Worried about this too - turned in my BMW lease on the 30th. Ended up sitting in my car in the service garage for 40 minutes waiting for the least inspector to come out. It was always ‘10 more minutes.’
Even though at pre-inspection they told me it was going to cost $300 disp. fee and $300 for a scuffed rim, I didn’t get charged for anything. Plus they paid for lyft lux to get me home. Hoping I don’t get a check in the mail but who knows. Was 2k under my mileage but doubt that had any bearing on it.
Final update: I returned the car by driving to the originating dealership.
I did first pull into my local dealer unannounced. They rejected me swiftly, though politely. They explained that as a policy matter (dating back to pre-covid times) they no longer accept lease returns they didn’t originate. Specifically they said that once BMWFS stopped requiring them to, they didn’t need to in order to run a good profitable dealership, so they stopped accepting lease returns.
During my 90 minute drive to the originating dealer I passed two other BMW centers, and in real-time called both from the freeway. Neither was willing to accept the return.
When I got to the originating center, despite being told by BMWFS to just show up, they first tried to tell me that I’d have to come back because I didn’t have an appointment. When I dropped the GM’s name who BMWFS spoke with, they said give me a minute, came back and took the return. It was all of ten minutes. They did not have an inspector there at the time, so they just took custody of the car and said they will have Autovin come inspect later since I didn’t do a pre-inspection at my house.
This experience is of course not what they promise when you lease, that you can return to any BMW center. In reality, it’s only at the originating center where it’s truly your option. Any given center can refuse to accept you, any time. I’d be sympathetic to all this given the covid thing, but it’s pretty clear to me that in SoCal the dealers are generally moving to only accept their own leases irrespective of the pandemic. I literally spoke with 8 different centers to try and find someone closer who’d take the damn car.
While BMWFS was actually pretty great on the phone, it took me something like twelve phone calls between different dealerships and BMWFS, plus then a full weekend afternoon with three hours of drive time, to do a simple lease return. And at this point I expect despite the car being immaculate they’ll try to hit me with some bogus charges. This is a pretty terrible customer service experience.
Are you saying that you spoke to someone at BMW Financial Services before you signed the lease, and they told you that you could return it at any BMW dealer, and that’s what your contract says?
Check your lease agreement. The one I signed in 2019 says this:
If you are relying on what you were told by the dealer at the time you initiated the lease, well, they have no power to verbally modify the terms of the agreement between you and the leasing bank.
I am looking through my contract to see where this is stated but no luck… Can you point it out since I am genuinely curious given your experience… Did BMW promise or was your originating dealer a little bold in their statements?
The only meaningful thing I did find was on BMWs lease end site…
“Please note that the only BMW Center required to accept return of your vehicle is the BMW Center where the contract originated.”
Well, if I can offer a counterpoint, and of course there’s no guarantee this will hold going forward, but I have returned probably 10 leased BMWs to the local BMW dealership 10 minutes from my house and none of them have ever come from that dealer. Honestly, most have come from many states away. They always joke with me at turn in with something like “hey, what do we have to do to get you to buy a car from here!?!?”. I laugh, say something nebulous and neutral, hand them the keys, sign the tablet for the turn in and head home😁
Going forward just tell em” that you will be leasing a new car with them next month and are working with “Jimmy” in sales on a custom build M5 Competiton.
(genius tech thinking to himself) We don’t have a Jimmy in sales?
I’ve not looked at the contract but I’m sure it says in fine print exactly what is the real truth, you can only formally return to the originating dealer. The point is that BMWFS very clearly acts as if that it not true, that you can return to any dealer. This is what I was told when I originated, and also what BMWFS told me the first two times I called to ask “how do I return”. And I believe that in other markets you might not have trouble returning at random dealers going forward. But in SoCal, that appears to me to be a thing of the past.
What the contract says is irrelevant; only crazy people on LH read contracts, real consumers of course do not. BMW is setting up a consumer expectation of “return is easy, do it anywhere”. They then aren’t delivering on it. Sure, if you roll into a new lease, maybe they’ll make it easier for you–but that ain’t exactly the LH way either since there’s no reason to know ex-ante that your local dealer is giving the best deal. If you want to actually optimize your cost on a BMW in SoCal, what it appears to me is that part of the hidden non-dollar cost is that if you want to get the best deal and have to travel to do so, you should mentally price that on the back end you’re going to have to travel to return. I just drove 2 hours to pick up my new XC90, so I’m not opposed to driving to save some dough. But for BMW what rankles is that they clearly try to set up a consumer expectation that they then cannot actually deliver on.