Car finance company in question is BMW Finance. We traded our last car in for one from another manufacturer last November. The other manufacturer (Audi) paid off our remaining payment towards the end of November. Stupidly, we forgot to cancel the BMW Finance direct debit and they went ahead and took another payment in December. I rang them to ask for it back, and found out during the phone call that the feckers actually owed us November’s payment as well, as the settlement figure we had used with Audi as a deposit (i.e. trade-in minus settlement plus a bit more cash from us was the deposit for the new car) was calculated without taking November’s payment into account. My first call to them would have been around the middle of December – as that’s when they took December’s payment.

A couple of weeks ago, I made my fourth phone call to them to ask for our two monthly payments that they owed us. A bit of bluster from the girl on the phone and I was promised that this time, it would definitely be done. Two weeks later, there’s still no money back in our account and no cheque in the post 😡 It starts getting annoying as they tell me each time, “it takes 5 working days to clear payments, and then you may have to wait 3 days to see the money in the account” so I end up having to wait two weeks to see if they’ve refunded me.

I’m not the best complainer in the world…when I ring them this time, who do I ask to speak with so that I get my **** money? I’ve just looked at my mobile phone bills and because it’s one of those 0845 numbers to ring them, it’s cost me about a tenner in call charges too, between ringing them and waiting on hold.

I assume that if I owed them two months payment, there’d be a mark on my credit record and they’d be chasing me quite a bit for them.

Feckedy ****!

Speak to your bank about your Direct Debit mandate. This may help?

don’t phone write and ask them to write back, sooner you start generating a paper trail the better.

and, as above, try and get bank to refund money under direct debit guarantee process.

Don’t phone, write and do clearly state that their representative has already accepted that BMW owe you the money.

Good luck – took me a year to get £240 off BT that they stole out of my account.

unfortunately they [ all] work on the premise that if they make it hard some folk will just give up as it is not worth the hassle

Starta paper trail they can deny all phone calls etc
I would then just go to small claims court tnh rather than mess about with them faster and dead easy

I’ve just looked at my mobile phone bills and because it’s one of those 0845 numbers to ring them, it’s cost me about a tenner in call charges too, between ringing them and waiting on hold.

To be fair, that is your problem for using a mobile unfortunately.

Anyways, as others have said write letters and possibly ring them up to inform them of this fact as it might give them the kick up the arse they need,

Also ask for, and get, the name of everyone you speak to on the phone. People seem to act a bit more efficiently if they think they can actually be held accountable, as opposed to just being a voice at the end of a phone.

To be fair, that is your problem for using a mobile unfortunately.

I know, yeah 🙁 Just makes it more of a pain. 🙄

Write, threaten small claims if not paid within 14 days, send RD.

Write, threaten small claims if not paid within 14 days, send RD.

Cheers c-a. I’ll do dat tomorrow. 🙂

You can claim directly via your bank with an indemnity claim.

I once had £700-odd taken from my account by some random car insurance company. Dunno how, but they’d got my account details mixed up with a random. They claimed that my account details were the ones given by the random so there was nothing to be done. I had a word with the bank, they gave me one of these indemnity claim forms to fill in and I had the money back within the week.

off topic but are car finances cost effective?

off topic but are car finances cost effective?

I have no idea – at the moment I’m £700 out of pocket because of them 🙂

😀

Just a quick update on this: I posted a message on BMW UK’s facebook site asking for my money back. It was in my account in a week 🙂

I lost count of the amount of people who contacted me to say it was being progressed as a “matter of urgency” 😆