C2W schemes - anyone’s employer offer it year-round?
kingstonian
Posts: 2,847
My employer currently only offers it for 2 months of the year, which seems odd to me. I think the problem is the Employee Benefits team are based in the US and they have no real clue as to what is possible. They’ve tried to explain that it is due to tax laws, but I can’t see how that can be the case.
So, do you work in a company where the scheme is available for the full year? If not, then how many months is it available to you?
So, do you work in a company where the scheme is available for the full year? If not, then how many months is it available to you?
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Zero months.
Whilst they bang on about being caring for the environment.
Where's my cheap bike? That's the important thing !0 -
All year round for us.
I'm in the education sector & there's no monthly limits here... I just picked up my CycleScheme Cannondale last Wednesday.
Not that the above helps your situation though. Perhaps you can look at discount 2016/17 bikes which will help with savings. I was in two minds over a heavily discounted bike vs CycleScheme as in some cases, there's not a huge difference. Also keep in mind, some bikes have better components on this years models.
Good luck.Riding - Voodoo Bantu0 -
dmont wrote:All year round for us.
I'm in the education sector & there's no monthly limits here... I just picked up my CycleScheme Cannondale last Wednesday.
Not that the above helps your situation though. Perhaps you can look at discount 2016/17 bikes which will help with savings. I was in two minds over a heavily discounted bike vs CycleScheme as in some cases, there's not a huge difference. Also keep in mind, some bikes have better components on last years models.
Good luck.
No, it does help. The more examples of companies/organisations that offer it to their employees the better, as it helps me substantiate my argument that our Employee Benefits team have zero clue, which in due course helps me force a change.0 -
My current employer offers cycle2work via cyclescheme, I think it's all year round. My previous employer also offered it, but there was a tight annual sign-up window. Both are US corporations, but I'm not sure that's relevant as I've only been employed by the UK ltd legal entities.
It's always looked like a bit of a con to me, ok you might save a bit, particularly if you are high-rate tax, but the scheme administrators seem to take a cut which hurts the bike shops and means they have to be guarded about what kind of deal you can strike with them. You take a on a bit of a risk that if you leave the job for whatever reason, you might get a bit of a bill at the wrong moment and you're tied in for 3 years if you want to achieve the full saving, even at the end of that they seem to want to charge you an exit fee if you want to keep the bike.
I am as tight as anything though and virtually always buy secondhand which is where I think the real value is, I also like cobbling bikes together over time as a bit of a project. I guess the whole thing's just that well suited to me.0 -
All year round but locked in to Evans...0
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We get to decide in December with vouchers available in January. Doing it once a year reduces the administration and probably makes the tax and NI issues easier.
For one year the company became a credit broker and was able to offer vouchers up to £2,500 rather than the usual £1,000. That stopped after the rules changed (again).
Depending on number of employees I can appreciate why some companies just do it once a year.0 -
All year for us, smallish company with just under 100 employees. I'm one of the administrators for it as it was my idea to do it, for entirely selfish reasons of course. Ours is done through Cyclescheme and as far as I know the payroll side of it is not very complicated. Admittedly I don't do that side of things. To be honest after the initial few we now only have a couple of people a year applying for it.0
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I keep looking at the savings with the C2W and they barely exist anymore. Most of the time you can get old stock or nearly new, ex demo or discounted bikes cheaper as shops frequently at a 10% charge for using the voucher in the first place.0
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Year-round here. I work for a big US corp, although we have a local benefits team that administer it.0
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all year here and able to buy components now is a big plus0
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Not all. Too difficult to administer, worried about liability in the event of accidents, who’s responsible for maintenance, owners worried about being left with a bike at the end of the year, owners worried about people leaving before the year is up.0
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Year round for our Cyclescheme.
Quite a small company too - just under 20 peeps.0 -
Same.Dinyull wrote:Year round for our Cyclescheme.
Quite a small company too - just under 20 peeps.joey54321 wrote:I keep looking at the savings with the C2W and they barely exist anymore. Most of the time you can get old stock or nearly new, ex demo or discounted bikes cheaper as shops frequently at a 10% charge for using the voucher in the first place.
It's OK if you can find an LBS who will let you get discounted bikes on it. Or what I did was get a bike which was over £1k and pay the difference myself.0 -
joey54321 wrote:I keep looking at the savings with the C2W and they barely exist anymore. Most of the time you can get old stock or nearly new, ex demo or discounted bikes cheaper as shops frequently at a 10% charge for using the voucher in the first place.
Through cyclescheme I bough a bike on offer at CRC. It's RRP was £1100, but was on offer for a short period @ £850 - so a £1,100 bike will cost me £700 over 18 months.
You have to be lucky though as most retailers won't offer sale discounts.0
