Guy is dying. Car is leased. What are the options?
Discussion
CampDavid said:
I'm not advising you to do this, however, the most logical move from a financial point of view is to leave it parked on a Liverpool estate near Anfield on match day. Question the parentage of the first youth you asks for a fiver to "look aft ya caar mate" and refuse to pay. Allow the insurance firm to do the rest.
Wow, you really a knob.CampDavid said:
I'm not advising you to do this, however, the most logical move from a financial point of view is to leave it parked on a Liverpool estate near Anfield on match day. Question the parentage of the first youth you asks for a fiver to "look aft ya caar mate" and refuse to pay. Allow the insurance firm to do the rest.
The stereotypical idea that all scousers are thieves , two things wrong here .The first being that as an away supporter I've parked in the area dozens of times and never had an issue with my car whilst at the match.
The second , I'll be very polite and respectfully point out that your attempt at humour might just be on the wrong thread , not withstanding how poor that attempt was , saying that it's such a dense thing to post I genuinely worry if you were being serious.
Whatever , it was a pretty tragic thing to come up with.
Hang your head in shame.
Buster73 said:
The stereotypical idea that all scousers are thieves , two things wrong here .
The first being that as an away supporter I've parked in the area dozens of times and never had an issue with my car whilst at the match.
The second , I'll be very polite and respectfully point out that your attempt at humour might just be on the wrong thread , not withstanding how poor that attempt was , saying that it's such a dense thing to post I genuinely worry if you were being serious.
Whatever , it was a pretty tragic thing to come up with.
Hang your head in shame.
Agree 100%The first being that as an away supporter I've parked in the area dozens of times and never had an issue with my car whilst at the match.
The second , I'll be very polite and respectfully point out that your attempt at humour might just be on the wrong thread , not withstanding how poor that attempt was , saying that it's such a dense thing to post I genuinely worry if you were being serious.
Whatever , it was a pretty tragic thing to come up with.
Hang your head in shame.
wack said:
That's how all businesses should handle a death, with compassion , many could learn from that example
Sympathies to the OP's friend and others in similar situations but unfortunately many people die everyday.I don't see why a lease should be treated any differently to other transactions.
If I bought a new S1 and died a few months later would anyone expect Audi to buy it back at the price I paid ?
If I had a Mortgage would the Bank write it off if I died ?
Or course not - that it why you have insurance - if you don't, they pursue the Estate.
Whilst it's nice when companies will minimise your loss in such circumstances, I don't see why they should be expected to lose money.
V8RX7 said:
Sympathies to the OP's friend and others in similar situations but unfortunately many people die everyday.
I don't see why a lease should be treated any differently to other transactions.
If I bought a new S1 and died a few months later would anyone expect Audi to buy it back at the price I paid ?
If I had a Mortgage would the Bank write it off if I died ?
Or course not - that it why you have insurance - if you don't, they pursue the Estate.
Whilst it's nice when companies will minimise your loss in such circumstances, I don't see why they should be expected to lose money.
110% agree but Audi presumably cares about its image/marketing. Bankers don't I don't see why a lease should be treated any differently to other transactions.
If I bought a new S1 and died a few months later would anyone expect Audi to buy it back at the price I paid ?
If I had a Mortgage would the Bank write it off if I died ?
Or course not - that it why you have insurance - if you don't, they pursue the Estate.
Whilst it's nice when companies will minimise your loss in such circumstances, I don't see why they should be expected to lose money.
Some great advice, thanks very much. I didn't make it clear, but VWFS were contacted and told the situation but just didn't move on the £7k. I think this will be because of people using this as a means of getting out of the deal early. I guess the other, unsaid, thing here is that if they're going to be wanting the £7k regardless, my friend should transfer the lease and actually just use the car themselves for the remainder of the contract (as they'll get the money from his estate in any case). Things might change on presenting the death certificate. Also worth mentioning that the lease was acquired through a dealer; the dealer supplied the previous cars he had too.
