Martin Lewis warns drivers with car on the driveway could be owed £1,100
Martin Lewis has warned "anyone" with a car on their driveway could be owed an eye-watering £1,100. The regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has launched a major investigation into hidden, unfair car finance commission.
This could lead to billions of pounds of overcharged interest paid back to millions of people. After setting up a free tool via the Money Saving Expert website, the ITV and BBC star said: "Already 2.3m complaints have been submitted through it, such as Catherine's - she emailed us after: "Your online tool is brilliant.
"I have submitted 6 'claims', yes 6 - and I did it only because of how easy, clear and simple you made it." Mr Lewis said: "This likely meant many overpaid without knowing and may be due a predicted average £1,100 back."
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In about 40% of car finance deals, there were hidden 'discretionary commission arrangements'. This is where lenders allowed brokers & car dealers to up the interest to increase their commission – so you overpaid, without knowing.
The first thing to do is to find out if you were impacted. In reply, a fan told him: "Got the following; After checking our records, we can confirm that we did not pay a discretionary commission to the dealer. As your agreement was not subject to a discretionary commission model, we’re not treating your enquiry as a data subject access request or complaint."
"I had a prompt reply from Blackhorse and asked me if I wanted to push forward with the complaint as I had been mis-sold via Vauxhall… thank you for all your hard work," a second wrote. "I got a hit but on your website its now says DEC 2025 so 2026 to get any actual money?! Plenty of time for a lot of them to bankrupt the companies and start up fresh under a new name, No?!" another asked.
"I really hope dealerships claim back overallowance where they used finance comm to help customers get out of neg equity…it was legal also btw so mis-selling is the wrong phrase…," said a fellow social media user on Twitter/.X