YOUR CURRENT AGREEMENT IS ENDING

Your current car agreement is ending and your credit has got worse

You have paid this car every month for three or four years without missing one. Somewhere in the middle of that, your credit file fell apart. Now the end date is coming and you are not confident anyone will finance you again. You are in a better position than you think.

£299 to £499

a month, inc VAT

3 months

rental up front

36 months

road tax included

10,000

miles a year

• Three or four years of car payments made on time is the strongest affordability evidence anybody can show, and it is exactly what we look at.
• Start six months before your end date, not six weeks. Nearly everything that goes wrong here is caused by leaving it late.
• If your current car is on PCP and it is worth more than the final payment, that difference can become your three months up front.
• Most cars are between £299 and £499 a month. The first three months are payable up front, from around £900.
• We read your bank statements before any credit check, so finding out costs you nothing.

Here is what nobody has explained to you.

Your credit score records the worst of what happened. The redundancy, the divorce, the business that did not make it, the year the arrears built up. It sits there for six years and it does not care what you did next.

What it does not show, in any way an automated system can read, is that you carried on paying for this car. Every month. Through all of it. Thirty six or forty eight payments, on time, while everything else was going wrong.

That is not a small thing. It is a better demonstration that you will pay than almost anything a person with a clean file could put in front of us, because a clean file usually just means nothing difficult has happened yet.

Yours means something difficult happened and you paid anyway.

A mainstream leasing company cannot see that. Their model reads the score, takes four seconds, and declines you. We read the bank statements, where those payments are sitting in black and white on every page.

This is the single most useful thing on this page.

Almost everybody in your position leaves it until the end date is close, and that is where it goes wrong. Six weeks is not enough time to be turned down somewhere, work out why, and try a different route. It is enough time to panic and take something expensive.

Six months gives you room to do this properly. It gives you time to get your statements looking their best, to sort out anything on your file that can be sorted, and, if you are in an IVA, to get your Insolvency Practitioner's agreement without everybody rushing.

It also means you never reach the point of having no car. That matters more than it sounds, because the moment you are without transport is the moment your options narrow to whatever you can get today.

If you are more than halfway through a hire purchase or PCP agreement, you may have the right to end it early and hand the car back. Plenty of people in that position discover their current lender will not finance them again, and feel stuck.

You do not have to sort that out in the dark. We can look at your statements and give you an answer first, so you know what you are moving to before you end what you have. The one condition is that we need to know the existing agreement is definitely being settled.

Check your own agreement for what you would owe, or speak to your current lender, before you commit either way.

Most cars are between £299 and £499 a month, including VAT and road tax. Agreements are typically thirty six months with a ten thousand mile a year limit. Going over costs between 10p and 14p per mile plus VAT, depending on the car, and around 12p on most of them. The exact rate is written into your agreement before you sign.

Ten thousand miles a year is the standard allowance. Higher mileage quotes are available up to twenty thousand a year, so ask if you need more.

You will need fully comprehensive insurance, which is not included.

Every car comes with at least twelve months' warranty, and each one is serviced, inspected and put right before it goes out. Delivery usually takes seven to ten days from order.

Delivery and collection are free anywhere in mainland England and Wales. Scotland is not something we can cover, so please get in touch before applying if that is where you are.

Servicing, tyres, MOT and insurance are not included. These are customer maintained agreements, so budget for those separately.

When we cannot help

• If you have fallen behind on your current car agreement
• If important direct debits are failing month after month. One or two that bounced and were sorted out is not the issue. A pattern is.
• If your income is under £1,500 a month after tax, or comes only from benefits
• If you cannot cover the three months up front and there is no equity to draw on
• If you have not yet been discharged from bankruptcy
• If you drive more than 20,000 miles a year
• If you are under 21, or hold a provisional rather than a full UK licence

None of this is about your credit history. It is about what is happening in your account right now. Bouncing direct debits and missed priority payments are the difficulty. The odd late payment on a card, with a reason behind it, usually is not.