14 million to get mis-sold car finance compensation!

Martin Lewis takes you through the mis-selling of car finance after the regulator launched its plans for a mass £8.2bn redress scheme – where 14 million people could get compensation. He explains why it’s being paid, how much you could get, if you could get it, what you need to do to get it, should you go to court, can you claim for deceased relatives, and loads more. This is an emerging situation so listen for updates future podcasts! If you’ve got a burning question for Martin’s Question Time podcast, send an email to [email protected] mailto:[email protected] - it can be about absolutely anything you want, within reason!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:44Martin Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's going to be about. Now, usually, much of it comes from my BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Charles, but there's also bonus money-saving tips just for you, lucky, lucky podcast listeners. Play the theme tune.

• 2:17Martin Lewis?

  There is only one story in town today when you live in my world and that is car finance, mis-selling, reclaiming. Fourteen million car finance arrangements are said to have been mis-sold. It's going to be an average payout of seven hundred pounds per person. It's going to affect huge swathes of people across the country. And what people want to know from me is, will I get it? Why will I get it? How much will I get? And what do I have to do? And I hope to answer all that and more over the next hour.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:48Martin Lewis?

  You've got two for the price of one here today.

• 2:50Speaker 04

  Is this, this is robbing to your Batman?

• 2:52Martin Lewis?

  Well, yeah, exactly. Well, I'm, I'm, this is Rosie, who is on my team and who does car finance with me. And because this is such a new and complicated subject, I brought Rosie into the studio to live fact check me. So if I get anything technical wrong, she's going to kick me under the table and give me a quick note to say, actually, it's this, because this is all brand new. And it's huge and very complicated.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  Can I just say hello to Rosie? I won't ask her anything. Hello, Rosie. Hello.

• 3:17Martin Lewis?

  There you go.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  What's he like to work with? No, I'm joking. If he, if he needs kicking, can you just give me the nod and then I'll do the kicking? Okay.

• 3:23Martin Lewis?

  You are allowed that after Mastermind. I think it's fair.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:27Martin Lewis?

  But yeah, and I, and I should, I suppose there's another caveat I will do on that. We've just learnt all this. We are still, you know, there's one bit of information that I had been saying that I'd looked is different this morning. It is changing all the time. We're not fully there yet. So we're, we've dotted it with many i's and crossed as many t's as we can. But there is still a little bit of riddle room to be given here.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Okay. So, right. I've got lots of listener questions to get all the information we need. Before I do, what is the latest update?

• 3:54Martin Lewis?

  So what has happened this week is the regulator, the FCA, has announced its proposed redress scheme.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:03Martin Lewis?

  So there are two ways to get redressed on car finance, mis-selling. One is go to court. And the other is go via the regulator. And that means you won't have to go via the ombudsman. And the regulator is going to set up this scheme at some point in early 2026. What it's announced is what it plans to do. It's put that out for a consultation. The consultation launched the other day.

• 4:23Martin Lewis?

  When they say consultation at this stage, what that really means is this is what we're doing, we legally have to give a chance to firms and consumer groups to have their say on it. We are very unlikely to change any of the major points, but there might be a little bit of wriggle room around the edges. So for example, we'll be replying to the consultation. One of the things we're concerned about is when firms have to communicate with you that they may be seen as scams, how do we, how do you make sure that doesn't happen? So it's the edges that will be moved in the main rather than anything too material. So, and I really want you to understand when I say the court and going through this route. What the regulator has done is pretty unprecedented in the way that this is going to operate. It's going to be, you know, they're estimating up to eight billion pounds will be paid out.

• 5:08Martin Lewis?

  And this is the easiest form of redress scheme I have seen. So for people who have been mis-sold, this is going to be absolutely the easiest way to get money back. I think if you look at the amounts, there has perhaps been a small compromise on the amounts that people will get to stave off firms doing a judicial review to stop the regulator. So there is an argument that if you were to go through the court route, though you'll probably need a lawyer or a claims management firm to do that, and they will take 30% of what you get, and you'd have to be more aggressive, and it's not guaranteed, and there are costs there, that there is a chance you would get paid out more. But for where I sit on this, and I want to state this to start is, most people when they get in touch with me, all they're saying is when, when is it going to happen? Am I going to

• 5:51Martin Lewis?

  get my money? I've been waiting so long. I just want this to happen, and I want it to be simple. And the regulatory route is providing an easy, simple, and relatively quick route from this point onwards for people to get their money back. So that's the one I'm going to be talking you through.

• 6:05Speaker 04

  Okay, can I ask you a very basic question? What is the original sin briefly here?

• 6:10Martin Lewis?

  There are three original sins. Okay. So when this first started in January 2024, the main type of misselling I was talking about, and you know, I've got 3.2 million, 5 million complaints through my template letter on this, was discretionary commission arrangements. That's where you went to a dealer or broker to get your car, and they

• 6:36Martin Lewis?

  Increase the interest rate that you would be charged in order to get more commission. So you were charged a higher interest rate, so they got more commission. That was done, and in all of the different cases, without telling you. If you were told, and it's virtually unthinkable that you were told, you very rarely were. But if you were told, you weren't mis-sold. But if it was not, you were not told you were on a discretionary, and that's the key word, commission arrangement, and your interest rate was increased, that is deemed to have been mis-sold to you because you should have been notified why you were getting it up, and it's deemed to be uncompetitive. That was the original sin.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Got it.

• 7:12Martin Lewis?

  And that is what of the 11.5 million mis-sold DCAs on PCP and HP deals between April 2007 and January 2021. Now, people are going to say, hold on, I thought you could go up to November 2024 because they've heard me say that elsewhere. But on the DCAs, they stopped in January 2021, they were banned. So if your, if your claim is on a DCA, it's only up to January 2021. Then we had this case that went through the Supreme Court. And initially, the Supreme Court was basically saying that car dealers had a right to protect you and look after the way that you were, and they were, they were acting as your agent.

• 7:55Martin Lewis?

  And if they hadn't acted as your agent properly, you were mis-sold. That was when it was going to be enormous amounts of payout for even more people. Supreme Court squashed most of that and said they weren't effectively acting of your agents. They didn't have that responsibility. But within that judgment, there was a Johnson case that it did uphold. And the Johnson case brought up a number of different issues. One was the level of commission, how high the commission was. And the other was, were they actually pretending that you were being given the best deal from across the market, but you weren't really? So those are the other two sins that people have been mis-sold by that are coming in the regulatory process. So you understand discretionary commission arrangements?

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:34Martin Lewis?

  Let's do the other two now. Let's go through what the sins are. The next one is a contractual tie. So what happened here, and this happened in the Johnson case?

