Hey everyone,
So this was my first lease negotiation. I’ve bought and sold over 45 cars for myself over the past 30 years or so, but have always stayed away from leasing because I could not reconcile the advertised lease prices with what I could do on a purchase. For some reason I never connected that you could negotiate hard on a lease and actually end up in pretty good shape. Had I known this two years ago, I would not have bought my 2012 X5 diesel that I am trying to sell right now for a loss. Or at least I was trying to; I think I’ll just keep it now.
Many of you have PMd me asking how I found the car, how I did the deal, if I can get more, and if I can tell you the dealer’s name. I’m going to answer the first two, but the answer to the second two is NO. I am just a regular guy, I don’t have any inside connections, and I have a commitment with the dealer that I could share his information, or share the deal details, but not both. My initial plan if I bought the car was to share his information but not share details other than to say “you have to see this guy”. But I didn’t want this deal that I worked hard on to go to waste, so I put the details out here. For all that missed out, I feel your pain. Trust me. I do.
OK, so here’s how it went down. I saw a couple of people posting about cheap E-Class leases, as well as others posting about service loaners on here, and how so long as they were under a certain number of miles, they could be great deals. So I started looking at local dealers’ sites to see if they had any service loaners on sale, and none of the local MB dealers listed any. I then thought about looking out of state, and did a Google search for something like “Mercedes Retired Service Loaner”. I found a dealer in the NE that had a few E300s listed for something like $8,000 off. I thought that was pretty cool, but I heard one poster had something close to that as a discount on a new one, so I figured there may be a way to “stack discounts”. Then I heard about the USAA/PenFed discount available, and realized that the E-Class has the highest percentage USAA discount ($2000) of any of the models. BMW’s discounts couldn’t touch it either.
So I sent an email to a dealer here in town asking about a retired service loaner, and gave them the parameters I was looking for by using the LH Calculator. I said I was looking for something around $260 with Max MSDs and a total of around $5K down, figuring I only wanted to put down first month and maybe acquisition fee and doc fee. The dealer responded to me saying they really didn’t have anything like that, certainly not at that payment, but he would look around again. He then emailed me the next morning and told me that he had a list of active service loaners that were “eligible for retirement”, and he thought he might have a deal for me, although not exactly what I wanted (slightly higher payment). He sent me a build sheet and a worksheet on the deal, and I then said that it was pretty attractive, but I don’t think I could make the numbers work. After a few more conversations, he and his used car manager worked for an hour or so and came back with the new numbers that were actually lower than what I asked for. Based on that, I said OK I’m coming over later today. He went over everything in his office with me and it was all legitimate. He then said he had never seen a deal as good as what we had put together, and I believed him. I couldn’t believe that I was going to be getting a $60K car for $258/mo including tax!
Of course, then the call came from the buyer of my X5 and everything took a different turn.
So, here are some pointers that worked for me:
- Contact dealers in your area and ask them if they have any active service loaners that are eligible for retirement. Try to get one with between 7-9K miles for the best deal.
- Know ahead of time what kind of hack deal you want, and propose that to them, instead of starting out asking what their best deal is (I know this might go against others’ wisdom, and maybe it’s wrong, but it worked for me). Be sure to break everything down.
- Remember the $50 roundup on MSDs. The sales guy saw that if he lowered the price of the car by $10, the base payment came under $350 which meant that I could have $3500 of my $5000 due go towards the security deposit and it would lower my monthly payment also. But $10 more, the lease payment was like $351, which then meant $4000 would go towards the security deposit, which seemed like a better idea, but the former ended up saving me $38 over the 36 month term so I went with that option.
- Don’t forget about other discounts, like USAA/PenFed which stack on top of everything. Make sure you include that in step 2.
I can’t tell you much about shopping other dealers. It’s possible that other ones in the area could have done better, but honestly I couldn’t see how. Plus, this guy worked his tail off for me, so I was going to give him the business.
I hope this helps, and apologies if the post is too long. But I have had my inbox flooded with questions and requests for “more cars”, so I thought this would be helpful to the community. Hopefully I’ll join the ranks of not just a lease hackr but also the owner of a lease hackr car one day. 
