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If you took out PCP, HP or another vehicle finance deal between 6 April 2007 and 1 November 2024 while dealing with a personal crisis, bereavement, illness or financial difficulty, you may well be owed compensation. The clearest way to find out is to run a free check that finds your old agreements in under 60 seconds, with no registration document or lender paperwork needed. Exceptions exist, including agreements already settled by a court or the Financial Ombudsman Service and cases complicated by bankruptcy, so treat the check as your starting point, not the final word.
TL;DR:
- Most people can quickly check if they had a car finance agreement between April 2007 and November 2024 that may have been mis-sold, using only basic personal details.
- Evidence such as call recordings, original forms, bank statements, or medical letters from the time can strengthen a vulnerability claim, especially if the lender knew about your difficulties during purchase.
- Complaints must be made first to the lender, then escalated to the Financial Ombudsman if unsatisfied or after an eight-week wait; court action is a last resort for high-value cases.
- The FCA’s scheme is paused due to legal challenges, so some claims may face delays, and scam warnings include firms asking for upfront payments or unsolicited contact.
- The scheme covers agreements from 2007 to 2024, with a six-year claim limit from the agreement date and a consumer scheme deadline of August 31, 2027.
Eligibility hinges on when you took out the agreement and how it was arranged, not on how badly things went afterwards. The FCA’s motor finance redress scheme covers PCP, hire purchase and conditional sale agreements taken out between 6 April 2007 and 1 November 2024.
Under PS26/3, a lender is judged to have treated you unfairly if one of three things happened:
There are exceptions worth knowing before you get your hopes up. Small, clearly disclosed commissions, interest-free deals, and agreements already ruled on by the FOS or a court generally fall outside the scheme. Being in a vulnerable situation at the point of sale, such as a bereavement, a mental health crisis or financial hardship, does not by itself trigger a payout. It strengthens a complaint once poor disclosure is established, but the scheme’s core test remains whether you were told the truth about commission and lender ties.
You do not need your old finance paperwork, your car’s registration number, or the lender’s name to get started. A free check service can search for agreements linked to you and report back very quickly, which matters if your documents were lost, thrown out years ago, or never kept in the first place.
The process runs in three steps:
Three outcomes are possible. If an agreement is found and looks eligible, you move straight into the claims pathway. If nothing is found, you will be told why, which might simply mean the finance predates or postdates the scheme window. If the result is unclear, the next move is gathering supporting evidence, covered below, before escalating.
Pro Tip: Run the check even if you think your old finance company has stopped trading. Lender records often survive administration, and a defunct firm does not automatically mean a dead claim.
Contemporaneous evidence, meaning records created at the time, not written after the fact, is what actually moves a complaint forward. FOS decisions consistently show that a vulnerability-based complaint succeeds when there is proof the lender or dealer knew, or reasonably should have known, about your circumstances when you signed. A general statement that you were “struggling at the time” rarely carries the same weight as a dated letter or call log.
Useful evidence includes:
If your own records are thin, request a subject access request from the lender and the dealer; both are legally obliged to hold and disclose personal data they processed. Build a simple timeline: date of sale, your circumstances that month, and any contact you had with the dealer afterwards.
One flag matters more than any other: if you were bankrupt, in a debt relief order, or subject to an individual voluntary arrangement when you bought the car, the Official Receiver may own your right to claim, not you. The Official Receiver runs a dedicated pilot for exactly this scenario, and submitting a claim yourself without checking first risks the compensation being paid to the wrong party.
Complaining follows a set order, and skipping a step usually just adds delay. Here is the route:
Timing matters. The general limitation period for these claims is six years from the agreement date, though concealment of the commission arrangement can extend that. Separately, the FCA scheme has set a consumer complaint deadline of 31 August 2027, giving you longer than you might assume, but there is no good reason to wait that long when a free check takes under a minute.
Parts of the FCA’s redress scheme are currently tied up in legal challenge, and the FCA has confirmed that some elements are paused while the litigation runs its course. That means lenders may sit on payments even where a complaint is otherwise straightforward. Complaints already lodged before the pause tend to move faster once processing resumes; new complaints may face longer queues.
Where claims do succeed, typical outcomes include a refund of the undisclosed commission plus interest, though high-value or complex agreements sometimes see partial awards rather than full refunds.
Watch for scams while this plays out:
At Makeapcpclaim, the promise is simple: a free check that finds your car finance agreements in under 60 seconds, with no upfront fee. Gathering evidence around vulnerability can feel exhausting when you are already stretched thin, so our role is to liaise with partner law firms and carry that weight once eligibility looks clear. We are a referral and claims management service, not the law firm itself, and being upfront about that distinction matters more to us than sounding grander than we are.
— Jake
Makeapcpclaim exists for exactly this situation: you suspect you were mis-sold car finance, but you do not have the registration number, the lender’s name, or the original paperwork to hand. Rather than trawling through old post or ringing lenders who no longer exist, our free check searches for your agreements and finds them in under 60 seconds.
If the check turns up an eligible agreement, the next step is a referral to a law firm to handle the claim submission on your behalf. You will not be asked to pay anything to find out where you stand, and you can read our guide to claiming car finance compensation for a fuller walkthrough of what happens after a claim is lodged. Start with the free eligibility check and see within a minute whether you have a case worth pursuing.
For the rules straight from the source rather than filtered through a claims guide, these are worth bookmarking:
If you are dealing with related debt pressures while your claim progresses, it is also worth looking at practical ways to negotiate lower interest rates on existing debts in the meantime.
This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified financial advisor. Consult a qualified financial professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.
Possibly not in your own name. If you were bankrupt, in a DRO or an IVA when you took out the finance, the Official Receiver may own the right to any redress, and there is a dedicated pilot for handling exactly this situation.
No, the eligibility check is free, and it finds your agreements in under 60 seconds without needing your registration number or lender paperwork. Current pricing for any onward claims management service is available on the Makeapcpclaim website.
The FCA’s redress scheme specifically covers agreements from 6 April 2007 to 1 November 2024, so anything outside that window generally will not qualify under this particular scheme. A different complaints route may still apply depending on the circumstances.
The general limitation period is six years from the date of the agreement, though concealment of commission arrangements can extend it. The FCA scheme has also set a consumer complaint deadline of 31 August 2027, giving most eligible customers a reasonable window to act.
You can escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service free of charge, either after receiving a final response you disagree with or after eight weeks of silence. The FOS can award refunds of commission plus interest and, in some cases, additional compensation for distress.