Hi,

My partner is in the process of buying an e bike through the cycle solutions, cycle to work scheme.

The maximum price her employer will go uptown is £3000, so she is paying the leftover amount. It is not entirely clear how it works at the end of the hire agreement. It offers an extended hire period for free, Which I assume is to allow the item to depreciate further before paying the remaining balance.

What isn’t clear is how they determine the fair market value to base the remaining balance on. The confusion then comes is how is this worked out as they haven’t paid the total amount for the bike as it was actually about £5,500 and they contributed £3000

Any Advice or experiences with the scheme would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Tom

There is no remaining balance to pay at the end of the extended hire period but the bike isn’t yours until it ends.

I thought this was the reason “top ups” were no longer allowed?

The confusion then comes is how is this worked out as they haven’t paid the total amount for the bike as it was actually about £5,500 and they contributed £3000

There is no confusion. Its based on the value of your voucher that you spend on the bike, end of.

If you tell them you’re topping it up by £2.5k then they’ll tell you you can’t.

For precisely this reason.

Hasn’t this bin dun recently?
Like really recently!

Yeah, there’s a duplicate thread going…

Its fine, just a fiddle to get around HMRC for final payment Ive had 4 bikes now through them.

With mine I’ve signed the longer term lease (0 cost) that effectively devalues the bike to nothing.

Scruff, lesgrandspotato, I don’t think you’ve really answered the specific question from the OP, which is about topups.

OP, the problem is that the shop need to submit the price back to the employer/C2W as part of the process so it needs to match the voucher price. When I found a Stumpie Expert Carbon cheap at Evans a few years ago they resolutely refused to let me do a topup 🙁
But they did agree to reduce the price even further instead to match the voucher price 🙂
Those were the days.
The only legitimate way around it would be to see if the bike shop will sell you wheels, groupset, cockpit ( soz) etc on the C2W scheme and you can then buy a frame separately ( a frame which happens to already be affixed to the aforementioned components 🙂 )

This may also have the advantage that accessories depreciate at a faster rate than bikes so you may find the balance to pay at year 1 is very close to zero. ( can’t be bothered to lookup the rates just now)

Is no one else going to say “£5.5k for a commuter – are you mental?”

I hope there is good security at her workplace.

yup – top-ups seem to be a strict no. sonder were having none of it and it was only couple of hundred over.

I got told no top ups buying direct from cycle solutions, but you can go through the lbs with a quote sent to CS. The depreciation is just using a loophole so the value goes to zero over time while your are actually within the contract period but not necessarily paying anything.

Is no one else going to say “£5.5k for a commuter – are you mental?”

I don’t think anyone’s said anything about a commuter have they? 😉

Its worth asking HR if they’d consider upping the limit. I asked and got it from £3k to £5k saving me an extra c£700. Its a tick in a box for HR and cyclescheme. Helps if you know the HR Director/key person well

Its worth asking HR if they’d consider upping the limit.

Hmm, yes. I tried that at my place and got knocked back. They said that they need to protect staff from potentially incurring big debts if they left the company. I was **** livid and argued the toss with them, but they refused to back down.

Especially galling as they are quite happy for me to enter into a 5 year commitment with them to hire a £115,538 Mercedes AMG car, but not £5k for a bike.

Especially galling as they are quite happy for me to enter into a 5 year commitment with them to hire a £115,538 Mercedes AMG car, but not £5k for a bike.

If you were to leave your employer during the 12 or 18 months C2W repayment period then any outstanding payments would be taken from your last pay packet. (Meaning, in your example, if you took a £5k bike on C2W and left after one month, you’d need to be earning over £5k a month to ensure that your employer wasn’t left chasing your debt. You know this, I’m sure)

My question, though, based on that – is the car hire scheme the same? If you left at any point, do you owe the whole cost of the car you are hiring? I’ve never looked in detail into car leasing through work but I got the impression that it is a simple lease/hire thing?

Yep totally agree on the cycle bit. And agree mainly on the other bit, but not fully.

I trawled through the details on the car lease and it said that if you exit the agreement within 12 months ( I think it was 12,) then they can charge a penalty. They didn’t say what that penalty was.

But the orhe thing that pissed me off more was that the HR guy said that they’d taken the decision that £3k was a reasonable cap for a bike. As if it was any **** business of theirs what I spend my salary on. Again, they’re fine for me to spend £60,000 tax free on a car, but they think I need to be nannied when it comes to a bike.

They didn’t say what that penalty was.

Yeah, there’s a problem there. 😀

Again, they’re fine for me to spend £60,000 tax free on a car, but they think I need to be nannied when it comes to a bike.

I’ve had this argument before.

Or they were aware that the scheme wasn’t only being used for cycling to work on a suitable bike and people were looking to get a tax-break on a more expensive bike…doubt it is about nannying you about how much you spend on a recreational solution, but they may have a concern about potentially aided some tax-free shopping on something that doesn’t quite qualify for the C2W scheme.

Or they were aware that the scheme wasn’t only being used for cycling to work on a suitable bike and people were looking to get a tax-break on a more expensive bike…doubt it is about nannying you about how much you spend on a recreational solution, but they may have a concern about potentially aided some tax-free shopping on something that doesn’t quite qualify for the C2W scheme.

You could make the same argument for a £115k AMG Merc though. A £1k bike is just fine for commuting, as is a £20k Fiesta.

but they may have a concern about potentially aided some tax-free shopping on something that doesn’t quite qualify for the C2W scheme.

What bike doesn’t qualify for cycling to work?* I mainly use a gravel bike, but often bring one of the MTBs in, if I’m going home via trails. One of my colleagues rides a DH bike in, about 4 miles, every day. One of my other colleagues alternates between a single speed and a hand built road bike. One of my friends often rides to work on a BMX.

The most common thing here is that none of us ride a stereotypical commuting bike. Why is an HR department qualified to tell me what I should be riding to work?

*maybe a fixed gear track bike, but I’m sure someone does it?