Lease car horror stories?

[CCM604e]

Been lurking for a while and looking into leasing my next car.

Mostly feedback seems to be positive looking at the various lease threads here (the tips thread/ the lease deals) but i'm more interested in when things go tits up.

I did search for threads with the built-in Google search but the only ones that seem to come up are those above.

Any horror stories to give a bit of balance?

[Dr Interceptor]

None from me... I lease cars through work, never had a problem.

I always send the cars back pristine mind you, have a smart repairer take care of any marks, then there's no room for any argument over fair wear and tear.

[Sycamore]

My lease car is delivered next week, so I'm hoping this thread doesn't come up with too many stories, but when a friend returned a 320d on a lease he got shafted for damage to paintwork, which is fair enough, but the end charge came out as being 4x more than he expected. Two days after his son was born too. Stress upon stress

A proper clean-up before the car went back would've probably helped to no end mind you.

[CCM604e]

Thanks for the responses so far. Also if anyone has suggestions for lease companies to completely avoid then that would be helpful too.

[Dr Interceptor]

CCM604e said:

Thanks for the responses so far. Also if anyone has suggestions for lease companies to completely avoid then that would be helpful too.

You will find there are two levels of lease company... the broker (the people you actually deal with), and the actual lease company. The broker is the company who does the deal with you, the lease company (usually either a manufacturer or someone like Network) actually supply the vehicle and take payments.

I've used lots of brokers (Lings, Direct2U, Nationwide Lease Contracts), you can play these off against each other. Go with the one that does you the best deal and you're happy with.