Lease Turn-in

[shaun132]

What are your experiences with lease turn-ins? How picky are they about things like scratches, wear and tear? Can you get a 3rd party inspection instead of dealer inspection? Are their any guidelines like BMW says scratches have to be under X inches and gives you estimates about how much wear is normal. I tried searching for this information and could not find it anywhere.

Thanks.

[jcrome04]

My experiences they are pretty picky. You should have it detailed before you return it. May end up saving a lot of cash.

[Randy&Bonnie]

..

[nc211]

A few tricks that helped me with turning in my damaged 01' Maxima, with 2,500 miles over the limit. Wax it up real good, including some rain-x on all the glass to make it reflective. Clean the tires up with tire-white "or something like that", it gets all the dirt off the tires, especially when you use a brush. Basically, really clean up the car, with the emphasis of making it as shiny as possible. Then, ask that the leasing inspector come to you, if possible. Pick a hot day if you can, and park the car in the sun, on blacktop "office parking lot is perfect". Then meet him/her when they arrive, and be as kind as possible. Talk a lot, ask questions, ask them if they like doing this for a living, flatter them. What you're doing is holding them in the hot sun, making them want to hurry up and get back into the nice a/c in his car. Making the car shiney, and having it sit in the sun, can blind the guy to miss a scratch here or there that you're worried about. Usually, the guys/gals that come out to inspect your car, are young and don't really like doing what they do "it's a stepping stone", so if you chat to them while they're looking over your car, tell them what you do for a living, get them interested in what you do, they'll spend more time asking you about you, then asking you about the car.

When I turned in my Maxima, with 47,500 on the clock, it had a bad dent on the back of the roof, over the driver's side passenger door and where the rear glass meets the frame. A tree branch fell during a hurricane and hit the car right in the sweet spot. It could not be repaired by a dr. dent because it was right at the weld spots, but it didn't break the paint. Estimated cost to repair it was around $800 bucks. So, I declined and waited to see what Nissan would say. I waxed up the car, made it super shiney, parked it in the hot sun at the office, met the kid, talked about good avenues to take to get into finance, he was sweating to death in the hot sun and freshly laid blacktop, he signed the release and didn't even make comments on the dent or the mileage. Two hours later, I tossed the keys to the Nissan dealer with a copy of my release statement, got in my LS400, and took off like a !Removed! in the wind. Had to pay $0.

[smooth1]

[eatingupblacktop]

NC you crack me up. But you are right on the mark. NC's new dissertation: The psychology of dispatching a leasing agent. You've done your studies well my boy. You give new meaning to the phrase "The answer is blowing in the wind".

[jcrome04]

hahahahah nice one NC!

[SKperformance]

When i ran lease maturities for Mercedes that would never happen , but their are some lazy guys around.

They also had a strict but forgiving policy that if it was smaller than a credit card it was free.

Leave it dirty and raining if anything if you want to hide it. Underground parking is great also.

Otherwise contact the leasing company and get their policy online if possible .