wuffles]

And me.. although mine did NOT go quite that smoothly.

I was in India on business - yeah I know, bad planning, pick up car one day, drive it for a bit an disappear off for 2 weeks on business.

So I call Audi finance (VWFS) and after some struggling (fight thru the call tree, wrong, place, retry, wait on hold yada yada) I manage to get to the right person and sort out the settlement fee.. this is maybe 2 or 3 days after I pick up the car. They really don't care about why you cancel , although for me... the 10k per year thing was not going to work... plus I had teh money in the bank. The settlement fee is basically what I took on finance plus £30 or so. I did the 50% finance which was the minimum... so max downpayment, min finance.

Next I try to pay the balance online... bank cannot do it. I phone 'em. Because it is more than £10k they cannot do it as a single payment because of anti money laundering regs. But the very helpful lady (NatWest) says she will do it as three payments ... 2 x £10k plus the remainder - over three days and that is OK. Fine I am happy with that do it.

I get home after my trip the world is all fine and after a week I get a letter from Audi finance telling me I have not paid the outstanding balance on the finance and if I do not pay within a week or so then, without further communication, they will take steps to "recover my vehicle".

***!?! I check bank statements.. money has gone. I phone NatWest and check the payee references.. they confirm that VWFS received the payments an acknowledged them... ARGH!

So I then spend (over the next 2 or 3 days) an hour or so on hold trying to talk to someone at VWFS... no joy.
I hit their web site and emailed.. no response.
By this stage I am getting a bit .. annoyed, desperate.. I really don't want to have a discussion with a guy who turns up with a car transporter about how he wil be stealing my car if he insists on loading it (and that would NOT have happened).

So I get onto LinkedIn and get the MDs email and send him an email that basically spelled out where I was at and what I was going to do next which involved the national press and a headline about stealing cars ..
To their credit they got back to me the following day with an apology and an explanation .. they were going thru system upgrades on their help-desk and I guess, finance systems so the connection had not been made between the payments I made and my contract. This had resulted in a huge swell of help-desk calls so they were overloaded (hence the delays and they were hiring more help-desk staff).

Bottom line.. they seriously PEE'D me off with the duff letter saying I had not paid.. but when I finally (finally) managed to contact someone they were responsive... and they threw £100 into my bank account to cover the inconvenience and all the calls I has made

Apart from the India bit, and including the Nat West bit we could have written the same thing. We did get a few more letters which we were told to ignore by the customer service staff, and then an extremely irritating £26,591 default on my Wife's credit history which stopped us from re-mortgaging for a couple of months whilst we found out who put it there and why. Oh, and no apology after that until during another unrelated complaint through the Financial Ombudsman that went horribly wrong at the last minute forced them to give us money and a free service. Audi on the other hand never gave us a thing for the other troubles we had experienced.

[retired99]

Cleared my finance a few days after I picked up the car - no problems at all.

Natwest limit is a bit odd. My bank (Cahoot, part of Santander) had no problem with about £23k.

I told the dealer Business Manager ( rolled out by the salesman to do the finance stuff) that I would be clearing the finance in the next few days, that I was not interested in his overpriced GAP insurance or his overpriced car insurance ( about twice what I pay).

He looked pretty unhappy about all of it, esp the finance bit but didn't say a word. Perhaps there is some impact on the dealer.

[belly buster]

My payment was about £17k and it went through on a faster payment from Halifax straight away.

Maybe Viz magazine was right. I remember they had a spoof advert for NatWest: "The bank that likes to say **** off!"

[ukgroucho]

Wow wuffles sounds like they digged a deeper hole for you and gave you no sign of the sunlight.

I do think that my lack of patience (not unreasonable) and the wonderful facility of linkedin to find the MDs email helped... no doubt that will become a hard thing to do. BUT I did connect with someone who cared about a customer who had spent a boatload of money with audi and he took time to get someone to sort it out. Good for him ( I will not name but the MD of VWFS)

[Wuffles]

Wow wuffles sounds like they digged a deeper hole for you and gave you no sign of the sunlight.

