I am looking for some advice here: I have my infiniti inspected for lease return with no issue but right after the inspection I had an accident (talking about bad luck!).
Car is in reputable body shop and insurance pays for it. Couple of mechanical and bumper cover will be aftermarket. Insurance is saying this is insurance industry standard and we give lifetime warranty, I checked couple of other major insurance companies and they ALL have the same policy. On other hand infinti finance lease contracts are saying OEM parts must be used!
Shop is saying if you insist on all OEM you need to pay the difference. Most infinti’s are leased and insured by one of these major insurance companies, it’s hard to believe they are (or customers) all paying 100% OEM parts for infiniti accident repairs.
Any advice? Anyone here experienced infinti lease return with accident repair using aftermarket repair parts?
Well don’t tell Infiniti about it, they’ll be none the wiser. There’s no way they can tell what parts were put on it. The only way they would find out is if you brought it up.
Correction, they could figure out what parts were used, but something like a bumper cover would require it to be taken off, and that’s not happening.
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, Infiniti doesn’t have shops, like some BMW or Mercedes outlets.
Reputable shops are quite capable of doing a terrible job. They’re FOS though, they get discounts for origin parts. A lot of times, the aftermarket parts are not significantly cheaper, but they are delivered on their doorstep several times a day, and they feed their relashionship with that seller this way. Problem is they fail faster, so you will pay more in labor. Not your case now, but in principle.
BMW and Mercedes-Benz don’t have shops either. It’s the dealership arm that runs those shops, and they’re franchised. Infiniti has them too, just not in your market.
I would not tell them about the aftermarket parts.
I would tell the the third party about the accident, they may have to redo the inspection, that is all.
In my experience, they only look at it superficially, if it looks nice, end-of story.
Check the third party website or agreement, they may have something about your situation exactly. It’s not that uncommon to have an accident after the inspection
That’s what I thought, there was nothing on the 3rd party report and I called Infiniti they said no need re- inspection ( which was odd to me) just make sure get repaired before return and body shop uses OEM…that’s how I found about the whole OEM deal…my concern is I don’t want after returning I get a bill.
Any one knows what happens after dealer takes delivery? and at what point the accident repair may come up, if come up at all? Or they really don’t care as long as car looks acceptable to the dealer at the time of return?
Infiniti didn’t even care when you told them, I think there’s your answer. I had hail on my car that I had repaired, I didn’t tell VW squat, and won’t be leaving the receipt in the car either for the repairs.
Infiniti isn’t going to be able to tell the difference. Just return the car looking like new and leave it at that. The car will likely go to auction as the dealer won’t buy it since it was in an accident making it harder to resell.
