I’m looking at a standard Motor Lease Agreement with Arbitration Clause in California and I’ve got a question about how the drive off is calculated.
Section 10 contains “Optional Insurance, Coverages and Warranties”–which is all of the crap F&I tries to cram down your throat before you sign.
If there is an item listed in Section 10, let’s say “Excess Wear and Tear” coverage for $500, will that amount be shown in Section 4, “Itemization of Amount Due at Lease Signing or Delivery”?
The description of Section 10 suggests that it’s optional coverage and only applies if you initial, which suggests it would be paid outside the lease agreement, but since I’ve never actually bought into this crap, I don’t know how it would be calculated.
I ask because a dealer made a mistake in a lease and sent me a revised lease to sign. The revised lease had something in Section 10 and I told them to piss off. They are trying to claim that the item in Section 10 was an error and that if it had been included on purpose, the amount in Section 10 would have shown up in Section 4 drive off (which it didn’t).
I’m thinking that Section 10 items are paid separately and are not part of the actual lease document.
Forcing me? No. Trying to trick me into signing and agreeing to one? Yes.
The second (revised) lease was mailed to my house with an “Initial here” tab next to the Wear and Tear line on the lease. There was no explanation for it…just a cover letter saying “Sign here and here and initial here.” I was not at the dealership–this second lease was mailed to my house to correct a mistake in the first signed lease (the error was them charging me too much for MSDs).
In the revised lease, there were three changes: 1) MSD was reduced, 2) drive off was reduced by the amount of the MSD reduction, and 3) the Excess Wear and Tear was added. But the drive off in the revised lease did not include the amount of the optional wear and tear package.
When I called BS on the addition of the W&T add-on, they claimed it was an honest mistake and said that the total drive off in Section 4 did not include the $500+ for the wear and tear in section 10, therefore proving it was an honest mistake. Knowing that these guys have tried to pad my original lease at every chance they had, I think they added the W&T intentionally.
Hence the question: Let’s say I actually WANTED a $500 wear and tear add-on. That would require me to initial in section 10, but would that amount necessarily be included in section 4?
Thanks. What’s strange is that in the capitalized cost section of the lease (Section 7), it lists the W&T, but it’s not included in the total. It looks like this:
$50,000 Agreed upon price of Vehicle
$700 Acquisition Fee
$500 Excess Wear and Tear
Total gross capitalized cost: $50,700
I assume that because they overcharged me in lease #1 by at bit more than the W&T charge, they’d just take that money and apply it toward the W&T? It’s all very shady.
Yeah, in the end they re-wrote the lease a third time, without the excess wear and tear. I’m just trying to figure out the likelihood that this really was an honest mistake, and I think it’s basically a very small to zero chance.
My guess is that since I over paid by ~$550 in MSDs, they trying to get me to sign up for W&T so that they could apply that excess MSD payment toward the W&T.
