Noticed this today. Has anyone else seen the same?
Same here
101010
Yes, noticed the same today ever since the new mileage increment was added to the calc (i.e., 5,000 miles).
I removed the feature this morning because different brands have different increments for residual value adjustments. This might be confusing for users.
Would there be a way to program the calc to adjust each increment based on the brand selected? With BMW, for example, it would be a 1% difference between 7500 to 10k and between 10k to 12k, and a 2% difference from 12k to 15k. Could the calc just be programed to make those specific adjustments only when BMW is selected as the brand, for example? I often share the LH calc with users when they ask for it, and they play around with the mileage to see how that affects the payment. I could easily see this creating equal confusion if I send them a calc and they change the mileage but the payment doesn’t change.
I see your use case, but I am not sure how to handle:
- People get confused because not all brands offer 5k, 7.5k, or 10k, as the calculator’s auto-adjustment seems to suggest.
- Brands like INIFINITI and Nissan have different residual value adjustment for different annual mileage among their models. It’s impractical for us to capture all nuances among all brands. Looking the residual value up using Rate Findr seems to be a more practical and accurate solution.
- People get confused because changing the length of the lease doesn’t similarly change the residual value or money factor, so they assume there is no impact (We got a lot of emails about this).
We welcome your suggestions on how to make the calculator more user-friendly.
can this be fixed? right now, it doesnt adjust rv at all. it just stays the same, regardless of mileage toggled.
I totally agree, and I guess this leads me back to my question - can’t we make the mileage/RV adjustment brand-specific since the very first filter is brand selection? If a user selects BMW as the brand – the same way we get other fields to adjust to BMW-specific criteria (e.g., number of MSDs allowed, one-pay MF reduction of 75 pts, MSD MF reduction of 6 pts per MSD, etc.) – can’t we do the same thing with the mileage toggle and have it adjust the residual based on BMW guidelines? And so on and so forth with other brands…
@littleviolette Can you at least make the calculator the way it was before. Now we need to manually send the new calculators to every single customer who wants to look at their payments for different mileage options.
I understand your point that changing the term such as 24, 27, 36 and 39 does not update the residual either. We have discussed it here many times before where a customer changes it manually. But there are very few brands with such programs. 99 % of the time we brokers also look at it ahead of time while we are pricing it to see what term makes the most sense and only post that. For example Lexus RZ300 payment is $ 10 more for 27 months compared to 36 months. I offer it to the customer when they are ready to proceed. But all the other models are always at 36 months or sometimes 39 months.
Closed a 2nd one and then realized the calc didn’t update RV for miles.
Please also consider creating a toggle for locking term. That will eliminate the playing around with calculators for payment shoppers who want to see a lower number and manipulate months w the same RV.
2 Likes
Thanks for looking into this @littleviolette.
Can we leave the calculator as it was for all other brands with the exception of Nissan / Infiniti ?
Basically it doesn’t change residuals if users choose Nissan / Infiniti and maybe a message in Red font informs of the issue till a permanent solution is found in the future ?
If that’s not possible, maybe load default 15k residual %s like banks post and then provide written description on what % to add for each mileage option. (Very similar to how programs are received by dealers from the banks)
Thanks.
infiniti does not change rvs the way nissan does. it’s one point across the board. nissan is 2 from 10 to 12k. That’s the only difference. It’s not even worth fixing. Nobody buys that junk, anyway.
If thats the case, then I agree only Nissan should be taken out.
GM decreased its RV by 2% when 10k to 15k if the term was between 24 and 27 months. The same annual mileage change decreased the RV by 3% for other terms. Not sure if it is still the case.
If we were to re-integrate the feature, can we come up with a list of brands that follow the RV adjustment convention? Documentation is preferred. It would also be helpful to know the rules for the brands that do not follow the convention.
@ZZAutoDeals : I hope you see the challenge in custom building the feature for each brand, as the calculator serves a larger audience who is interested in brands beyond BMW. We are open to the idea, but we would need a lot more input from the community to get this done.
Makes sense @littleviolette. I only used BMW as an example, but almost every brand does it the same way. How about keeping the calculator as it was and changing it only for the brands that actually do it differently like Nissan, Infiniti, and GM, for example? So rather than program something specific for each brand, keep it as it was before and only change it for those brands that do it differently. Seems like the list of brands that don’t follow the conventional method is a lot smaller.
I’m not a programmer, so not sure if it’s easy to implement. But seems to me that creating an exception to the general rule would be easier to program.
Is it possible to disable the feature for Nissan and GM and have people input it manually from Ratefindr ?
We restored the mileage residual adjustment for now, with Nissan and GM as the carveouts.
5 Likes
Thank you !
thanks much
Thank you!