• 8:45Martin Lewis?

  Is you went to get your car financed and they effectively said something like, yeah, we're going to go and find you your best deal from a panel of lenders. But they didn't go to a panel of lenders. What they did is they had one lender who had a first call. So if that lender wanted your custom, that's the loan that you were given rather than them being a competitive market.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  But they weren't testing the market.

• 9:04Martin Lewis?

  So they weren't testing the market, having indicated to you that they were. And if they didn't disclose that to you, then you were mis-sold due to a contractual tie. That is 3.2 million arrangements. DCS 11.5, this is 3.2. The third one is where it is deemed, and again from the Johnson case at the Supreme Court, that the commission was so high in its own right that it was a market distortion. Now, this comes at two different levels of commission. The first is if the commission was over 35% of the cost of the credit and over 10% of the total loan amount, it was deemed that in its own right, even if nothing else was

• 9:47Martin Lewis?

  wrong, unless you were told how high the commission was, you were mis-sold. The second level is if it was over 50% of the cost of credit and over 22.5% of the loan value, then it was also deemed too high, but you actually get more compensation and we'll come on to the amounts of compensation. And there are 2.9 million high commission cases. So to run through all those discretionary commission arrangements, they got, they charge you more interest, they contractual tie, they didn't tell you they were only really going through one lender in most cases, and unfair high commission are the three sins, as you call them, that people are due to get money back. Now, some may go, hold on, you've just got about 17, 18 million cases. I thought you said there were 14 million.

• 10:30Martin Lewis?

  That's because in some cases, there was more than one of them. If there was more than one of them, you still only get the same amount of compensation. It's worth saying that. And it's also just to note, and we'll come on to more of this in detail. If you've complained about one of them, and the vast majority of people who've complained so far have complained about discretionary commission arrangements because that's what my template is, and that's 3.25 million complaints, we hear there's 4 million overall, so it's the majority of them, then the regulator is telling firms they must still look at the other two automatically, they must consider them even if you haven't complained about them. So hopefully that's giving you a start to see what the mischief that's trying to be sold by the regulator is.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. How's he doing so far, Rosie? Yeah, very good, yeah. You see, every so often...

• 11:14Martin Lewis?

  I mean, I am her boss, we have to be careful.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  But every so often, she gives an approving little nod.

• 11:19Martin Lewis?

  Good. I swear, is it?

• 11:20Speaker 04

  And if I had somebody like that, I'd be trying to elicit that little nod the whole time.

• 11:24Martin Lewis?

  I can't even see because I'm looking at you, so you get them on, I don't.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  Well, next time she does it, I'll go...

• 11:29Martin Lewis?

  Okay, all right.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  I'll give you one of them. Right. Okay, so Jodie, how do we know whether to put a complaint in or not? What are the next steps for those who aren't very clued up on this stuff?

• 11:39Martin Lewis?

  Okay. So, if you have not put a complaint in, we need to go through what is going to happen. If you haven't put a complaint in, what the firms are supposed to do once the redress scheme starts sometime in early 2026, is they are supposed to identify everybody they believe has been mis-sold. You will then be contacted, they're calling it a letter, but that hasn't been defined yet, whether it's a letter or an email or what form of contact, within six months of the start of the redress scheme, and you will then have a choice to opt into a complaint. So that's the point, you will then have to say, I want to be part of the complaint because they've identified that you were mis-sold. If you

• 12:23Martin Lewis?

  have already complained by the time the redress scheme starts, then you will be contacted and you have to opt out. So you will automatically be in the complaint scheme unless you choose to opt out. Ask me in a moment why some may choose to opt out, that's important. But just to explain this...

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Making out, Rosie, remind me if I forget.

• 12:42Martin Lewis?

  Okay, good. No, Rosie's with me, you can't tell them what to do. Right, so...

• 12:49Martin Lewis?

  If, the reason I'm phrasing it that way is, my view, and when I was talking to the boss of the regulator on this the other day, he agreed, is you would be better to be in the cohort of people who have complained and therefore it will happen unless you opt out, than in the cohort of people that you, that they have to contact and you have to opt in. Do you understand? Do you understand why? So my view is that means people should be putting in a complaint now before the scheme starts so that you're in the right position. You're in the, you're in the opt out, not the opt in. But, and I'm going to be really blunt here, and I hope I'm not breaching rules by saying this, the template letters that I have on my site that Rosie manages

• 13:32Martin Lewis?

  only talk about one of the three streams of complaining at the moment. And they also only include the firms that had offered discretionary commission arrangements because there are some firms that didn't. We, over the next few weeks, are working to change the letter and add all the other firms into the automatic complaint process. And that's what Rosie's going to be focusing on actually, and she's saying that's one of her main jobs over the next few weeks. Okay. So, as there is no harm in waiting a month or so, because you don't need to use a claims firm for this because this is all going to be automatic, I mean, there's, there's just no point. As there's no harm in waiting, I would say, I would sit on your hands for about a month or so and let us and other people who are doing similar things get all

• 14:14Martin Lewis?

  our, get all our ducks in a row to get this right for you. Because now we know what the redress scheme is, and we have strict dates on the redress scheme. So it is for PCP and HP deals between April 2007 and November 2024. Obviously, DCAs are earlier, but contractual mis-selling and unfairly high commission could be up to November 2024. There is no harm in waiting, as long as you get this in between, before the redress scheme starts in some time in the beginning of next year. So you would probably, the best thing to do is to put a complaint in. The easy way to do that is to use one of the three tools that are out there, including the one that I have. But those three tools aren't quite up to speed yet, so you may as well wait a month and do it then. And we can talk about that again in a month's time. So that is my answer. Yes, put a complaint in. If you

• 14:57Martin Lewis?

  had a PCP or HP deal between those times, and some may be saying, hold on, not everyone was mis-sold. Why are you encouraging everybody to do it? And here's why. Because all those three sins, discretionary commission arrangements, contractual tie, an unfairly high commission, the big sin is that you weren't told about them. So you do not know if you were mis-sold. You cannot find out if you were mis-sold without asking, was I mis-sold? That's the whole problem here. So it isn't, I'm just encouraging you to do it even if they weren't mis-sold. Actually, the premise of the template letter we drafted, the primary premise is to say, did I have a discretionary commission arrangement? And it will also be saying, was I contractually tied? And how high was my commission? Because none of that was disclosed. And that's the sin.

• 15:42Martin Lewis?

  So the only way, you have to do the search, the discovery before you do the complaint. And that's what the letters do both.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  A couple of questions come in. Tell me to ask you this later if it gets in the way. But a couple of people, John in Woodside Park and Richard in York, both asking if the loan was interest free. Do I still qualify for a complaint?

