Car lease return

GSDMum

Hi, we returned a Mazda CX3 yesterday and was shocked to find we might be charged over £450. 

Bit of background, the 3 year lease started August 2021, think we put down around £3k initially and have paid £218 per month without missing a beat. We extended the lease from August 2024 until yesterday without any extra £s (other than the £218pm) due to my husband being terminally ill. It was a low mileage lease of under 5k miles per year, it was collected yesterday at 9995k miles on the clock which was well under mileage. It's had its full service maintenance over the years, has been well looked after and parked off road. 

Before the car left it was assessed to have £450 worth of damage, tbh I was shocked, I was under the impression it was pristine. It appears I'd (I was the driver due to husband's illness) caught the seatbelt in the door causing a minute ding in the strut (£165 for repair), I didn't know it was even there. There's a slight scuff on the front offside bumper which I really can't see, but no doubt could have been polished out, but the assessor is saying the bumper will need a repaint. There is a scratch on the edge of the driver's door where it's brushed against a wall, I'm being charged £65 for that. Afterwards the assessor did say it was in good condition considering it's 3.5 years old and it's had full maintenance.

Just hoping for advice please as this is something we've got no experience of. How do we haggle on this?  Does anyone have any pointers? 

Thanks for any advice.

BTW I signed to say I wasn't happy with the assessment.

DullGreyGuy

What the assessor says and what the finance company says arent necessarily the same thing... we were told we'd get charged £7.50 for "dry paint" on the lip of the wing under the bonnet, I'd assumed wet paint would be a problem. They'd also report the overly thick pain on the rear quarter and they missed a chunk taken out of the front splitter by a tall kerb. After a few weeks we got a letter from MBF saying the account was settled with no further charges. 


https://blog.appliedleasing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/BVRLA-Fair-Wear-and-Tear-Guide.pdf

Not sure it's the latest version but the above is the guide on what's fair wear and tear from one of the trade bodies. pages 17 and 18 show images of what should be considered acceptable and what is not acceptable as fair wear 

GSDMum

Just the job. Thank you for the link! It's brilliant. 

Goudy

Your circumstances are very unfortunate but as DullGreyGuy points out, the lease/finance company will more that likely work within that particular industry standard, the BVRLA's fair wear and tear guide.

Prices associated with anything outside of the guidelines actually tend to be fairly reasonable, I know they don't appear that way to you at the moment though.

They don't fully assess the damage and price the actual job up for repair as they don't really repair it. They just decrease it's expected value to them because of it, so each use a fairly reasonable base price for each item on the list.

If you took it to a body shop to fix those things, I would expect it to cost a bit more to fully repair those items.

To be honest, this sort of excess fair wear and tear amount is about average for a lease return.
Some just don't care for the cars and return them in a right state as it's often cheaper to do that than look after and service them.

Your first point of call would be to contact the lease/finance company and question those charges and prices.
Explain your unfortunate circumstance, if the lease was in your husbands name they might think twice about chasing him for those charges and be ready to settle for a more reasonable amount there and then as your and their options will be more difficult later.

If you really think that they are over charging you or being unfair, then you could open a case with BVRLA themselves over it.
Most, if not all lease companies sign up to BVRLA, so they may offer to mediate this on your behalf.

GSDMum

Thank you for your reply Goudy, I'm beginning to understand a bit more. The link from DullGreyGuy re BVRLA's 'fair wear and tear guide' is very interesting and I don't think we've got much to worry about, but then I'm biased and I don't feel in control of the situation. As yet we've not heard yet from Santander, only had the assessor's report via email. 

Goudy

It's always a bit hard to assess your own car. You've lived with it for so long, you become a bit blind to the odd nic or dink. You have to think about it like the assessor would and be very critical.

As I wrote earlier, the assessor shouldn't be unfair and the costs they assign to any damage are just related to the expected value loss of the vehicle rather than an actual repair.
If they sign up to BVRLA, they'll use helpful price guides and other industry data.

The vehicle will go through the auctions as is and based on it's condition they would expect it to make a certain amount. The more damage the less it could make so they try and recover some of that when it's returned and inspected.

I've read the average "bill" for a returned vehicle is £300 to £400, so you aren't far off average.

As you have the assessors report and are obviously going to try and contest or negotiate with the finance company you can start building an argument  for each, some or all of the points.
They probably haven't anymore to go on than the same report you have, perhaps the odd picture as well.

Go after the severity and price of each item, one by one and pull any other levers you think might help.

Be pleasant and  make them want to help you, no one wants to help someone that's being aggressive or stroppy. 
Certainly don't threaten them with any sort of case with BVRLA, if you need to do that later, just do it.

GSDMum

Thank you again Goudy, great advice once again. 

My husband had over 40 years in the car industry, he worked as National Service Manager for several car manufacturers, liaising directly with them, in both this country and abroad especially on bodywork issues. So we're pretty sure the car had better care than that is mainly considered 'normal'. The car is three and half years old, surely a percentage of the monthly lease finance would have been taken into account 'wear and tear' as well as depreciation. 

We will be haggling. We've paid the last premium and have stopped the DD. Thanks for all good advice, this is an area we've had no experience of.  

GSDMum

To conclude....

We've just received a letter from Santander. There was lots of contract jargon and legal speak in the letter, but the sentence that said we owe 'zero' is what we homed in on. Success I believe.

Thank you to those who supported this thread with their brilliant advice. Much appreciated.

Mildly_Miffed

GSDMum said:

The car is three and half years old, surely a percentage of the monthly lease finance would have been taken into account 'wear and tear'

That's precisely what that FW&T guide is for - to show you what is and is not deemed acceptable wear and tear.

In your case, the initial assessment has erred on the side of forewarning of potential problems, the fuller assessment has said there's no issues to be charged for.