Car finance payouts! Will it happen? Have you unknowingly signed up to a claims firm?

23:44Martin Lewis:Well, I mean, that's certainly one viewpoint that I've heard a lot. And when that initial Consumer Voices challenge came in, I did a poll on whether people would prefer, you know, for a push to get more payments and get a bigger payout or they prefer everything to be quicker. And from memory, the result was most people just wanted it to be quicker and were disappointed at the delay that was coming in. So that Consumer Voice, which, as I say, acts as an introducer to group legal claims firms, it did do that. And that was its decision. And you're entitled to your opinion on it, John. Yeah, I mean, Kerry agrees with him.

24:18She says, I'd have preferred the option to have a payout or await further court proceedings. Seems to be going on forever. I've heard that view a lot. James asking, is it still too late to claim and where do I find your template? It is absolutely not too late to claim. Now, assuming everything continues the way it's going, the most important thing you need to do is get a complaint in. Two reasons for that. One, because if you get a complaint in, rather than waiting for them to come and find you, assuming that you were missold you will be paid out sooner I mean there's lots of delays but you'll still be ahead in the queue but the most important reason I would say is one of the issues we have with these claims is while firms have to try and track down people who were missold it goes all the way back to 2007 and because of that there clearly are documents that are missing you may have moved house they may not be able to contact you there are loads of problems when they're going to come to finding people.

25:16They have to make best efforts, but that doesn't mean they're going to find everyone. So I would far prefer people to put in a complaint with their details, with as much information as they have, and that will make it easier for firms to track you down. Let's just do the who's eligible bit here. So first of all, it has to be motor vehicle finance, which is car, van, motorbike and camper vans, not caravans because they don't have a motor. It has to be a financial agreement from the 6th of April 2007 to the 1st of November 2024. Those are the eligible dates and it's the date you got the finance.

25:53People always ask me, what about the 1st of April 2007? No, this is a strict date. It's about regulation and when that regulation started. Although one of the challenges that's happening in court is when it should start.

26:04Martin Lewis:So that date could change depending on what happens in the court. Finance types, personal contract purchases or PCP as they're more commonly known, and higher purchase, not leased cars. Leasing doesn't count. The vehicle must primarily be for personal use in most cases, although sole traders and small partnerships for work, if the finances under£25 ,000, can count. If you have multiple car finance deals or motor finance deals, which is common, you will be due multiple payouts. Each one is a separate thing. The fact you've had more than one does not discount it. If you've paid the vehicle off, if you no longer own it.

26:40Martin Lewis:This is about the finance. So the fact you don't have the vehicle, the fact you paid it off doesn't matter. It's about were you effectively missold and charged too much interest because of the commission? And those are the prime things. I'll go through in a little bit what the three different ways that you were missold. Now, you asked me about complaining. Is it too late to complain? This is the big bit you've got to get in your head. At the moment, there is no way for any individual to know they were missold without complaining because part of the complaints process is to ask and the free template letters that are out there this is what they do they ask the key questions to find out the information if you were missold and the reason that there's no way for you to know is the whole point of the misselling is that they did not disclose to you the activities that they were doing that have seemed to be missold so you cannot know because if you did know, you wouldn't have been missold.

27:37So the only way to know if you're missold is to ask, did you do this? Because I don't know, because you didn't tell me, because that's the whole way that it worked. So that's why you have to be considering putting a complaint in. As for where to put the complaint in, I don't know if I'm allowed to say, am I, Simon? Is there a website that has a very popular and charismatic podcast host that has started it a long time ago? I believe there is a website that has a very popular and charismatic podcast host, but also there's a money website that I'm involved in.

28:09Martin Lewis:Look, I mean, I can't give the website name out. Hopefully you'll work out for yourself. There are other places I've got templates too. My tool has had 4 million people use it, so you can probably find it for yourself or you may be able to find another template out there that will work for you too. But there's certainly a lot of DIY resources out there that can help. What's the next question? Now, so Jackie, she asked a question that came up quite a few times on the very long list that I get down to a long list that you then get down to a short list that gets us into this position of asking the questions.

