Does section 75 cover my car finance?

Why hire purchase and PCP fall outside section 75

Section 75 makes a creditor jointly and severally liable with a supplier for the borrower's claim for misrepresentation or breach of contract. It only bites on a debtor-creditor-supplier agreement falling within section 12(b) or (c) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, and those paragraphs describe credit provided by a creditor under arrangements with a separate supplier — the classic case being a credit card used to buy goods from a shop.

Dealer-arranged hire purchase does not work that way. The finance company buys the car from the dealer and then supplies it to you under the hire-purchase agreement, so the creditor and the supplier are the same person. That is the section 12(a) case, which section 75 does not reach, and there is no separate supplier for the creditor to be jointly liable with. A PCP is legally a hire-purchase agreement with a large optional final payment, so it sits in exactly the same place.

The two routes that do work, and why they are stronger

Section 56(2) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 deems the dealer's negotiations to be conducted as agent of the creditor, so what the salesperson told you about the car binds the finance company. Section 7 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 brings hire purchase inside the goods-contract rules, so the satisfactory-quality, fit-for-purpose and as-described claim lies against the finance company that owns the car.

These are wider than section 75, not narrower. Section 75 stops at a cash price of £30,000 and requires a qualifying credit purchase. Neither of the two routes above has a cash-price ceiling, neither depends on how you paid, and both point at a regulated firm rather than at a dealer who may no longer be trading. The practical consequence is that the complaint goes to the finance company named at the top of your agreement, not only to the dealer.

Where section 75 does help a car buyer: a deposit on a credit card

There is one place section 75 genuinely reaches a car purchase. If you are buying the car outright from the dealer as supplier and you put part of the price on a credit card, the card issuer can be jointly liable for the whole claim. The section 75 limits attach to the cash price of the car — more than £100 and no more than £30,000 — and not to the amount you put on the card, so a modest deposit charged to a credit card can engage the issuer on the full claim, while a car priced above £30,000 is outside section 75 however you pay for it.

It has to be credit rather than debit: section 75 is a provision about credit, so a debit card payment does not engage it. A credit card is the usual route, though what the section requires is a credit agreement falling within section 12(b) or (c). And where the car is supplied under dealer-arranged hire purchase or PCP rather than bought from the dealer, the supply is by the finance company, so the two routes in the previous section are the ones that apply.

The Consumer Rights Act timeline on a car bought on finance

The short-term right to reject runs for 30 days from delivery. A fault that appears within six months of delivery is presumed to have been present at delivery, which reverses the burden of proof: it is for the trader to show the car was of satisfactory quality when it was supplied. On hire purchase or PCP that trader is the finance company.

One exception is routinely left out of consumer writing. A refund on the final right to reject can normally not be reduced for use in the first six months, but section 24(10) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 makes motor vehicles an exception, so a car can be docked for the use you had of it even inside that period. Cars are the carve-out, not the rule.

Section 75 is not the motor finance redress scheme

These are two different things and are often conflated. Section 75 is about a supplier's breach of contract or misrepresentation. The FCA's motor finance redress scheme, confirmed in PS26/3 on 30 March 2026, is about commission arrangements on agreements made between 6 April 2007 and 1 November 2024. The Upper Tribunal partially suspended that scheme on 1 and 2 July 2026, so lenders are not currently required to calculate or pay redress, or to send compensation communications; the Tribunal hearing is listed for 14 to 18 December 2026 or 16 to 26 February 2027, and the FCA does not expect payments before 2027. Firms must still respond to complainants who are not owed compensation by 18 November 2026 for agreements after April 2014, and by 18 January 2027 for earlier ones. The FCA says there is no need to use a claims management company, and that one could cost over 30% of any payout. Nothing on this page says whether any particular agreement is owed anything.

Where a complaint goes if the finance company says no

A complaint about a regulated credit agreement can be referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service after the firm has had its chance to answer. For a dispute with an accredited dealer about the sale itself, The Motor Ombudsman is free to consumers and is a CTSI-approved alternative dispute resolution provider, its Vehicle Sales Code having received full CTSI approval in October 2016; an outcome binds the business if the consumer accepts it, and the consumer is not obliged to accept.

Does this differ in Northern Ireland?

No. The Consumer Credit Act 1974 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 are both United Kingdom statutes, so section 75, section 56(2), section 7 and the section 24(10) motor-vehicle carve-out read the same way in Northern Ireland as in England, Wales and Scotland. That is not true of everything a car buyer meets — the roadworthiness test and its fees, for instance, are administered separately in Northern Ireland — but it is true of the consumer credit position on this page.