I do think that my lack of patience (not unreasonable) and the wonderful facility of linkedin to find the MDs email helped... no doubt that will become a hard thing to do. BUT I did connect with someone who cared about a customer who had spent a boatload of money with audi and he took time to get someone to sort it out. Good for him ( I will not name but the MD of VWFS)

Unfortunately we did have his email address (alas I think we're talking about different MDs). I'll dig out his response to our very large query at the time. Always good to drag this back up, makes me want to go and brick their head office.

"I am sorry for the circumstances that led you to contact me and in order to be able to respond accordingly I have liaised with the relevant parties.

Having contacted Steve Smith, Head of Business at Bristol Audi, he was also naturally concerned to learn of your comments and spoke to David Nightingill, Service Manager regarding your visits. It is very unfortunate that your vehicle has needed to visit our workshops on several occasions during your ownership.

Whilst we take our reputation for quality very seriously, like any other manufacturer, we cannot guarantee that the many components which go into the complex build of an Audi will never fail. That’s why all new Audis are supplied with a comprehensive three year/60,000 miles warranty.

I was pleased to learn that our Audi Centres were able to repair the mechanical failures of your vehicle under the terms of your warranty and without charge to you. Further to this, I understand, whilst Bristol Audi have not accepted responsibility to the damage of your vehicle’s alloy wheel and bodywork, that remedial work was also completed without charge to you. From my investigation, this has left your vehicle without faults, failures or cosmetic concerns.

Additionally I have discussed with Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS) your request for vehicle rejection and concerns with your credit record. VWFS have clarified to you directly that they would not be willing to accept your request for rejection. I would recommend that you contact VWFS directly, should you wish to discuss this matter further, or to gain any further clarification on the reasons why your request was declined.

VWFS have also confirmed that they were originally contacted one day after the expiry of your Right of Withdrawal (ROW) date. Despite it being too late, they chose to accept your request and accept payment in full to settle the finance. Unfortunately VWFS suffered a system error during the ROW closure process and incorrectly applied an adverse credit rating to Mrs Thomas. Once VWFS became aware of the error, they corrected the information on 27 November, exercising caution by advising the customer that whilst they would perform the update immediately, it may take up to a maximum of 72 hours to update all records. Mrs Thomas’ Experian record was updated on 29 November and now shows no adverse information with a settlement date of 30 May, 2012.

As previously advised, as a joint gesture of goodwill, VWFS would like to offer 500.00gbp and Audi UK would like to cover the cost of your vehicle’s next service. Whilst I am mindful that you are seeking legal action, I wanted the opportunity to contact you directly.

Please be assured that feedback of this nature is vital in allowing us to improve the service we provide and we are committed in taking into consideration, the individual circumstances of each of our customers.

Kind regards

Martin Sander


Martin Sander
Director of Audi UK
Audi UK"

[Bash D Bishop]

The £10k limit to third party beneficiaries has nothing to do with Anti-Money Laundering legislation. It is simply an arbitrary limit imposed by NatWest and is based on their risk appetite and/or their ability to mitigate fraud losses.

Different banks have different limits and some even have different limits for different customer segments. However, the limit normally only applies to Faster Payments while CHAPS payments effectively have an unlimited cap and are only limited by the funds available. Unless you are a Business customers it is unlikely you will have on-line or telephone access to make CHAPS payments and you would have to visit a branch. The downside to CHAPS is the c.£25 charge.

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[glammr]

I bought an A6 took minimum finance of £7.5k. Paid cas rest. This gave me 2 yrs servicing. Collected the car then 5 days later called Audi finance paid the £7.5k plus £17 interest and closed the account.
2 yrs free servicing for £17!!!!

[Steve82]

Can you pay off the finance with a credit card?