Complaints procedure

At ALD Automotive, we aim to provide our customers with high service standards. However, we understand that there may be occasions when you feel that you have cause for complaint. In such instances, we want to put things right first time and with the aid of your comments can improve our services still further.

You can contact us with details of your complaint by letter, e-mail, or telephone. If you write to us, please address your complaint to the Complaints Team, ALD Automotive, Oakwood Drive, Emersons Green, Bristol, BS16 7LB. Should you wish to raise a complaint by email, you can do this by emailing qualityuk@aldautomotive.com or you can call us on 0117 908 6589.

We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days of receiving it. We will always deal with complaints as quickly as we can and will carry out a full and impartial investigation of the issues you raise, although some complaints may take longer to resolve. If the investigation is still incomplete after eight weeks, we will write to you again and explain what stage the process has reached and how we are planning to proceed.

In January 2024 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) shared that they would review motor finance discretionary commission arrangements (DCAs) and how these have been handled across the motor finance industry today and in the past.

On 24 September 2024, the FCA released an update to the ongoing review and issued further guidelines. The pause was then widened on 20 December 2024, so the FCA have now given firms until after the 4 December 2025 before they have to start responding to any type of car finance commission complaint (including DCAs).

At the start of August, the FCA confirmed their intent to consult on a redress scheme which is planned to be published by early October 2025. Confirmation of the outcome, including which motor finance agreements will be in scope for any potential compensation, is expected to be published in late 2025.

The redress scheme is expected to cover DCAs and consider whether any non-discretionary commission arrangements should also be included. Any compensation scheme is likely to start in 2026. The current complaint handling pause is still in place and the deadline for us to respond to customer complaints will be after 4 December 2025, however, the FCA have indicated that this may be extended further. As a result, we will not be in a position to issue final responses to commission complaints at this time.

If you have already contacted us and received confirmation that you are currently in scope of the FCA review, you do not need to do anything further at this time. We will reach out to you as soon as we have any updates.

You will have more time to refer complaints to the Financial Ombudsman when a final response is issued. Instead of the usual six months, you have until 29 July 2026, or 15 months from the date of the final response letter, whichever is later. The timelines will be confirmed in the final response letter we send you.

Alternatively, if you have received confirmation that your query / complaint was outside of the FCA review, you don’t need to contact us again. If your agreement is impacted by the redress scheme, we’ll be in touch once the details have been finalised by the FCA.

You can read more about the timelines on the FCA's website.

For all impacted customers, we’ll be providing further updates in due course. You do not need to take any action yet and we won’t have any further detail to provide if you call us. For more information, please visit our dedicated Motor Finance Commissions page.

Please note, all other complaints not related to motor finance commission or a DCA will follow the normal process and timescales as laid out by the FCA. To submit a complaint, please email us qualityuk@aldautomotive.com.

At ALD Automotive, we aim to provide our customers with high service standards and we look to provide a fair outcome in the event a customer is unhappy.

To put these figures into context:

Insurance and Pure Protection: ALD Automotive has not been involved with the selling of Payment Protection Insurance products since 2007 and we have no current policies in force. The number noted above is in relation to customers who had a complaint upheld with a successful PPI reclaim. The figure excludes those customers who complained but were not upheld as they did not have PPI cover included in their agreement.

Credit Related: The total number of complaints received is equivalent to 12.6 per 100 accounts against our total fleet size of Regulated customers.

This figure is further broken down as follows:

Of the 6923 complaints received during this period:

• •
  6666 or 96.3% of complaints are regarding the product provided by ALD Automotive (This equates to 12.2 per 100 Regulated accounts)
• •
  257 complaints or 3.7% of complaints received in this period represent mechanical or technical issues with the vehicle financed by ALD, though not necessarily supplied by ALD (This equates to 0.47 per 100 Regulated accounts)

Previous figures