The car finance claim in that advert is free, and frozen

In June, claims companies pulled or amended 170 car finance adverts after the regulators leaned on them. That takes the running total to 1,200 since January 2024, the FCA said on 16th July. Four bodies are now working the same beat: the FCA, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Information Commissioner's Office.

Look at what the regulators objected to, because it tells you exactly what these adverts are selling. Posts dressed up as ordinary consumer recommendations, with the fact that they are paid financial promotions buried or missing. Adverts leaning on the FCA's own redress scheme to imply the firm is affiliated with the FCA. Adverts that failed to make clear there is a free way to claim. One firm ran edited clips of Martin Lewis, without permission, to put a number on your compensation that suited the pitch.

Strip the theatre away and every one of these adverts sells the same product: paid access to a process that is free to enter, and that right now is not moving.

It is free

The car finance redress scheme is the FCA's PS26/3, published on 30th March 2026. It covers PCP and HP agreements arranged through a dealer or broker between 6th April 2007 and 1st November 2024. The FCA puts the eligible pool at around 12.1 million agreements and the average payout at roughly £830.

Here is the part the adverts work hard not to say. When the scheme runs, lenders have to identify eligible customers and contact them. You do not have to find a claims company to be found. And the complaints route that sits behind all of this, the Financial Ombudsman Service, is free to consumers by statute. It closed 53,600 cases into its books in the first quarter of this year without charging a single one of them a fee. That is the whole design. The consumer never pays to complain.

A claims company cannot change any of that. It cannot get you a bigger number than the scheme formula produces, it cannot move you up a queue, and all it can do is take a cut of a payout you were always going to receive.

That cut is not small. The FCA caps claims-company fees on a sliding scale under CMCOB 5.2A. For the smallest redress band, up to £1,499, the maximum is 30 per cent plus VAT. The average motor finance payout of £830 sits squarely in that band. Thirty per cent of £830 is £249, and VAT takes it close to £299. So on a typical case, the advert is offering to hand a third of your money to a company for doing paperwork a lender is obliged to send you anyway.

It is frozen

Now the second fact the adverts skip. On 2nd July 2026 the Upper Tribunal suspended parts of PS26/3, on terms the FCA agreed with four challengers: Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, Volkswagen Financial Services, CA Auto Finance, and the consumer body Consumer Voice. Until the legal process concludes, lenders do not have to calculate or pay compensation. Not a single claim has been paid under this scheme.

Read the two facts together. The adverts are selling you fast, paid access to a redress process that (a) you can enter for nothing and (b) is currently paying nobody at all. There is no queue to jump because the queue is not moving, and no work to outsource because the work has been paused by a court. The only thing a signed no-win-no-fee form achieves today is to attach a 30 per cent claim to a payout that does not yet exist and, when it does, will arrive whether you signed anything or not.

That is why the regulators are pulling the ads faster than the firms can post them. This is not a technical advertising-standards squabble but a straightforward mismatch between what is being sold and what is real.

What to actually do

If you had a PCP or HP car finance agreement between April 2007 and November 2024, you are probably in scope. You do not need to act this week. The scheme is suspended; when it resumes, your lender is required to reach out. Watch for that letter and check it is genuinely from the lender, not a claims firm imitating one.

Do not sign a no-win-no-fee form for something that is free. If you want to complain now rather than wait for the scheme, complain to the lender directly, in writing, and if they reject you or go quiet for eight weeks, escalate to the Financial Ombudsman yourself under the FCA's DISP rules. Both steps cost nothing.

Keep your paperwork: the agreement, the dealer's name, the dates. When the scheme restarts, that is the evidence that gets a case moving, and it is worth far more in your file than in a claims company's.

I run a portfolio of disputes and I have never once needed a claims company to collect money that was already mine. This scheme is no different. The regulators have spent eighteen months and 1,200 pulled adverts trying to tell you the same thing. The claim is yours, it is free, and nobody, however slick the advert, can sell you faster access to a queue that is standing still.

Also worth your time this week

A quieter week for decisions, a busier one for the regulators policing the people who claim to help you. Here is what mattered.

• The car finance advert crackdown widened. The FCA said on 16th July that claims companies pulled or amended 170 misleading car finance adverts in June, taking the total to 1,200 since January 2024. The full argument for why the thing being advertised is both free and frozen is in the essay above. FCA.
• The motor finance redress scheme is still paused. The Upper Tribunal suspended parts of PS26/3 on 2nd July, on terms agreed with Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, Volkswagen Financial Services, CA Auto Finance and Consumer Voice. Lenders do not have to calculate or pay compensation until the legal process ends. FCA.
• Ombudsman complaints fell year on year, but fraud is now the top driver. The Financial Ombudsman took 53,600 cases in April to June. Current accounts were the most complained-about product at 8,900 cases, largely fraud and scams. More cases are closing inside three months, 51 per cent against 46 per cent a year ago. Financial Ombudsman.
• Buy Now Pay Later got an ombudsman. BNPL, or Deferred Payment Credit, moved into FCA regulation and the Financial Ombudsman's remit this month, so users now have somewhere to escalate. Watch the agreement date: older agreements taken out before the regime started are not automatically covered. MoneySavingExpert.
• The FCA sharpened its Consumer Duty enforcement message. Enforcement Watch 2, published on 7th July, sets out how the regulator is supervising and enforcing the Duty. The fair-value and consumer-support tests it describes are the same ones that win a lot of everyday complaints. Regulation Tomorrow.
• The energy price cap for summer landed lower than first announced. Ofgem's cap for 1st July to 30th September is £1,663 for a typical direct-debit household, below the £1,862 flagged in May, after Ofgem revised its assumed consumption downward. The per-unit rates, not the headline figure, decide your bill. Ofgem.
• A structural signal on class actions. The Law Commission opened a project on whether the UK should have opt-out consumer class actions beyond the competition regime, with responses due by 30th October. Worth watching if you are one of many people with the same complaint against the same company. Pinsent Masons.
• Data breach payouts got a little harder to win. The Court of Appeal clarified the rules on compensation for distress from data-protection breaches, tightening what a claimant has to show. It does not remove the right to complain to the ICO, which remains free. Norton Rose Fulbright.

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