OT: Van Contract Hire clauses

Do it anyway. I doubt they're on here.

So do I, but if I'm breaking the law in some respect I could potentially be in the shit. Personally I doubt I would be, as I wouldn't specifically be mentioning the name of the funder, but I'd rather not take my chances. Anyone know for sure?

Ok, here goes:

Basically my worry is that all that basically says two things:

1. They have calculated their return on investment based on all these facts - capital allowances, corporation tax rates and due payment dates (w.r.t. their accounting period), tax relief allowances in respect of interest on borrowed funds by them (the Owner), etc etc, and if any of these things change, causing their after-tax return on investment to decrease, then they can increase the monthly rental charges to compensate, so that their return on investment is as they had initially calculated.

In other words, I take all the risk and they take none.

1. If the VAT rate increases between the start date of the contract and the time when they come to dispose of the van, then I have to compensate them for any difference in what they owe the VAT man (if I'm wrong on deciphering all this someone please let me know). Now surely VAT would be charged on top of the selling price of the van when it's disposed of at auction, so whatever amount they owe HMC+E they would be collecting on top of the sale price (which it would be made clear was exclusive of VAT, I'd assume), so how can they justify asking me to compensate them in this respect?

A few more questions:

What is the realistic risk involved if I was to sign this agreement? Is it realistic that I could get out of these points, or do I just accept that financial institutions are clever bastards that make contracts water tight to protect themselves? (which leads on to the next point) Do all lease contracts have these sort of terms imposed? Does anyone reading this have any experience of, or know anyone who has been caught out by such clauses and ended up having increased payments, and if so, how much did they increase by?

Your arse will become very sore and your wallet empty. You can end up paying a fortune. Its completely no risk for them but I doubt they'll get alot of punters except the desperate. You could consider them to be the Yes Car Credit of the Contract Hire world.

They're clever bastards.

NOOOOO.

Walk away. In fact don't walk away, run. Very fast. Until you're sick. Then continue some more.

Contract hire is very simple. Fixed monthly rate for the hire term usually with an excess over a certain mileage plus charges for damage at the end of the hire period.

Take a shuftie at what Salford Van Hire terms are. Excluding the price, that's what you should be looking at.

Ah right. Noted.

Heh! Right, now here's the bit where I may have been a bit stupid and missed something. I enquired several weeks back about prices, and having looked into various other companies' pricing, I asked to see their terms and conditions. They forwarded to me the ts + cs of one of their main two funders' ts + cs (having assured me that both are virtually identical). I read it quite carefully, and it all seemed fairly standard stuff, and nothing untoward, so signed the order form and sent it back to them. This order form was on Excel, and I printed it out, signed it, scanned it and emailed it to them (as I don't have a fax machine).

Since then I've had the finance paperwork, which I haven't yet signed, but like I said I did sign the original order. How legally binding is that, and what could I be liable for if I pull out now?

As a matter of interest I've just re-read the terms and conditions they emailed me a while back, and it does include a very similar clause regarding charging extra should changes in corporation tax etc result in a lower return on their investment, so that's at least two finance houses.

Aye, that's exactly why I was going for it. I did all the sums and it worked out around £900/year worse off overall compared with buying on HP (but that's assuming a reasonable retained value, and who knows what the market's like, especially if a new model is released), but £800/year better off overall in terms of cash flow, plus less up front, and a lot less risk of anything going wrong, so if the terms of the agreement didn't aim to potentially shaft me, it would be a good deal.

Can't find anything on their website relating to terms. Will call them up tomorrow. Also, their website appears to be all over the place, text-wise - anyone else experience this or should I just move to a decent browser (currently on IE6)?

This is another bit I hadn't scanned in back then, which serves as even more proof:

Which seems to contradict this in quite a big way:

Who apparently take the rest of us for complete idiots.