28:37And she wants to know, can I claim on behalf of my husband who died last year?

28:42Martin Lewis:Yes, you can. You can claim, depending on the circumstances, it's either the primary beneficiary who can complain or the executor of the will who can put in a complaint on behalf of someone who's deceased. The fact someone who has passed away does not stop you complaining. However, I've already talked about my concern about car finance firms, even though they are mandated to try and find people who've been missold, finding people because of documentation issues. Clearly, that gets even more difficult if we're talking they have to find out who is the appropriate person for them to be paying mis-selling compensation to for somebody who's passed away.

29:19Martin Lewis:So in this case, I would even more strongly push you towards putting in a complaint. You can use the same free template letters to put in a complaint going through the FCA's mass redress scheme that I've just talked about. What I would do if you're doing that, you'll need to adapt the letter so that the complaint information is about the deceased person. But you're also noting within the letter that you're acting either as a primary beneficiary or the executor and your name, your relationship to that person and your contact details to it. Not a very difficult amendment, you know, just the obvious administrative stuff that they would need to know that you're doing the complaint because this person passed away.

29:58Martin Lewis:When that happens, they will want proof of the death certificate and other things. But just get the complaint in with that basics in the letter. Now, the other thing that people find difficult, because I talk about as well as the free complaint tools, there is another tool out there, which is Equifax has a car finance complaint tool via its app, which if you go into it can try and find you all the car finance agreements that you've had since 2007 and I've had great feedback from it I need to say it isn't universal not every single car finance agreement is in there but many people who've lost their car finance details have told me they found it really helpful and it produces the details that you can then put into one of those free tools or template letters out there if somebody has passed away you can't use it to find the information of someone who's passed away.

30:46Martin Lewis:But if you get in touch via Equifax's help system, so you need to go online and you can call it or you can use its web chat or you can write to it via email on its help system to tell them that you're doing a car finance complaint on behalf of someone who's passed away, it can then provide you with the information. But again, for obvious and understandable reasons, it's going to need proof that you're the legitimate person to give that information to, you know, proving death certificate and primary beneficiary. Now, I need to be honest, I've been talking about that now for a couple of months. I've not yet had feedback from anyone who's been through that process of using Equifax to track information for the primary beneficiary.

31:27Martin Lewis:So hopefully it's working, but I don't have the feedback on it. So I think that answers the question there. Joanne wants to know, I used your template for making a claim on one car, but I've now remembered another car I had on finance. Will I have to claim that separately, please, or will all claims in my name be under one? Well, the most important thing you haven't told me, Joanne, is whether the claim is with the same car finance firm. If it's with the same car finance firm, it is possible they will look at both claims in one, but I would still get in touch with them and ask to update what you sent them originally with the details of the second car finance agreement.

32:04Martin Lewis:If it is with a separate firm, you need to put in a totally separate complaint. I think what I'm sort of getting the indication, and I don't know because I've only got the words that you wrote, that you sort of feel like there's a big mass scheme out there where it's all going into this regulator's pot. It's not. The regulator is mandating each motor finance firm to handle the complaints that come into it. So each motor finance firm is handling this separately. So certainly if you've got two motor finance firms, they are entirely separate and you have to treat them as completely separate cases.

32:36Sarah wants to know, will they still find you if you don't fill out a claim form? They will still look for you if you don't fill out a claim form, provided they have the details of your car finance agreement. But you've already heard me quite strongly push you to put in a complaint. Let's just explore that a little bit more. Companies, once your business is over with them, Under data protection rules, often talk about an obligation to destroy your information after about six years so they're not holding on information too long. Now, this can be interpreted in many ways. But effectively, if you had a car finance agreement for, let's say, three or four years and then it ended over six years ago, they might not have your information.