• 16:00Martin Lewis?

  No.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  Right, okay. And a couple of people, Toby in West Sussex and on, asking, does this cover lease?

• 16:09Martin Lewis?

  No.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  Contracts via.

• 16:10Martin Lewis?

  Only PCP and HP.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Okay, okay. And not business?

• 16:16Martin Lewis?

  No, this is consumer. Well, the definition of business is interesting. If you bought it and it wasn't primarily for business use, that you can do it. So there's a commuting sort of crossover in there. Sort of how much of it was for business? I mean, if you've gone and bought a truck for your limited company, no.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 16:32Martin Lewis?

  Right. But if you've got, if you've got a hybrid domestic van thing, then maybe yes.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Okay. Have I asked?

• 16:42Martin Lewis?

  We do the opt-out.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  I've got to ask you that thing. So if they come to you and they ask you whether you want to opt out of something, why on earth would you do that?

• 16:50Martin Lewis?

  I go back to how I started this in the first place. There are two routes for doing this. The FCA route, the regulatory route, is the easy, simple, quick, no hassle route.

• 17:03Martin Lewis?

  The more militant route is going to court. You may decide at that point that you think you're going to get more from going to court and you feel competent and capable to do so and you are willing to have that fight. That is not a judgment I will make for people. I'm mainly going to be focusing on the FCA route. But if you chose to do that, then you need to opt out of the FCA system. It's worth noting, if you do opt out of the FCA system, you cannot opt in again. So it's a one-time-only decision that you're making. So you go out of that and then you say, either I don't want the money because I don't think I've been missold and maybe there are some people who have that on a principal decision, or I'm going to go and do this myself and I'm going to go through the court route. And if you want to do that, that's why you have the chance to opt out, because you might

• 17:48Martin Lewis?

  say you wanted to do that. And I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's not the route I will be supporting because of listening to my listeners and having done PPI and having done bank charges and similar things in the past. The huge majority of people who are following the type of stuff that I do and want help, they just want easy and simple.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  Okay. Joe says, if you already contacted the finance companies regarding DCAs using your template, are we also now required to submit emails regarding the other two scenarios?

• 18:16Martin Lewis?

  No. So the regulator has confirmed if you have put in a complaint already about a DCA, then firms will automatically have to assess you for a contractual time misselling and an unfairly high commission misselling as well. So if you have put in a complaint, you are done. You just sit on your hands and wait to what will probably be my guess is you're probably going to get contacted maybe March, April, May 2026 and you will be asked to opt out if you were missold. And if you don't opt out, then they're going to pay you.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Andy in York says, is the £700 per claim or is it a one-off payment? I had approximately six cars during that period and wondered if I would get six times 700.

• 18:59Martin Lewis?

  Every individual claim is separate. So if you had six arrangements, six different car finance deals, even if it was with the same company, and they were all missold under one of the three categories of misselling, you would get paid for each one. Let's just do that £700 number though, because that's something. Some people seem to have got the impression that it is a fixed £700. It isn't. That is the average payout that will be assessed. Now, here's how they're going to do it. And I'm just searching back for that email with that table. Thank you, Rosie. Oh, she was good. Did you see that?

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Brilliant, Rosie, brilliant.

• 19:36Martin Lewis?

  There you go. Thank you. She knew where it was going to go.

• 19:40Martin Lewis?

  This is really complicated, folks. The, what the regulator has done to decide how much you'll be paid out in the vast majority of cases, is it has worked out what it believes the loss that you had was from the distortion of the market by the way that you were mis-selled. And having done a calculation, it has come up with a figure that that is 17% of the interest that you were charged. And it says, and it's just going to use that block, it's going to take that average figure for everybody and say, it's 17% of the figure that you were charged. There's one exception to that. So let's just, let me just give you an example on a DCA. Your interest was a thousand pounds.

• 20:24Martin Lewis?

  Therefore, the regulator's saying you are owed £170. And effectively, if your interest was 10%, it takes you down to, it should have been 8.3%. However, if the lowest amount of interest that was being charged by the car firm for anyone was 9%, it won't take you down to 8.3% because that's unfair. It would only take you down to 9%. But that's likely to be in very limited cases. In most cases, it's 17% of the interest. You've got that. That's step one. Step two is it also says, what was the total amount of commission paid to the dealer or broker? Which is generally higher than 17% of the interest.

• 21:08Martin Lewis?

  Then what it does, I told you it's complicated, is it adds up the total commission and it adds the 17% of the interest together and divides by two. So you effectively get a mean average of the total commission and the loss the regulator believes you have made. So you get more than the loss it thinks you've made, but less than the total commission. Let me give you some examples because I think that will help. So the average payout for a discretionary commission arrangement claim, which is the majority of them, is going to be, according to the FCA, £666. If it had done it by the loss system, you would have only got £421.

• 21:51Martin Lewis?

  If it had done it by the commission system, you would have got £910, and it is a weighted average, so don't start going quite into the means. So you're getting 666, you're getting in the middle. For those who were charged a high commission, the average payout will be £1,100. If it had done it by the loss system, it had been £452. If it had done it by the total commission, it'd been £1,765. For those who did a contractual tie, the average payout will be £686. If it had done it by the loss system, it'd been £511. If it had done it by commission, it'd been £862. So it is a pretty complicated formula that they are using to work out how much you get. Basically, they're going somewhere between the total commission that they got and the

• 22:33Martin Lewis?

  amount of loss the FCA deems you've got based on its calculation. There is a but, though.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Right, there always is.

• 22:39Martin Lewis?

  So, that's for the vast majority of cases. Then do you remember earlier I said there was a specific case of extremely high commission, where it was over 50% of the cost of the credit and over 22.5% of the cost of the loan? In those specific circumstances, because the court set a precedent on that, under the Johnson case, and the court awarded all the commission to be paid back and the interest, that in those circumstances, you will, the regulator will give you all the commission and interest. To put that in perspective, they're estimating that's 13,000 or 14,000 cases out of a total of 14 million.

• 23:21Martin Lewis?

  So it is not a very likely chance, it's a very small occasion. But overall, I mean, to cut that all short, most people are going to get an average of 700 quid. And you get interest on top, although the interest rate is way too low in my view. It's the bank base rate over the period that you were owed plus 1%. It used to be a statutory interest of 8% non-compounded a year. We are putting in the consultation, we think this change is too low, but they're also doing that at the Ombudsman as well. So, there we go.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  How about-

• 23:51Martin Lewis?

  How are you doing, Rosie?

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Very good.

