Another disadvantage can be that you may want three years contract hire but the offer it is only available over perhaps eighteen months or two years. Ultimately it is a question of weighing up the pros and cons. The normal procedure when you take a vehicle on contract hire, or personal contract hire is that you pay three months rental in advance (if the offer you see advertised, requires six payments in advance it is unlikely to be cheap), this is regardless of whether the car is available over eighteen months or three years. So it is worth doing the calculation if the car is available over a shorter term, to see how much it pushes up the cost.
Many of the offers you will see for cheap contract hire will be through contract hire brokers, particularly on contract hire websites where various brokers advertise. It's important to be aware that in general these websites do not police the quality of the advertiser, or the authenticity of their advertisements. The vast majority of contract hire brokers are extremely reputable organisations striving to run an ethical and service driven business. We at Bowater Price have a number of smaller brokers that work with us; in the course of setting up these relationships we visit a large number of brokers throughout the country and we are invariably very impressed by the way they operate. Contract hire broking is nevertheless an unregulated industry and where clients generally fall foul of unethical brokers is when they follow up an offer of cheap contract hire.
Some of these offers do not even exist and are designed to attract a potential client's attention. When they make an enquiry they may be told that all those vehicles have been sold, however you will still see them advertised two weeks later. There are companies, again often those that advertise what appears to be very cheap contract hire, that take deposits that can be very difficult to recover.
We have seen contract hire broker's terms and conditions where they have no obligation to deliver the vehicle within any set time scale but can charge you three months rental if you cancel, the potential problem is obvious. This may well be covered under the Unfair Contract Act; customers have protection against companies using unfair small print but going to court is the last thing that most busy people or companies want.
Apart from the offers that are not genuine, Cheap Contract Hire will probably get you a car that may not be the exact model, exact specification, or even the term you want but it will give you a very reasonably priced contract hire or personal contract hire vehicle, if you are in a position to order immediately or the planned delivery date suits your timetable.
These offers will generally suit those looking for a vehicle for personal contract hire, in other words an individual rather than a company (although you do need to check that the offer is also available on personal contract hire, not all are), or a company that infrequently buys vehicles. This is because different brokers at different times will have a very cheap contract hire offer. It can get very complicated for a company that has a number of vehicles, if they acquire them from lots of different sources; they generally need a larger broker that is very competitive across the range of manufacturers that can coordinate and manage its fleet.
In summary Cheap Contract Hire deals can be very worthwhile, you just need to try and assess if the deal on offer is genuine and that it is not to far removed from the vehicle you actually want; even eighteen months can be a long time, when you are driving a car you are not happy with.
Should you have any queries or questions with regard to Fleet Management, Licence checking, Contract Hire, Personal Contract Hire, Lease Purchase or vehicle Hire Purchase, please do not hesitate to contact us. Bowater Price plc 01494 536 536. www.bowaterprice.com.