33:19But Equifax might have your information and you might have your information. So you ask me, will they still find you if you fill in a claims form? well they will still be obliged to look for you but they may not find you because they don't have details of your car finance or motor finance agreement they might not have details of your current address or how to contact you so all of that means you would be better putting in a complaint to tell it this is my car finance details if you can find them um or even if you can't just to say i had car finance with you it was from this period whatever you can give them the more you can give them the better and to make sure they've got your updated contact details.

33:58Alex, when it was announced a few years ago, I used your template to contact Black Horse. Now I just get an email from them every few months saying they will contact me in 28 days and repeat. Is there anything I can do to chase it up? No, this is just a symptom of the hold and the legal delay. You know, it was all ready to kick off and then it has to be put on halt. So I'm actually not going to blame Black Horse, which is part of Lloyd's. They are at least keeping you up to date with what's going on. And the honest truth is what's going on is we're all sitting on our hands waiting for the court to decide.

34:28So there is nothing to chase up. They are not going to do anything until later on this year when hopefully we have a court decision. Gavin, is there a risk that we may not get the payouts at all, that we will have to go via the court route and won't be automatic? It's a very incisive question, Gavin. And yes is the answer. I think, and some of the conversations I've had with people in the background about this challenge is, I mean, there is always the existential threat that this challenge stops this mass redress scheme. And I think even more so, there is a larger existential threat that it stops all mass redress schemes in future, which I personally would be very, very depressed if that happens.

35:14You know, ultimately, for all the years and all the mis-selling campaigns I've done over the years, we got a billion pounds back for people on bank charges. Through my templates, we got over 10 billion pounds back for people on PPI. In all these cases where companies were deliberately and systemically trying to profit or mislead customers, people have said to me, why do we have to complain? If they mis-sold, why don't they just give us our money back? And under this mass redress scheme, that is what the regulator is creeping towards doing. That people who haven't complained will have to be contacted and will have to be given money.

35:57Now, while I agree to an extent that the actual payout levels the regulator is giving have been watered down and are less than you going to court, because there are so many people who've been missold and just don't know how to do it, who are information disenfranchised, who are vulnerable, who don't have the time, who've gone the wrong route, and in some cases who haven't heard about this, or think it's all a scam because of the way that some claims management firms have gone about

36:26Martin Lewis:advertising it, will miss out. And I think that's wrong, and I'm a supporter of the mass redress scheme. But it is under threat. So there's a number of outcomes here. The first outcome is all the court cases lose and we just get on with it in exactly the same system. The second is that there is a tweak either up or down to the eligibility and payment criteria in what the FCA has said about its mass redress scheme, but things carry on. The third is the FCA decides that because of a court ruling, it cannot continue with the mass redress scheme, in which case people will need to make individual complaints and would still be able to go to the financial ombudsman.

37:04Martin Lewis:But the basis, it's going to be much more all over the place, or people could, of course, go to court. And then at the extreme case, of course, there could be a ruling that none of this is relevant anyway and you're not entitled to money. But then I still think people would still be able to go to court. And that would, of course, which is rather interesting where the complaints come from, if everyone had to go to court, that would put a lot more customers in the hands of claims management companies. So, Gavin, is there a risk? Yes. And finally, Louise wants to know, has anyone who applied for the payout even had an acknowledgement for their requests.

37:37Yeah, I mean, you should definitely have had an acknowledgement and millions of people have had acknowledgement. Some companies are really pants at this, but you may, at this point, they should absolutely be acknowledging you.

37:50Martin Lewis:And if you put your complaint in and you haven't heard, I would absolutely be getting back in touch with them at this point to say what's happening. Any more? That's us. I think, I'm just thinking anything I haven't told you. I think I should probably explain the three different types of misselling, which is the one thing that I haven't done. I'm not going to do this in over detail, but just to give you a picture. The first is discretionary commission arrangements, and that's the big one. This is where the interest that you paid was increased to pay the dealer or broker extra commission without you being told that that was happening.