• 23:53Martin Lewis?

  It's complicated, isn't it?

• 23:54Speaker 04

  Very good, yes.

• 23:55Martin Lewis?

  Okay.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Robert in Inverness, I mean, we've sort of covered this, but go on, Robert. How are you doing?

• 24:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think good afternoon, gents. I think you just touched on it there, but my question was, can you claim for numerous agreements? And if you can, do you need to do them individually?

• 24:12Martin Lewis?

  So, yes, every agreement is separate. How you do it, though, depends on, are they individual agreements with the same car finance firm or with different car finance firms?

• 24:24Speaker 05

  Okay, so I think I've got three, and I believe that two of them are different finance firms.

• 24:30Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so you've got two with one and one with the other, I'm presuming. Well, in fact, that's the only way it could be mathematically, isn't it? I'm sounding really clever there.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  Another good nod from Rosie there. Yeah, good maths.

• 24:39Martin Lewis?

  So, clearly the one you just do is a complaint in its own right. Where you've got two, you can combine them, you just need to make sure you, you know, when you're doing these complaints, the more information you give them, the better. If you have both policy numbers and for what the car registration is for each car, and you put those in your complaint letter, you can just do one complaint letter for both, but just make sure you're detailing the separate policies in them. And that's not a problem. So, it's a pretty easy system. And again, hopefully, and you've been listening along, hopefully the concept here, you don't have to do anything. Even if you haven't complained, what should happen is the car finance firms will identify that you've been mis-sold and they will communicate to you. My view is you'd be better off complaining now because then they've definitely got notice

• 25:24Martin Lewis?

  of you, they've definitely got your up-to-date address, and you'll be in the opt-out system. It's not compulsory, though. But the fact that you're listening to this and interested in it tells me you're the type of person who should be putting your complaint in because you want to be on it.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's the plan.

• 25:40Martin Lewis?

  Okay. All right. Good luck to you.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Thanks very much. Ian in Grantham says he's emailed Toyota twice using your template for asking about car finance mis-selling. I've not had any response. The first time was shortly after the template went live and then the other one a few months ago. Is this normal for Toyota?

• 25:57Martin Lewis?

  Rosie, can you check our data on Toyota? We have for each firm on what the response rates were. It's not that up to date. The last time we did a survey on it, but some firms are really good. So you generally get, what you want at least is to have had an acknowledgement of your email, even if they don't say anything. And then you're in the system and it counts.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 26:15Martin Lewis?

  Better is many firms have written back and either said, because it was only about discretionary commission arrangements, you did have a discretionary commission arrangement, or you didn't have a discretionary commission arrangement. But you want at least an acknowledgement on there. Rosie's tapping away, so we'll get that answer in a minute.

• 26:30Speaker 04

  Okay, but I mean, should he be worried? What should Ian do?

• 26:34Martin Lewis?

  No, the truth is, as long as you sent it, I mean, you use my tool and it automatically sends it to the right address. And we have checked that. We've been, we talked to each individual lender before we did that about what the right contact address is. So they have it logged. It just sounds like poor admin on their side. And no, you shouldn't be worried because they are legally obliged to contact you anyway. But yes, you should be absolutely frustrated and a little bit annoyed about it. Have you got those numbers?

• 27:01Martin Lewis?

  Okay, we don't have those numbers. We don't have specific data on Toyota. It's too small a firm to go. We'll do some looking and see where we are on that one. Through the magic of podcasting, I can now answer that question as I have found some data I have on Toyota responses, though I have to warn you, the data is from November 2024, so it's not that up to date. Back then, of around 360 people who replied, about 30% of them had not heard from Toyota at all. So this case is by no means unusual. Now, of course, it's slightly out of date. More people, more than slightly, more people may have heard now, but firms tend to continue their pattern of responses. So what I read from that is. The fact that you haven't heard from Toyota is likely to be more its administration

• 27:45Martin Lewis?

  processes than the fact that your complaint hasn't gone through. So I wouldn't worry that much. I think you probably have complained, you're probably fine, and you will be in the I've complained route. If the data had shown me that virtually everybody who got in touch with Toyota had got a response, I would be saying the anomaly is with you and you probably need to do anything. So having done a little bit of checking, I think it's probably just get a little bit frustrated that you haven't heard anything, but you're probably fine.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  Hannah sent the initial complaint, has a complaint reference number with the company. Does she need to do anything else? Or will she just automatically be receiving the compensation?

• 28:19Martin Lewis?

  Assuming she was mis-sold, she will be contacted at some point in early 2026, maybe March, April, May, as I've said. And they will then say, we are going to pay, we plan to pay you this amount of compensation. If you want to do that, you don't have to do anything. But if you don't want to be withdrawn from that, you will need to opt out now. So no, she doesn't need to do anything more.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Okay. And let's say hypothetically, somebody who looked and sounded exactly like me bought a car in January 2024 on PCP.

• 28:50Martin Lewis?

  Handsome chap.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  No, not particularly. No.

• 28:53Martin Lewis?

  From the West Midlands?

• 28:54Speaker 04

  Quite unpleasant from some ankles. Okay. Anyway, yes, it was me. So how would I know? All I remember is signing about 200 different pieces of paper.

• 29:04Martin Lewis?

  January 2024.

• 29:05Speaker 04

  That is when the car was registered, yeah.

• 29:07Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so let's just, good, because that's quite useful to explain the dates. There are three different dates that are relevant here. You've got April 2007, which is the furthest that you can go back. You've got November 2024, which is the most recent you can go to. And you've got January 2021, which is when discretionary commission arrangements were banned. So you did not have a discretionary commission arrangement. So that's one of the three categories of mis-selling. Gone. You may have been contractually tied, in other words, they may have told you were getting from a whole group of lenders but really only go to one lender, you may have had unfairly high commission. How do you know? You don't.

• 29:49Martin Lewis?

  That's the whole point, is this is all about undisclosed, misselling. If you were told, you weren't missold. So if you weren't told, the only way to find out is to say, was I, were you contractually tied when you sold me?

• 30:04Speaker 04

  But what does told mean? Because I was given, I was, I signed hundreds of pieces of paper.

• 30:08Martin Lewis?

  Is it in your documentation? Did they tell you?

• 30:10Speaker 04

  You couldn't possibly read through the documentation.

• 30:12Martin Lewis?

