to hand a pcp agreement car back early?

[cosmobrown]

Has anyone done this? The car is so bloody unreliable I'm fed up with it.
Obviously I have to study the documents, but if you've done it, was it a strait forward process?
Thanks

You can always hand a car back early, you just might have to pay to clear the finance if you're in negative equity (you owe more than the car's worth). Conversely if it's a popular model that dealers are desparately looking for stock for then you might come out even or with a little equity.

If you've bought it fairly recently and it's been unreliable to the point of no use, you can look at your right to reject the car and get your money back - this can be a fairly long and drawn out process, including giving the garage a chance to repair the car first.

You could also look at 'voluntary termination' of the finance if you've paid back at least 50% of what you owed.

thank you @xILikeJamx
We've had the car for 2 out of the 3 year deal.
The "balloon" payment after 3 years is £6k more than the car is currently worth.
I think we're in a bad situation. The car currently needs over £1k of repairs and I'm tempted to just give it back as it is. How much do companies check the car when you give it back? Morally I don't think I could hand a car back with a fault though. And it's probably very illegal too!

We've done it twice and it's very straightforward but I'd expect to pay the cost of repairs, possibly at an inflated price

You could try and trade it in at a dealers? I took my car back 12 months early. It was fairly straightforward. They do check it tho so it’s likely you’ll need to pay for the repairs or expect them to knock it off your trade in price.

We’ve had lots of cars on PCP and it’s never been worth less than the balloon payment. £6000 less is a lot…what type of car is it? Is it fully electric?

Check your contract but usually there’s a clause to say you can hand it back with no obligation if you’ve reached ‘half-way’. We’ve given back 2 cars at just over half way and it was no problem.

@LadyWestStar
Yup. Fully electric. And unreliable.

I assume it wasn't a new car then or it would be under warranty surely?

You should absolutely not feel any concern over the moral aspect of handing a shit car to a dealer - they sold you it in the first place and have presumably done everything in their power to avoid fixing it. You owe them nothing.

It's not unusual to find a dealer who will even cover the negative equity if you choose to buy a new car from them - depends on if they've met sales targets for the month/quarter etc.

As I mentioned before, you could look at voluntary termination if you've paid back over 50% of what you owed (the 'total cost of credit'). Eg if the car cost £25,000, but with interest added the total cost was £30,000 - you'd have to have repaid £15,000 before you could VT. This could make the VT threshold near the end of your initial 3 year period, rather than 50% of the way through it time-wise.

Thanks all, yes, the car wasn't new and yes it is an ev.

I think I might look into getting rid of it via a dealership. I hadn't thought of that.
To add insult to injury, some bloody idiot scratched it in a car park yesterday without leaving a note.