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nonamegiven - 19 Oct 2004 22:24 GMT

Anybody have any experience with this company SGS that inspects Acuras
before you turn them in at the end of a lease?

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JXStern - 20 Oct 2004 00:05 GMT

>Anybody have any experience with this company SGS that inspects Acuras
>before you turn them in at the end of a lease?

No. I carefully avoided this by trading mine in on a new one (Honda).
The lease the dealer had sold me (from Chase) on the CL had only a
tiny turnover fee, and I had some reasons to think an inspection was
going to ding me. I note the Honda lease has a fixed $500 turnover
fee, which the dealer says generally covers minor wear and tear.
Though you can sort of beat that out, too, if you manage to trade in
the car on something new - dealers can sometimes (always?) buy out
your lease for a grand or two better price than the company offers
you, and you can use the difference towards the new car.

J.

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nonamegiven - 20 Oct 2004 15:14 GMT

> >Anybody have any experience with this company SGS that inspects Acuras
> >before you turn them in at the end of a lease?
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> J.

I have contacted American Honda, that is who the lease is with,
actually they contacted me from their Lease Maturity hot line, and
they told me I have a $1500 waiver on the car. Any time you opt out
of a lease, the balance is tacked on to the new lease or finance,
dealer doesn't buy out anything you do. Confirmed this with Honda. I
can buy the 2002 TL for $17,600 and they will finance if I want. The
car was on a 36 month lease with 45,000 miles that I could drive. I
have 34,000 on it now and the lease is up on Jan. 5, 2005. If turning
it in, I must have the inspection done before the last payment which
is on 12/05/04. I really like the new TL and RL but this car is
really in good shape with a lot of warranty left on it. There was no
acquistion fee on the lease so I only have to get the inspection done
and turn it in. I guess I could buy it and resell it and maybe make a
few bucks there.....

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JXStern - 20 Oct 2004 16:06 GMT

>they told me I have a $1500 waiver on the car. Any time you opt out
>of a lease, the balance is tacked on to the new lease or finance,
>dealer doesn't buy out anything you do.

I'm not sure what this means. If you opt out early, someone has to
cover the remaining lease, sure, or maybe they can tack it onto the
new lease, but none of that is what I'm talking about.

> Confirmed this with Honda. I
>can buy the 2002 TL for $17,600 and they will finance if I want. The
>car was on a 36 month lease with 45,000 miles that I could drive. I
>have 34,000 on it now and the lease is up on Jan. 5, 2005.

Right, *this* is just the situation I had.

Let's say the book value for the car with 45k miles is $17,600.

Since you have low miles, maybe the book value for this car is
$18,600. So, you're tempted to buy it for $17,600 and come out ahead,
one way or the other, right?

The thing is, the lease company will let the *dealer* buy it out at
wholesale value for, say, $16,600! So it's worth about $2,000 to you
today to use it as a trade-in, rather than purchase it and hope to
gain $1,000 in the future.

Little-known facts about the leasing world!

J.

ps - because these are the numbers, if you call and ask nice,
sometimes they will offer you a better buy-out price, maybe $17,300,
maybe better, since they're really happy to do the dealer buyout even
lower than that!

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