  No, no, but, but, let's just go back. Again, stop trying to make it too difficult. If you remember, I initially came and said there are two routes, there's the court route, the difficult route, then there's the easy, simple route. The easy, simple route is that these firms effectively, the regulator is saying you have to behave in a certain prescribed way, you know, and, and, and I say that there is some compromise in my view to this. And I, you know, I, I said the other day when I was being interviewed about what's going on, I want these firms to accept this and not fight this by judicial review. If they had accepted and not fight it by judicial review, certainly I, and I can't speak for other consumer groups, certainly I will accept it and suggest people use this route. If they go militant and try and fight it, then I might start saying people need to go to court, which they will not want.

• 30:57Martin Lewis?

  So the reason I'm making that point is, under this system, you don't need to go back through that paperwork, the companies have to go through their paperwork and documentation about what was done and what was not done. You ask, was I contractually tied? How much was my commission? Is it over the unfair commission barrier? You write them a letter and you ask them that. That's what you need to do. And that is why we have a regulatory redress scheme, because there is clearly a misbalance of power between

• 31:29Martin Lewis?

  Joe Blogs or Adrian Charles buying a car and huge car finance firms with 30 page of legalese that nobody understands. That's why you have a regulatory redress scheme when what was happening is there was a sneaky way of misselling by the way that they were operating over the years.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Okay, Hayley, what happens if you already put your claim in via a third party, they're taking a percentage, so would the 700 go via them?

• 31:49Martin Lewis?

  Okay, this is a big question and this is one that we are planning to do some more work on. Many people went via claims firms. If you're going to go the court route, I can see why you would do that. But as I have been warning for at least a year, we were likely to see a simple system put in by the regulator that does not need you to be paying anybody to do it for you. So we're now in a very interesting position that we have quite a lot of people because of the huge amount of marketing and advertising that went through claims management companies. We had a warning put out by all the regulators who cover those claims management companies and law firms the other day about misleading claims that may have been put in by those firms.

• 32:29Martin Lewis?

  And effectively what's being said is, some of the firms say you must have an exit fee. If you decide to opt out and not go through the firm, then you pay an exit fee. One of the big problems with that is those exit fees are often payable immediately. So if you contacted the firm now and say, actually, I don't want you to do this for me, I'm going to opt out, I'm going to do it myself, so I don't have to give you the commission because it's easy, well, you may have to pay them an exit fee now under the contract that you sign with them. What the regulator is saying is you should not pay, you should only be paying for work that has been done. So if they're not going to be doing very much work for you, they shouldn't be charging you the full fee. When we ask them how much you should be charging or exactly how this works, we get, we're not there yet.

• 33:11Martin Lewis?

  And so my answer is going to mirror it to an extent. Over the next few weeks, we are going to be working on what the situation is for people who've signed up to claims management firms and the claims management firm is not going to be doing anything for them. But it is currently a vague and a grey area and claims management firms by definition are litigious firms because that is what they do and this needs to be worked out. I think certainly you did sign up to them. If they're going to charge you an exit fee, if that's fair and reasonable because they probably have done some work already, then you're going to have to pay it and you're going to have to work out. You know, which adds up best for you and if they have done work for you, you're going to have to pay them within what was contracted for the work that they have done, but they may not have done much work for you as it's all been on hold for a while. So we are in

• 33:55Martin Lewis?

  a, we're in a grey area on that one at the moment and it's something that, that we will be doing more work on and we will be pushing both, both the, I mean, if you wanted to complain to the firm, by the way, just so everybody knows, if you do complain to the firm and you don't like what you get, then you have a right, if it's a claims management firm, under most circumstances, to go to the claims management ombudsman, which is part of the financial ombudsman. But if it's legally regulated under the solicitors regulatory authority, then you go to the legal ombudsman. So you have to find out which type of firm it is too, because there's two different regulatory processes for claims management firms.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Okay, um, Lauren and Jimmy in County Tyrone have the same question. What if you've changed address? And I can't remember, Lauren said, I can't remember if the template letter included this information.

• 34:36Martin Lewis?

  It will have included your address and you should have put in your new address if you haven't, but that's very simple. Let's not, get in touch with the firm that you've complained to, especially if they've had a reply, and just update them to your new address. Say, by the way, my new address for correspondence is X. Well, I don't say it's X, because obviously it will just, you know, it'd probably send it to Elon Musk. But, you know, put down what your new address is. Let's not make that too difficult.

• 34:56Speaker 04

  Ryan says, what if I can't remember? So within the window, I've had a total of six cars on HP or PCP. I think I've submitted a letter to once, to at least once to one of them. How can I check this? Or should I just resend a letter to all? Or should I, and also should I send three letters to all to ask about the three types?

• 35:15Martin Lewis?

  You don't need to ask about the, if you have complained about one type, they have to consider all three types. So you don't need to do any more. So let's write that one off. If you don't know if you've complained, well, it's very tough to know, to know what to say, other than, well, if you're not sure, you might want to put a complaint letter into all of them. If you're telling me you don't remember who your agreement with is, that is a different matter. Again, let's just go back to the process, two step process. One for people who've complained, you'll get an opt out. One for people who haven't complained, but the firms have discovered that you were mis-sold, you will be contacted anyway. So the, the cost of not complaining isn't huge. I think it slows things down. It's a bit more bureaucratic and they might not have your current address. So you're better off to complain, but it's not a huge amount.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Simon says, I put in a claim when you first highlighted this using your form. VW Finance came back and said I wasn't eligible. Does this change at all with this recent ruling? That's the bit I don't understand. I mean, you might say, well, no disrespect to VW, anyone, anybody else. But if they come back and say you're not eligible, well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

• 36:20Martin Lewis?

  Well, no, because what they asked, what the letter asked is, did I have a discretionary commission arrangement?

• 36:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:26Martin Lewis?

  So there were two types of firms. There were firms that didn't do discretionary commission arrangements at all and firms that did sometimes do discretionary commission arrangements. So VW Finance was one of those that sometimes did it. So if you've complained to them, they've said you haven't got a discretionary commission arrangement. One would hope that the regulator is absolutely on top of this and will be spot checking, that there will be veracity in the information. But now it means you still may have been mis-sold via a contractual tie or unfairly high commission. But the fact that you have put a complaint in means you have put a complaint in and therefore they will have to investigate those and you will be in the contracted outletter, i.e. where they'll just tell you if you're being mis-sold and you don't have to do anything.

• 37:11Martin Lewis?

  So you will be in that category, which it works that way.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  What if the company used for your finance is no longer in business? I have two agreements. Santander has confirmed a DCA on and this other one from 2007.

• 37:24Martin Lewis?