38:29So effectively, there was a premium added to the interest rate in order to pay more commission. Now, that's a DCA and that's where it all started. And my original template letters only covered that. They were banned on the 28th of January 2021. So even though you can complain to a later date, you're only complaining about DCAs till that date. Now, many people, the original template letters and even the current ones, one of the questions they ask is, did you have a discretionary commission arrangement? If you have had a response to that saying, yes, you did have a discretionary commission arrangement, then you are very likely, if the FCA scheme goes ahead, to be entitled to money back.

39:10You know, and it should be in the high hundreds of pounds. But exactly how much you get depends on when you had the discretionary commission arrangement, what the level of commission was, what the size of your agreement was. if you were told you didn't have a discretionary commission arrangement you may still have been missold now if you only put in a complaint about discretionary commission arrangements then the firm will have to look at the other cases but you won't be in that I've complained

39:37Martin Lewis:group who were at the head of the distribution table who'll get their money first so if you put in one of the early template letters on discretionary commission arrangements and were told you didn't have one, I'd be putting in another complaint now over the other two types of misselling, which are contractual ties. That's where a broker didn't tell you it worked primarily with one lender. There is an exemption here now that if it was obvious capture, so a Volkswagen dealer with Volkswagen Finance doesn't count within this. But effectively, if they didn't tell you it was working with one lender, so you thought you were going to a competitive panel of car financiers.

40:16Martin Lewis:It's not an easy word. Of car financiers. And they then effectively save one company first dibs. It got you and they didn't put it to a panel. Again, you could have been missold. And there's millions of agreements who are potentially missold there. The final category, unfairly high commission. This is where commission paid to brokers or dealers was 39 % or more of the total cost of credit and 10 % or more of the total size of the loan. The regulator sees that as excessive. In all these cases, just to remind you, it's only misselling if you weren't told and didn't have it overtly declared to you.

40:53But they very, very rarely did.

40:55Martin Lewis:So I don't really see that as a get out. Hopefully, that has given you all the information that you need. Okay, one final story I just want to do in this podcast. I need to say, if you saw me online you might have seen we were going to be talking about haggling and different ways to haggle and secrets of the call centre in our tellers. I'm going to hold that because I think that works better when I do it with Adrian and we'll do it in the Five Live podcast next week. I will of course be doing a mastermind there. I have one all written and ready to go. It's a good one too, so I'm slightly disappointed I haven't done it.

41:30Hopefully you're not too disappointed and that you've got some decent info out of this podcast. Now, final point is I want to warn you to beware British Airways questionable behaviour as it pushes people to overpay for ESTAs and other travel permits. This all came from a tweet I got. Can you still call it a tweet? You can't call it an X. What would you call it? Is it an X post? I'm going to call it a tweet. It all came from a tweet I got from Andy RFC Charman on X. Obviously it was on X because it's a tweet. He said, very disappointing to see that British Airways are now directing their customers who require an ESTA to a third-party site, Sherpa, who charge for their service, rather than going through a direct link to the US Customs and Border Protection site.

42:17So my brilliant team did more work into it, and absolutely right. British Airways is directing customers to a travel permit tool on its website

42:25Martin Lewis:powered by a firm called Sherpa. And if you then go through that, and it sort of says, we'll help you work out what visas you want, so it's a visa tool, but within it, it talks about travel permits. If you then go through it and you apply, you will pay more than you would going to the official websites. So, for example, when we checked, Sherpa charged£51 for a US ESTA, ESTA, that costs about£30 when bought directly from the US government, while an Australian e-visa, which is totally free if you go direct, costs£17 if you go via Sherpa. The same is true too, that you're going to pay more for a Canadian ETA and a New Zealand ETA.

43:07Martin Lewis:And I suspect once the European system sets up later on this year, they will be doing the same there. So my warning to you is be careful going through these third-party sites. You need to be aware that you'll be paying more. Now, Sherpa told us that its service fee is shared between Sherpa and its airline partners, which, if so, means British Airways will be making money from this tool on the excess, though neither Sherpa nor BA would tell us how the fee is split. So, my overall summary here is I doubt most people would really pay£17 for an Australian e-visa document if they knew they could easily click to get it for free from the official route.

