New car for work

[cyber69]

Hi all, my company car is going back at the end of October and I am being told I will be put on a car allowance of about £350 a month plus claiming back mileage at the current government standard rates.

I've no idea if to do a personal lease for 24 months with or without maintenance included or to get a car loan of £10k. I've got about £2k saved to put towards also.

Not really sure if I will be continuing doing my current mileage of about 500-600 a week so yearly mileage would be 20k to 25k business miles.

Any recommendations on car and leasing companies? Really out of my depth here.

Or just to find another job!

 

[cyber69]

Will there be any restrictions associated with receiving the car allowance, such as age of car, emissions performance etc.?

This may well dictate some of your thinking to you - i.e. if they say your car has to be sub 4 years old and under 110g/km CO2, you'll find your options are limited anyway.

I think there is basic limitation like has to be large enough to carry basic tools and no older than 10 years.

 

[cyber69]

In which case i'd be trying to buy something 3 to 6 years old - leasing for 25k per year will probably be horribly expensive.

Got a quote for £350 a month for a 24 month lease, maintenance and £1.2K upfront that's on a new Skoda octavia 1.5TSI SE tech with 20K miles a year and excess charged at 10p per mile.

Would need to add insurance ontop though but i'd be saving on company car tax so not sure if it evens itself out?

 

[cyber69]

Don't forget you'll be taxed on your car allowance, so as per post above, depending on various other factors, you may actually be looking at less than £350pm in your pocket. If you're a 40% tax payer and your BIK commitment was tiny on your company car, you could be nearer £250pm actually making it into your pocket instead of a company car.

I'm only base rate tax so after tax and NI it would be around £280/£290 so not very much per month for geting a lease car.

 

[cyber69]

Don't forget you'll be taxed on your car allowance, so as per post above, depending on various other factors, you may actually be looking at less than £350pm in your pocket. If you're a 40% tax payer and your BIK commitment was tiny on your company car, you could be nearer £250pm actually making it into your pocket instead of a company car.

Edit - whatever you do, don't rush into committing yourself to a £9,000-£10,000 2 year lease without fully understanding the figures you're dealing with in detail. Maybe even buy a cheap run-around for a couple of months to give you some thinking space.

I'm being tupe'd over back to a company I worked for 4 years ago who got rid of company cars and only offer a car allowance. In that 4 years we have been tupe'd twice and this will be the third time so as you can appreciate getting 'fixed' in for 2 years on a car might not be the best decision.

So i'd be looking to buy a car for about £12K tops.

 

[cyber69]

Doing 25k business miles a year in your own car is wild. What’s the score if your car breaks down or needs a repair that’s going to take a few weeks? In a company car, that’s their issue to figure out. The only way for you to mitigate that would be to tie into a lease but that’s putting you in a rubbish position if you move jobs or they let you go.

What’s the job market like in your field? If it’s decent, I’d be looking for a move. And I’d politely let the company know you’re looking to move and why.

I've been looking for something closer to home but the jobs listed are all 6K lower than what I earn with oncall added in. Still waiting to hear from the company to let me know how much they are offering to pay for the car allowance or if they will do a U turn and supply a company car but I know the lead time for delivery on lease cars which are
instock are 4-6 weeks and the TUPE goes ahead after 31st October.

I'm not sure what my position is if I say that due to the high mileage my job now entails means that I cannot afford to get my own car (also they presume I have savings for a deposit on a car). Can they just say i've made myself redundant?

 

[cyber69]

No chance of another company car and they are offering £4100 a year for a car to cover 20-25k business mileage a year. On top of that been told that I need to provide myself with a mobile phone to include international calling for £29 minus tax a month as they no longer offer a company mobile.

 

[cyber69]

Tell them to go **** themselves.

Tempted, i'm mortgage free.

Just the fear of not having a job for the first time in my life and looking for a new one. Kind of forced my hand, either get a car and accept the situation or leave.

 

[cyber69]

No job is worth the crap they're expecting of you. Expecting you to sort your own phone, with international calls is a sign of a company that doesn't take their employees seriously, add in the ridiculous car expectations and honestly I'd tell them to get stuffed.

Where are you based and what is the job? It might be easier than you think to find something new, and I will guarantee with absolute 100% certainty that you'll not only leave behind a terrible company, but you'll get a decent bump in money too. Guaranteed.

Currently a mobile field engineer specialising in server & storage hardware repairs and undertaking warranty repair for a major manufacturer, smarthands support for Cisco, Fortinet, Checkpoint, Quantum disk and tape library's.

Also do deskside support so setting up laptops for new users and replacing existing one's (refresh).

All in the midlands area so based from home. Looking for work around where I live as i'm fed up with all the driving (covering Manchester, Cambridge, Shropshire and down to Bedford area). People have just left and not been replaced so it's fallen on the few left to try and cover.

 

[cyber69]

Find some local datacentres, find out who looks after them and start applying. Get on Linkedin if you're not already too. There are four in Birmingham alone:

Birmingham UK

Data Centers in Birmingham UK - Colocation and Cloud facilities in Birmingham UK (United Kingdom) at Data Center Map

www.datacentermap.com

Honestly get out of that company, it sounds awful. You're very clearly no appreciated.


EDIT: Better still, find some recruiters and let them do the work for you. A 3 second google found this one, start there:

IT Recruitment Agency & IT Jobs - Birmingham - TechNET IT

TechNET's IT recruitment agency in Birmingham, offering the latest IT Jobs in Birmingham and supporting your IT Recruitment process. Get in touch today!

technet-it.co.uk

A couple of our engineers left to go work at data centre's. There's not any in my area though, nearest being probably Nottingham and also there is 12hr shift patterns which work out well if you live within a reasonable distance.

I think the whole hardware support model is a race to the bottom with manufacturers wanting to pay as little as possible in order for the warranty repair to be carried out.

I worked onsite doing deskside support for a company in Northampton for 4 years and enjoyed doing that far more than doing the field based work. There are days when i'm driving 7hrs to go change a disk and it does not seem
to bother the company I work for as long as the SLA is met is all that matters.

 

[cyber69]

I worked for the same company 4 years ago before they outsourced us to another company (TUPE). We were with this other company for roughly 2 years and they nose dived and we were TUPE'd again to the company I now work for (for 2 years).

We are now being TUPE'd back to the original company I worked for 4 years ago as they made a decision to bring it back in house.

With the original company we were told that they would stop doing company cars and I purchased my own car and had that for sometime before moving to the first company where I was able to switch to a company car. I also took a company car with the firm I work for now so have had a company car for about 4 years.

Of course the original company are now saying that I need to get my own car as they still don't offer a company car if that makes sense.

I've been in touch with ACAS and an employment law solicitor and they can't give me an answer to if I can bring any unfair dismissal claim against them (solicitor saying that only about 5% of constructive dismal claims are won in the employee's favour)

I was paid £4100 a year before tax 4 years ago and was doing about 1000 business miles a month and now I am being offered the same amount and am doing double the amount of business mileage. It's been pointed out to them also that the car allowance has never been revised in over 10 years.

So potentially this will be the third TUPE process in 4 years.