  I'm sorry, is the answer. You cannot be part of the regulatory process for a firm that has gone bust. So if the car finance firm is bust, you are not going to be paid out via the regulatory process. Now, maybe arguably, if there were liquidators to that firm and you would be a creditor of that firm, and you were to take the liquidators to court, that you owed the money on the back of it, you might get some money on the back, but you still can't go via the liquidation process via the FCA. The FCA redress scheme is only for firms that are still trading now. If another firm has taken over that old company's liabilities, you may be able to. But basically, for most people, if you want a simple and easy life, if the firm you got

• 38:07Martin Lewis?

  your car finance with has gone bust, you're not getting anything, being straight.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Okay. And Gareth, it says, my dad took finance out on a car in 2010 but has passed away. Can his mom still make a claim?

• 38:22Martin Lewis?

  Yes, so you are still eligible. The person who is the primary beneficiary of the estate is eligible and the firm should be contacted by the executor of the estate or the primary beneficiary of the estate with proof of who the primary beneficiary is in order for that claim to be pursued. I would say in those circumstances, I would strongly push you to put a claim in because clearly it gets much more difficult. Let's just, while we're on this, let's just talk old car finance, because you said 2010. This is really interesting and difficult and complicated. So, clearly, if you've got a car in the last six or seven years, you've got all the details.

• 39:01Martin Lewis?

  Even if you paid it off, credit reference agencies keep details of active lending for the last six years. So, active lending for the last six years means even if six years ago was your last payment month for a car finance, you got out five years before that, it'll still be on the credit reference file, you've got data, you hopefully have documentation, you've kept documentation, it's fine. And the firms themselves are being told to turn over every stone to find out all the details of who had these car finance agreements and check them. And I'm hearing, and I haven't got this confirmed, there is access to credit reference agencies of more than six years' data for that the firms will be able to access, but I haven't

• 39:43Martin Lewis?

  stamped that yet, so I may be wrong on that, we're looking at whether that's possible. So the firms will need to identify, but let's be really blunt. If we start going back to 2007, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, you know, you're talking 13 years ago, it's much more difficult and there is a high plausibility that even if you had a car finance deal, the firm will not know that now because they do destroy records and they are often encouraged through data protection to destroy records. So what happens in those circumstances? In those circumstances, you, the best thing to do is you have to find some evidence that you had car finance with them at that time. Now, that evidence could be an old credit reference file of yours, it could be an old

• 40:27Martin Lewis?

  bank statement that shows you were paying them, even better if you had the original agreements and you're, you know, it's interesting because when we talk about how long you keep documents for, the standard advice is you keep your statements for six years. I wrote a blog 10 years ago saying, "I disagree with that. I would keep records of every agreement you've got because we don't know what the next PPI will be."

• 40:48Speaker 04

  And here it is.

• 40:49Martin Lewis?

  And here it is, and you should keep those documents, keep them on your computer in a file, just have them somewhere that you could go back and search them. And that's future-proofing advice, by the way, now for everything else that's out there. I'm not saying you need to keep every bank statement, but every loan and agreement you sign up, try and keep a record of it. Now, if you have any data going back to that time, then I would make a complaint, even with the scarcity of data. This was the registration number and I know I bought it through your firm. What the regulator will likely do, not confirmed yet, is even if there's scant details, it will look and it did this in PPI and say, were people who were getting the type of loans that you were getting at that time in the same circumstances systematically being mis-sold in this way? If they were, then we will assume that you were mis-sold in that way.

• 41:34Martin Lewis?

  If they weren't, we will assume you weren't mis-sold in that way. So even scant details from the early period may be enough to get the claim through. But if you have no details and it's old and the firm has no details, then nothing's going to happen and you just have to say, well, you know, that's it.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Okay. And Jim in County Tyrone, he thinks, I might have misunderstood his question, I think he's right. He said, if I haven't complained and I wait on the finance company to proactively contact me, how will they do this if I've moved house?

• 42:04Martin Lewis?

  Well, they should try and find your latest address, but I presume we are going to be saying and going to be campaigning out there for everybody to update with the finance company if you have moved address because they may not have it. My, what I'm suggesting you do is you contact and put a complaint in, then they have your address and you include your old address and you include the car details. This is why I'm saying you want to be in the I've complained group. You don't want to be in the I've not complained group because while it should work, there are clearly going to be people who fall by the wayside in that group. So you're asking me what to do? Put a complaint in them, tell them your address.

• 42:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 42:42Martin Lewis?

  That's my answer.

• 42:43Speaker 04

  Laura wants to know if this all applies for loans for a motorcycle.

• 42:48Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, this is for any motorised vehicle bought as a domestic or a consumer purchase, not a business purchase. So motorcycle, yes. Motorhome, yes. Domestic use van, yes. Car, yes.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  But if you're a self-employed decorator and you buy a van.

• 43:10Martin Lewis?

  Then if it's for business use, it's for business use. The more important point I was about to make, the one everybody asked me, caravan, no. Caravans do not have motors. Therefore, even if you bought a caravan on a similar type of deal, it is not included in this scheme.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  That doesn't seem fair, but anyway.

• 43:28Martin Lewis?

  Motorhome, yes. Caravan, no.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Got it, because caravan's got no motor.

• 43:32Martin Lewis?

  And this is about, this is actually motor vehicle compensation is technically, I call it car finance, it's motor vehicle finance compensation is technically what it is.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Any other business?

• 43:45Martin Lewis?

  Do you know what? I'm going to do some more questions, I think, in the pod only bit. But I think at this point, Adrian, we all need something a little bit more relaxing and a little bit more chilling. Rosie and I certainly do, but maybe not for you. Can we play the theme tune, please?

• 44:04Speaker 04

  I want Rosie just to give me a...

• 44:06Martin Lewis?

  She is not allowed, Rosie will know the answer. She is not allowed to help you. Rosie, I will poker face, please.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  I'm just looking at you, Rosie, listening to it.

• 44:16Martin Lewis?

  So the score, Adrian, the mastermind score, where I ask you questions rather than you ask me questions, is you currently have 11 right and 23 wrong in this three option multiple choice, which means it is now statistically likely that if we had written the options on three scraps of paper, place them on the floor beneath a three-toed sloth, and each week picked whichever one it pooped on the most, that would be a more successful method of answering than you have been.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 44:47Martin Lewis?

  You are now and have officially limboed below random chance. Random chance, you would have been 11, 22 wrong. So.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  It's nearly time for the news.

• 44:57Martin Lewis?

  In a shock, I'm throwing you a bone.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  All right.

• 45:01Martin Lewis?

  This week's question. Is one I have explained to you before in a very similar way to the way I ask it now. In fact, I have done the explanation, looking you in the eyes twice on the show. Yes, this is a sympathy question, everybody. Adrian, you should get this right. Does that add pressure?

• 45:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 45:24Martin Lewis?