JeS10 said:
Some great advice, thanks very much. I didn't make it clear, but VWFS were contacted and told the situation but just didn't move on the £7k. I think this will be because of people using this as a means of getting out of the deal early.
I can't imagine VWFS are inundated with people getting terminal cancer in order to get out of lease deals early...I'm a bit confused though. All this talk of voluntary termination, selling the car to pay off the finance, etc. -- is it a lease deal or a finance deal? A lease is where you pay a monthly amount to effectively borrow VWFS's car, and give it back to them at the end. If this is the case, surely some deal should be available as they're getting the car back in better condition and with fewer miles than they were expecting.
I work for one of the U.K's largest lease companies, our policy is that on production of the death certificate we will take the car back with no further charges.
Alternatively some customers want to retain the car for a spouse or relative in which case we allow them to take over the lease.
Obviously all of the above is handled sensitively by our staff and thankfully is an infrequent occurrence even with the size of our fleet.
Alternatively some customers want to retain the car for a spouse or relative in which case we allow them to take over the lease.
Obviously all of the above is handled sensitively by our staff and thankfully is an infrequent occurrence even with the size of our fleet.
This does raise a good point at the seemingly unreasonable cost of buying out these leases. A Audi S1 is approximately ~23k with discount from Broadspeed and there doesn't seem to be a single approved used example below 20k, even with 20,000 miles and two years showing (impressive residuals!). How on earth based on those sorts of values, and a monthly payment £400 P/M, should it take another £7000, AND the car back to square off the deal!?
AlmostUseful said:
I don't know about what happened when people are dying and want to cancel, but when a friends son died she called BMW and expected the worse when trying to hand his 1 series back, she was sent a massive bunch of flowers and had all charges following the day of his death cancelled.
Not all the finance businesses are monsters, so just call and see what they say. Some proof will no doubt be expected.
That was good of them.Not all the finance businesses are monsters, so just call and see what they say. Some proof will no doubt be expected.
Buster73 said:
The stereotypical idea that all scousers are thieves , two things wrong here .
The first being that as an away supporter I've parked in the area dozens of times and never had an issue with my car whilst at the match.
The second , I'll be very polite and respectfully point out that your attempt at humour might just be on the wrong thread , not withstanding how poor that attempt was , saying that it's such a dense thing to post I genuinely worry if you were being serious.
Whatever , it was a pretty tragic thing to come up with.
Hang your head in shame.
No, my point was to around leaving the car in a dodgy postcode. Insurance postcodes are rated from good to bad, those near Anfield are given there own special refer rating. I could have picked areas in other cities but Liverpool is the only one I've experienced someone offering to "look after my car" so I picked there. Sorry if you were offended. Maybe I should have just said dodgy postcode and left it at that, I actually quite like Liverpool as a city more than most places.The first being that as an away supporter I've parked in the area dozens of times and never had an issue with my car whilst at the match.
The second , I'll be very polite and respectfully point out that your attempt at humour might just be on the wrong thread , not withstanding how poor that attempt was , saying that it's such a dense thing to post I genuinely worry if you were being serious.
Whatever , it was a pretty tragic thing to come up with.
Hang your head in shame.
Secondly, and removing all morality etc from the argument, from a financial POV disappearing the car makes sense. It's a zero cost solution where the alternative is going to cost you £7000. £7000 is actually a substantial amount of money, people have killed over less, an awful lot less. Currently there's a move from people using PCPs to leases in fairly high numbers and those moving from a PCP where they could simply hand the car back with 50% of the value paid may find that being asked to pay the equivalent of 18 months payments (which presumably is to the end of the lease) to get out of a lease a bit strong, especially if the need to get out of said lease is due to a loss of a job. As a student I remember a couple of members of staff casually discussing scraping their cars and reporting them stolen as both had fairly substantial issues (cambelt failure and a bottom end, both Alfas if we want to keep hitting those cliches) and both were paid out. I imagine that, with rising insurance costs, this practice is a little more reduced these days but the private lease industry could well bring that all back.