43:51So I suspect a material number of people who do pay don't know they don't need to. And that means that our national flag carrier, British Airways, for me, feels a little bit less like it's acting like a flagship and a little bit more like it's acting like a pirate ship. It's not the only one, though. We've seen Sherpas tour on Thomas Cook and Virgin Atlantic.

44:16Martin Lewis:We've seen tour operator Saga operating via a different system which is even more expensive than Sherpa when you go through it. So let me be really play. If you want an Australian e-visa, go to the Australian Government's Home Affairs website where it's free. If you want a Canadian ETA, go to the Canadian Government's ETA website where you'll be led through the process answering just a few simple questions. If you want the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, the ETIAS, it hasn't started yet. So anyone who's promising to get you one. They're wrong and they're a shyster, so don't touch them.

44:53Martin Lewis:New Zealand ETA, New Zealand Immigration website, USESTA, go to the ESTA website. For all other visas and travel permits, the rule of thumb, go through the UK government's Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office site, the FCO site, and it'll link you to the right site for your information. Do not pay more than you need. I don't think it's that good that now airlines are just trying to grab an extra digital snack on your cash when it's unnecessary for getting you travel permits and visas too. Do let me know if you've seen them and if you paid and you didn't realise. Get in touch at martinlewispodcast at bbc.co.uk.

45:30Martin Lewis:And I think that probably is the place to end, Si. Perfect. Hi, producer Simon here. British Airways and Sherpa have both got in touch with their response to what Martin has said. British Airways says we serve customers travelling to hundreds of different destinations where entry requirements vary by nationality and route taken with some requirements changing at short notice. We offer an optional third-party service to assist with this and check requirements all in one place and for some destinations an optional service to help with applications. We make it clear that customers must check the full entry requirements with the relevant government directly.

46:07It's also clear that Sherpa is a third-party provider and may charge additional fees. Customers can apply directly via official government channels, also linked on the same page, which are clearly displayed. And Sherpa CEO Max Tremaine got in touch saying, we are transparent about the difference between the government fee and the Sherpa's service fee. And depending on the integration, we often give the option to go directly to the government system. Before payment, Sherpa provide an itemised cost breakdown, including the government fee and our fee. Travellers opt to use Sherpa because our products make the application process quicker, easier to complete, and we provide application support, unlike many government sites minimising the likelihood of repeating applications.

46:52Back to the pod. A different podcast this week.

46:56Martin Lewis:It is a different podcast. It wasn't what we were planning to do. I hope people have found it useful and interesting too. And thank you very much for stepping into the breach, Simon, to ask me the questions as we go through. Well, I'm just grateful you didn't make me do my Adrian Charles impression. If Matt Lansley was here, he would have been able to just do it seamlessly. But I would quite like to hear your Adrian Charles impression. Do you have one? Because I have one. I do it when I do the podcast. What are we going to say? Martin, what shall we do next? OK, shall we do it together? Same words.

47:20One, two, three. Martin, what shall we do next? What do we do next? Can you explain this to me, Martin? Bye.

47:30And that is it for this week. We tend to put out a new episode every Thursday and Monday. Monday is our question time podcast where you can ask me absolutely anything and everything, open brackets, within reason, close brackets. If you've enjoyed it today, please do tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast. And why not subscribe? And hey, why not even write us a review? We'd like some, please, as long as they're good. Now, I can't say that. Write them whether they're good or bad. But if you like the podcast, hopefully you'll be more keen to write a review than the people who don't like the podcast who can't be bothered.

48:00And if you've been listening this long and you don't like the podcast, where you've only got yourself to blame. For the rest of you, though, I hope your pockets are pleased with you.

48:24Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing martinlewispodcast at bbc.co.uk. The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review however you listen.

49:18I got bills, I gotta pay the life and fortune of Beyonce. Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.