  Good. So, no elaborate setup, no preamble, just the question. If you bought a high-tech smartphone, brand new, eighteen months ago, and it's now failing through no fault of yours, you haven't damaged, you haven't misused it, it's now got a fault. How long are you protected whereby law they must repair it or replace it for free? Is it A, the warranty length, which we'll say in this case is one year? B, there's no fixed time, it's just what's reasonable? C, two years as the EU electrical law was incorporated into UK law post Brexit?

• 46:07Martin Lewis?

  So, it's a faulty phone, you haven't done anything wrong, you bought it eighteen months ago. How long is your protection? The warranty length, which we'll call a year, it could be two years, but in this case I'll say it's one year. There's no fixed time, it's just what's reasonable, or two years as the EU electrical law was incorporated into UK law post Brexit?

• 46:24Speaker 04

  I think, well, I think I remember when you told me, you boiled it down very kindly to me and using the example of a tin whistle. If I bought a tin whistle for a quid and it conked out after a year.

• 46:41Martin Lewis?

  Yep.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  That was not unreasonable. But if this is a high-tech smartphone, and you said high-tech, you made that point. Not any old smartphone, and eighteen months, through no fault of my own, you said. So I would say that is unreasonable. It is not a reasonable length of time. So I'm going for B.

• 47:06Martin Lewis?

  You're saying there's no fixed time, it's just what's reasonable. I had a big bone, been chewed by a dog, I tossed it up in the air, it span around a few times. You put your hands out in that correct cricket catch to see if you could catch it.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:21Martin Lewis?

  It fell down, you pushed your hands together over the bone, did it slip out? No, play Hallelujah.

• 47:32Martin Lewis?

  That's friendship, I gave you an easy one. So just to explain it to everybody who is listening. Yeah, look, it's really important to understand there are consumer rights laws when you buy something that say goods must be of satisfactory quality as described, fit for purpose and last a reasonable length of time. Those are your legal rights. If you take them back within a month if it's faulty, you're entitled to a full refund. If you take it back after that, you're entitled to a repair or partial refund or a replacement. There is no time limit though. Reasonable time, exactly as Adrian beautifully explained, and it was a tin whistle, it's actually a plastic whistle, but I'm gonna let you have the tin whistle, but it was a pretty good memory, is the way that I tend to explain it. So it is what a reasonable person would say is reasonable.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  Well, there's just a grey area.

• 48:18Martin Lewis?

  It is, and ultimately it's a judge who would decide it. But what we do is, and I've done before where I've got juries of people, just as an example, and said, okay, I've got 10 people here, how would, what would you say is reasonable? And we'd go in here, and I think we would all say that a whistle breaking after 18 months, if it costs 50p or a quid, wow, that's pretty reasonable, it's not fair. But if I've spent two grand on a smartphone and through no fault of my own, it's not working after 18 months, well, that is perfectly reasonable. Now, what happens, and the reason I do this question, and the mischief I'm looking to solve in this question, is I cannot tell you how many people go to high-tech shops where the retailer and the manufacturer are the same. So I'm talking Apple and Samsung, to be honest. And they go in and their phone's broken after 18 months and they take it in and they say, "Sorry, you're out of warranty."

• 49:03Speaker 04

  I never bought the extra warranty.

• 49:05Martin Lewis?

  Well, it doesn't matter, they say you're out of warranty. And, and my answer is warranty schmorienty, because the warranty is a contractual obligation that you were given by the manufacturer. Absolutely fine, it's nice to have and it's good, but you have legal rights with the retailer. Now, in this case, the retailer, if it's Apple, Apple is a retailer and a manufacturer. They're answering you as a manufacturer, you're going into the shop, you're asking them as a retailer. Under the retail rights law, the sad fart rule, satisfactory quality as described, fit for purpose and last a reasonable length of time, you have retail rights and you're saying, "I don't care about your warranty, you do it politely and nicely, it's not the customer service people's fault." You're saying, under the law, this this item must last a reasonable length of time. It has not lasted a reasonable length of time. Therefore, you are responsible for repair or replacement.

• 49:50Martin Lewis?

  Now, if you push that and you understand that the warranty is irrelevant, because I'm asking you as a retailer and your rights, your legal rights are always with the shop you bought, the place that you have the contract from, then you need to enforce it. And that is, I mean, we should teach this in schools. You buy something, your rights with the retailer. If items are faulty and you take them back, then they have, they have to give you a full refund within 30 days or repair or replace afterwards. Of course, it's a grey area. I mean, let's say we've got a jury of you and Rosie here. My smartphone breaks after four and a half years. It costs two grand. Is that reasonable?

• 50:23Speaker 04

  I mean, the amount of yakking you do, I'd be amazed if it lasted that long. I wouldn't give you your money back.

• 50:28Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so, so you see, that of my jury of two.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:32Martin Lewis?

  You're both saying that's unreasonable. So, you know, one and a half years, you're saying is reasonable, four and a half years. Now, if I went up every month, at what point do we stop?

• 50:41Martin Lewis?

  Right, that is the podcast over and done with. I think we got through a huge number of people's questions. And with podcast producer Matt. Matt, is there anything I didn't manage to answer?

• 50:52Speaker 06

  Okay, there is one thing that people have been asking.

• 50:54Martin Lewis?

  Almost, I almost made it. Go on, what is it?

• 50:56Speaker 06

  So close. Is this amount lower than the amount that we first thought?

• 51:00Martin Lewis?

  Yes, it is. And there are probably three reasons for that. The first is, the original figure that was being quoted as an average was £1,200 per person on a discretionary commission arrangement. Now, that figure was because that is based on the calculations that the financial ombudsman was using on a case by case basis at the time, which effectively said, take the interest you paid

• 51:26Martin Lewis?

  and subtract from it the minimum interest you could have paid if you're, they hadn't added extra interest in order to pay extra commission. So you had the difference between the interest you were paid and the minimum interest. But even at the time, I was saying there were no guarantees that the regulator was going to follow that form of methodology. And I suggested it may well follow something called a Plevin methodology from PPI, where it chose what it was a reasonable interest rate. And you get the difference between the interest rate you were charged and a reasonable interest rate, which isn't that far from how it has actually constructed what it's doing. And I won't go into that again because you heard it earlier and it's complicated.

• 52:04Martin Lewis?

  The second point. Is possibly because the FCA has used a different measure for what it's saying now to after the Supreme Court hearing a couple of months ago. Then it said claims will likely be less than nine hundred and fifty pounds. Now it says claims will be an average seven hundred pounds. And those two are of course not inconsistent. It could be less than fifty nine hundred and fifty pounds and an average seven hundred pounds. I suspect it did that because it hadn't fully decided what the compensation level it was going to give was at the time. So it went with a most people will get less than rather than an average because to do an average you have to know exactly how you structure the redress scheme. And within that, I think there is a nub here.