Not really an attempt at humour, more an observation of where the industry is going and the issues raised by personal leases. Right thread to put it in? Probably not, though if Audi's finance department are unmoved by the fact that someone has terminal cancer then a tongue in cheek look at screwing them over isn't off the menu.
What would I do? Fraud isn't really my thing so calling into Audi finance is the obvious first step, you'll need to escalate the issue up to someone who has the capacity to write off £7,000 so that may take a while. Buying the whole car outright and then outing it to a dealer would be a great option if they'll allow it as that would obviously reduce the cost. The real key is around what the lease contract actually says. Unlike other assets a lease isn't usually transferable so there would need to be something in there around the leaser passing away.
JeS10 said:
Some great advice, thanks very much. I didn't make it clear, but VWFS were contacted and told the situation but just didn't move on the £7k. I think this will be because of people using this as a means of getting out of the deal early. I guess the other, unsaid, thing here is that if they're going to be wanting the £7k regardless, my friend should transfer the lease and actually just use the car themselves for the remainder of the contract (as they'll get the money from his estate in any case). Things might change on presenting the death certificate. Also worth mentioning that the lease was acquired through a dealer; the dealer supplied the previous cars he had too.
I know you said earlier that you want to help from a distance, and I have no idea of your relationship to the family, however, the offer of taking responsibility for something like this would certainly ease some of the stress at a time should have other priorities. Stuff like this shouldn't be a concernCampDavid said:
No, my point was to around leaving the car in a dodgy postcode. Insurance postcodes are rated from good to bad, those near Anfield are given there own special refer rating. I could have picked areas in other cities but Liverpool is the only one I've experienced someone offering to "look after my car" so I picked there. Sorry if you were offended. Maybe I should have just said dodgy postcode and left it at that, I actually quite like Liverpool as a city more than most places.
Secondly, and removing all morality etc from the argument, from a financial POV disappearing the car makes sense. It's a zero cost solution where the alternative is going to cost you £7000. £7000 is actually a substantial amount of money, people have killed over less, an awful lot less. Currently there's a move from people using PCPs to leases in fairly high numbers and those moving from a PCP where they could simply hand the car back with 50% of the value paid may find that being asked to pay the equivalent of 18 months payments (which presumably is to the end of the lease) to get out of a lease a bit strong, especially if the need to get out of said lease is due to a loss of a job. As a student I remember a couple of members of staff casually discussing scraping their cars and reporting them stolen as both had fairly substantial issues (cambelt failure and a bottom end, both Alfas if we want to keep hitting those cliches) and both were paid out. I imagine that, with rising insurance costs, this practice is a little more reduced these days but the private lease industry could well bring that all back.
Not sure why you would do any of that if you have a death certificate in the unfortunate circumstances of somebody passing away before the end of a lease.Secondly, and removing all morality etc from the argument, from a financial POV disappearing the car makes sense. It's a zero cost solution where the alternative is going to cost you £7000. £7000 is actually a substantial amount of money, people have killed over less, an awful lot less. Currently there's a move from people using PCPs to leases in fairly high numbers and those moving from a PCP where they could simply hand the car back with 50% of the value paid may find that being asked to pay the equivalent of 18 months payments (which presumably is to the end of the lease) to get out of a lease a bit strong, especially if the need to get out of said lease is due to a loss of a job. As a student I remember a couple of members of staff casually discussing scraping their cars and reporting them stolen as both had fairly substantial issues (cambelt failure and a bottom end, both Alfas if we want to keep hitting those cliches) and both were paid out. I imagine that, with rising insurance costs, this practice is a little more reduced these days but the private lease industry could well bring that all back.
Having said that I suppose you will now say you know somebody who provides fake death certificates
VWFS are not great. I don't deal with them any more. IME they wont negotiate on anything, even if its massively in their favour after said negotiation.
Personally I would get a settlement figure first then post back.
If settlement is around or below market value (might well be) then it should be fairly simple to sell it and then make full settlement to VWFS.
Personally I would get a settlement figure first then post back.
If settlement is around or below market value (might well be) then it should be fairly simple to sell it and then make full settlement to VWFS.
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