End of lease advice
 

Hi There

Just wondering about end of lease advice

My lease ends may 9th and I am going to return the car

car has 91000km on it but my buy out is $18900 so its not worth it. Cheaper to buy a used one with less KM.


About 2 months ago I backed into a pole :( and scratched the corner of the bumper. I know I will have to pay if I return the car. I got some quotes and looks like it will cost me $500 to fix what I did.

Should I pay to fix it? what do they normally charge for scratches? It is right down to the bumper. There are a few of them and they will notice or they are blind.

Besides that everything is perfect.

I just want to give it to hem damaged and pay them so I don't have to go through the hassle of bringing my car in. But I don't want to get charged something like $1200 bucks or anything like that.

What is the best thing to 2?

Thanks
Marc

repair the bumper, the dealership will charge you a LOT more then 500 for it.

Depending if you could haggle the buy-back price down to reasonable levels, it might be better than getting another one with fewer miles. You will know how yours was treated and cares for. One that you might get could have been starved for oil, violated by some 'tuna' then returned to factory defaults. It becomes a major gamble when you start hoping that the engine blows before the magical 160,000 kms.

I recently returned my 8, and based on my experience I would advise you to NOT have the car repaired yet. Here's why.

Before your lease expires, you will be contacted by a company that does lease end inspections for Mazda. This inspection takes place ~1 month before your lease end. The inspector will tell you exactly what damage is chargeable, and how much you will be charged if you do not fix it. In some cases, the damage is considered "normal wear", and will not be chargeable. The inspector will still take a picture of the damage, so you will have a record that the damage has been assessed, and if they assess it as not chargeable that is final, and you have a record to prove it. In my case, I had one spot on my car that I was positive I would have to pay for, but the inspector saw it and deemed it not chargeable.

On the other hand, if it is considered chargeable, you're still probably in good shape. Mazda in particular tends to charge less than the repair cost, so you'll still be paying less money than the repair you're looking at. I think this is the most likely scenario from what you describe.

In the worst case, the damage assessment is going to be more than the repair cost. In that case, have it repaired and present your receipt to Mazda.

In other words, get the inspection done first. There's a good chance it will save you money.

As for buyback, I did talk to my dealer and they told me that Mazda does NOT negotiate buybacks. Strangely, they would rather sell your car at auction for 11k than sell it to you for less than your stated buyback.

Some great advice there Marc - you seem to know what you talk about!

S

Hi Marc,

I am also in the same situation, I did however purchased the extended warranty and ware care package. Would that save me from small dents from cars parked beside me (got like 3 small ones) and stone chips? How about tires? I also have a scratch that i can just put a touch pant on it.

thanks so much!

Stealth, thanks for your comment!

kps, I'm not sure about wearcare since I had not bought it, but the guy inspecting my car did tell me that he'd recently seen an RX-8 in really rough shape, but that all damage had been covered by wearcare, so I think you'll be fine if your car is in pretty good shape with only a couple of door dings.

In fact, that reminds me of something I forgot to put in the previous post. Before your car is inspected, you'll receive in the mail an envelope from Mazda giving a brief overview of the lease return process. Of course, they also include a Mazda full-line brochure but more importantly they talk about normal wear and provide a template. Many of the small dents may well fall into the normal wear category, so you'd be fine regardless of wearcare or not.