• 52:48Martin Lewis?

  Now, if you look at what the court did in the narrow instance of the Johnson case, it effectively gave people back all their commission. And if you gave them back all the commission, that would be nearer nine hundred pounds than seven hundred pounds. But what's actually happened here is the regulators come up with this hybrid model of you get somewhere between the total commission and what we calculate as the market lost back, which is less. That's the average seven hundred pound figure. So whether there has actually been a material change because of the way it's calculated it, or it's a communication change, I don't have a way of knowing. Both are possible. And of course, you may say, why is it giving less? Well, I mean, the answer, I suspect, I don't know, they'd say this overtly, but I strongly

• 53:28Martin Lewis?

  suspect the answer is because it had to come up with a solution that was legally robust, but wouldn't wouldn't see wasn't so expensive that we would see judicial review coming from any of the car finance firms. In other words, it's a slight compromise, which is why I started this by saying, you may well get awarded more if you go to court, but then there are costs associated, especially if you've got lawyers or claims management firms with it. And so that is part of the compromise here in order to get this, what will hopefully be quick, easy, fast, and see far, far more people being paid out without having to use and pay fees to claims management firms. And the third reason people may feel it's less is because there have been some very exaggerated claims being put out there, certainly by some claims management firms on the back

• 54:13Martin Lewis?

  of the earlier court cases. Though again, it's true that if you do go to court, you may be paid out more. So so there is a balance to be had in that. I think when you wrap all of that up together. Yes, the figure is definitely lower than when we started. Whether it's unjustifiably lower, hopefully I've given you enough information so you can decide that for yourself. And a final thought on this, the regulator is saying most people will be paid two thirds or more of the commission. And if you go to court, you would get the commission. And a claims management firm typically takes 30% of what you get paid. So the commission minus 30% and you get two thirds of the commission or more is indicating

• 54:57Martin Lewis?

  to me, I think the FCA is subtly trying to say, hey, people are still going to get as much in their pocket going this route as they would do going to court after fees. I mean, let's not dot the i's and cross the t's on those particular exact amounts, but I think that's the subtle messaging it's trying to come out with there. I haven't done the adding up on it yet and we haven't quite seen the detail on it, so I'm not making a judgment. I'm just telling you the message it's putting out on that.

• 55:18Speaker 06

  Whew, I think that's everything, isn't it?

• 55:20Martin Lewis?

  There is one more thing I just realised I haven't said and I am dotting every i and crossing every possible t, so let's go super techno geek nerd for a second. I talked earlier about the compensatory interest that you will get, which is bank base rate, so every year when the base rate changed, it will change. So if you're over an eight year period, they'll be tracking the base rate over those periods, plus 1%. But I have noticed in the documentation, they are saying that if you can prove that you suffered more harm than that compensatory rate of interest, then you may be able to argue for more interest. So let me try and give what I think they're trying to, they're getting at, although I'm not 100% sure yet and I'll need to do a little bit more work on it.

• 56:04Martin Lewis?

  I think if your loan was so expensive that you had to do other borrowing elsewhere that was also expensive, say you had to use a credit card and you were paying 18% on that, you could argue that to put you back in the position you would have been, bank base rate plus 1% does not do it because you were paying 18 or 19% interest on your credit card. And you could make that argument once you get the interest given to you. Now again, none of that is going to be relevant until March, April, May next year, and it's certainly something we will Be doing work on to try and come up with a when you should be asking to be given more interest and when you shouldn't be asking to be given more interest. And they will want it to be provable at the time. So there is a slight possibility interest will be bigger for some. And someone will need to be working on that.

• 56:48Martin Lewis?

  And Rosie is still sitting next to me and Rosie, you're going to be working on working exactly, exactly what she's very clever luckily. And exactly how that works. And then we will try and work out what our stances and what we should guide people through on that. So just a final little note, but I, you know, I go back to where I started on this. This is absolutely massive. It's 14 million arrangements. It's an estimated payout of 8.2 billion pounds, although I have a little bit of skepticism. Because that involves a huge number of people doing this. And I am slightly worried about people thinking when they get contacted about their opt in, that they didn't know they had a car finance misselling, that they're going to think it was a scam. And we really do have to do some work on that. But this is still relatively early stages.

• 57:30Martin Lewis?

  This is a consultation document, although it's a hard consultation, unlikely to change too much. That closes in November and then we'll get the final redress scheme somewhere next January. So everything I say has some slight caveats on it. But I hope you've set you up with the main messages from me are. If you had an HP or PCP deal between April 2007 and November 2024. I would strongly suggest you get a complaint in to ask. Did it have a discretionary commission arrangement or was it contractually tried? Or was my level of commission high? There are, you could do that yourself, although there will be free tools available. My free tool isn't yet. I mean, you could actually use it now and be fine because I'd have to consider all three cases, even if you only put a discretionary commission arrangement complaint in.

• 58:15Martin Lewis?

  But I would say, give me a month and I'll have that done. And other people will probably have tools and things and template letters available. And the regulator has a template letter available. And so I would strongly urge you to put your complaint in if you want the money. Because I think it will make the process easier. But I would also say, if you don't do that, that doesn't mean you won't get anything. It just means it may take longer and it might be a bit more difficult for them to track you. And that is my final summary. And probably this podcast has been enough where we should finish.

• 58:44Martin Lewis?

  That's it for this week. Please do spread the message about this podcast to anyone who's interested in car finance. There are so many questions and confusions out there. I hope this will start to clear things up for people and make sure they get put on the right track, or on the right road is probably a better analogy. So just tell your friends that you've been listening to the latest The Martin Lewis podcast and why not subscribe too? And then your pockets will be pleased with you. And if your friends subscribe, their pockets will be pleased with them and you too. It couldn't be any better. We tend to put out a new episode every Thursday and also the Question Time podcast on a Monday too, where you can ask me absolutely anything and everything. Normally I tell you what to do if you haven't enjoyed it, but you know, today, I'm spent.

• 59:43Speaker 07

  Martin 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 [email protected]. 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.

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• 1:01:29Martin Lewis?

  He's the founder of the Adani Group, one of India's major infrastructure conglomerates.

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• 1:01:38Martin Lewis?

  He's become one of Asia's wealthiest individuals.

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  On Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service, we're delving into the life and fortune of billionaire businessman Gautam Adani.

• 1:01:48Martin Lewis?

  Listen on bbc.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts.