In 1937 the German government founded the Volkswagen Group in order to mass-produce a low-priced “people’s car,” for citizens. Headquartered in Wolfsburg, the brand’s most popular models include the Tiguan, Golf and Polo. In 2015 the brand made headlines due to fitting their cars with defeat devices to misrepresent actual diesel emissions. This scandal affected the brand’s reputation and later led to Oliver Schmidt an engineer being sentenced to 7 years in prison for his role in the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Volkswagen PCP Claims
Did you have a Volkswagen car finance agreement before January 28th 2021? If so, you may be able to claim compensation in light of a new FCA announcement concerning hidden commissions.
Claim NowA background on Volkswagen
In 2024, Volkswagen celebrated new features, milestones and achievements including:
- Golf named The Sunday Times Legend Car of the Year and The Sun Legend Car
- News UK Motor Awards highlight best-in-class cars in all segments
- Volkswagen is celebrating 50 years of production for its best-selling model to date
What are Volkswagen PCP claims?
At the beginning of 2024, The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) made headlines when they shared that they will be investigating historical PCP and HP agreements to determine whether hidden commission payments were secretly being earned by brokers. The news quickly made headlines due to the potential scale of such an investigation. For example, The FCA’s enquiry has the potential to allow millions of car finance customers to claim compensation from their lender/broker. The purpose of the investigation is to seek out whether or not discretionary commissions were made by brokers who were financially incentivised by brands to offer higher interest rates to customers.
According to the FCA, their decision to investigate was prompted by a number of customer complaints concerning motor finance firms potentially unfairly rejecting otherwise legitimate miss-selling claims. The nature of such complaints from customers are centred around the belief that their contract was more costly due to their dealer/broker earning a significant secret commission from their policy.
In 2023, Volkswagen Group delivered 9,239,512 vehicles worldwide, which was an 11.8% increase from 2022. The car giant offers customers both PCP and ‘Hire Purchase’ options to purchase their vehicles. For many years now a personal contract purchase has been the most popular way to finance and purchase a car. PCP agreements were introduced more than ten years ago after multiple financial crisis’ and have continued to increase in popularity over the years.
Who has a Volkswagen PCP claim?
If you are wondering whether or not you may have a future PCP claim against Volkswagen once the investigation has been concluded, there are a few key things to consider. Firstly, in keeping with the deadline that prohibited hidden commissions, complaints need to be made only for car finance agreements sold before the 28th of January 2021. In addition to preceding the deadline the car sale must have been a either a PCP or a hire purchase offering. Unlike a PCP agreement, a hire purchase agreement means the customer pays the value of the car in specific monthly instalments.
For those who bought a car on finance after the deadline or without PCP or Hire Purchase agreement, such claims will not be eligible. If you did purchase your car with the aid of car finance but it was on or after the 28th of January 2021 deadline, you will also not be eligible for compensation. Secondly, a personal contract hire agreement complaint in which the car was leased will not be included.
How to claim Volvo PCP compensation
Initially, there was a pause put on firms by the FCA to stop companies from responding to clients during their investigation. This pause was set to stop in Sept 2024, however, the deadline has been pushed back to next year as the FCA would like longer to investigate. This pause period began after 17th November 2023 and will now end May 2025 whilst the FCA conducts their investigation. Whilst the investigation is underway, it is a good idea to submit any complaints to the firm as soon as you can as there is often a limitation period to be observed. With regards to misselling, you are generally required to make your complaint to your provider within six years of the issue, or within three years of you becoming aware of the problem.
We can help you get kickstart your complaint in order to see if you may be eligible for a payout, click here to get going.
PCP Secret Hidden Commisions
It has been unveiled that lenders tend to conceal the existence of commission offered to their brokers. A mystery shopping exercise carried out back in 2018 reviewed the processes followed by 122 retailers in their provision of Motor Finance. Of those 122 retailers, only 11 chose to disclose to the customer that commission may be received by the broker for arranging the finance. This violates CONC requirements as it creates an unfair relationship between customer and lender.
PCP Difference In Commisions
It has been found that lenders often incentivise a broker to charge a higher interest by compensating them with a commission proportional to the interest the sell. The estimated cost of this behaviour for the customers is £300m annually. An FCA consultation entitled : ‘Motor Finance discretionary commission models and consumer credit commission disclosure,’ found that Difference in Charge models are the most damaging to the customer which unnervingly consist of 95% of the 1000 agreements the FCA looked into.
PCP Inadequately Explained Contracts
The mystery shopper exercise mentioned earlier which was carried out by the FCA also wanted to investigate whether or not lenders fully disclosed all the necessary information regarding the Motor Finance agreements to be made. The shoppers found that the concept of ownership of a car under PCP was frequently brushed over or poorly explained. 69% of the mystery shoppers were not made aware by the broker that they would not fully own the vehicle until they had payed the final ‘balloon payment.’
How much is a Volkswagen PCP claim worth?
Not even the FCA currently knows the amount of financial compensation that may be available to car finance customers in the future. In fact, The FCA has simply stated that it will “identify how best to make sure people who are owed compensation receive an appropriate settlement in an orderly, consistent and efficient way”.
Examples Of PCP Misselling
A list of real-life scenarios to demonstrate how you may have
been mis-sold a car on finance:
It takes just a few moments
If you'd like to get your compensation claim in before the FCA investigation is concluded to have it lodged in advance you can do so now