So my friend recently leased a car which he thought was new but recently found out through BMW the car was retailed back in Jan as a demo. The car only had 100 miles on it. On the lease agree, the car is marked as New and not Demo. Could he demand the dealer to take the car back? Could he renegotiate the lease? Any legal actions he can take? What are his options?
These are things you are supposed to check out before you buy. Don’t know why anyone would worry about 100 miles on a leased car or even one you are buying. What does he want? To return the car? Renegotiate based on the car having $20 worth of miles on it?
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There’s no recourse, as there’s no harm.
Tell your friend to ask for a hat next time he gets a free oil change. Failing that, tell him to fill up on yummy BMW Dealer coffee and figure it’s $4/cup. Drink 5 and you’re even. Drink 6 and you’re ahead.
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OP how do you know it was a demo ?
My X5 had been test driven for over 10 months and had 120 miles on the odo.
Even with 120 miles, it was sold as new.
The only way to prove it was used before the purchase:
Was the warranty & maintenance punched earlier than the retail sale date ??
If it was punched before it was purchased, you have an issue.
Seriously?!
I guess some people are just looking for a jackpot.
Is there something wrong with the car now that it has 100 miles on it versus 20? Mechanical problems? Somehow I doubt it.
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He’s upset at the fact that it wasn’t disclosed to him and demos sell at a much larger discount.
BMW sent him a record showing that the car is listed as USED and he is the 2nd owner. The first owner is the dealership.
Yes with 3-4k miles on them, not with 100 miles. Seems like someone’s looking for a payday.
PS he’s not the second owner as demos aren’t titled.
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Not a big deal as others have mentioned. If he feels so strongly about it he should order his car from Germany so he will know its specially for him.
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Here is the exact verbiage from BMW.
“Your salesman would be able to explain this to you better. My guess is that the dealership retailed the vehicle to themselves when new to use as a loaner/demo vehicle in January and then sold/leased the vehicle to you this month as the second owner. If the vehicle was retailed to the dealership first and you were the second owner then the vehicle retail would be considered used and not new. I assume this is what happened, but your salesman would be able to confirm if that is the case or not.”
There could be a payday. 7 months of warranty are gone. What does your friend really want- some compensation or to get out of the deal? He could talk to the dealer and/or an attorney. What the dealer did isn’t too cool.
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If I was buying i’d probably be annoyed but leasing? meh, who cares. It’ll go back before the warranty is up right?
Several BMW dealers have been found to not correctly report the mileage on the vehicle to the DMV / state and BMW Financial. They will say a car has 300 miles on it to give special “demo” rates, when the vehicle only has 10. BMW is infamous for strong-arming dealers into punching demo cars to make a month meet ends, but those are the best deals for all of us on LH.
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BMW seems to have misled the sale and did not disclose it was a demo.
On the vehicle purchase/lease contract, there should be a huge RED stamp that says “DEMO” on the contract.
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Have to agree with the general consensus to do your due-diligence during the purchase process to avoid situations like these; but generally I don’t see any harm here.
What exactly is your friend hoping for?
He’s looking to do either one of these options.
- Renegotiate the deal to reflect a demo car.
- Give back the car and lease an actually new car.
He’s not looking for a payday. He’s just upset that the dealership pulled a fast one on him and his ego doesn’t want to let it go.
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Tell him to get a life and live with the contract he signed. The car is new, punched as demo. No way they would have given him the same discount as on 4,500 miles loaner.
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He could be damaged a little bit if he were to buy the car out of the lease later and have less warranty. He could have less equity or more loss if he gets out of the lease early.
He should make sure he doesn’t have any separate document that discloses he leased a demo.
I’d be annoyed if I leased a car where the in-service date was 7 months prior. I don’t know what a BMW dealer gains from that, but they should have disclosed it was punched as a demo.
I suspect the dealer will offer up a pound of flesh.
I’m not buying the “due diligence” concept. That’s assuming a customer should know to see if the warranty was started.
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I disagree with others on this. If I were sold a car that I thought was new but it was in fact a demo, I’d be pissed. It makes a difference. I would have negotiated a lower price or asked the dealer to give me one of them new cars instead. I mean, all things being equal why take the demo? If the car was a demo (100% sure) and the dealer did not disclose, then bad faith on the dealer.
However, I would suspect that if your friend looks at his paperwork closely, somewhere on there it says that the car is a demo (if in fact it is) and your friend signed that paperwork - probably without really looking at what he signed. And maybe because the finance guy slipped it in real quick while they were talking about something else (still shame on your friend too for not reading).
If it turns out that it is a demo and it is not disclosed anywhere (i.e. he didn’t sign anything to that effect), then he does have some recourse with the dealer. If he really wants to, and really pushes it, he could probably get out of the deal (but I mean it will take a bunch of work and no one is going to give in easily). However, what are your friend’s damages? If he lost out on 7 month’s warranty, then unless he is in danger of being out of warranty at lease end (i.e. he signed a 4 year lease) and it was not disclosed, what does matter? Maybe he can finagle a warranty extension out of it. Or maybe he can unwind the deal but then he is going to have to start all over again finding a new deal. Maybe they will give him a few bucks to just go away. But I would only do that if it was determined that they were in fact sneaky bastards about the whole thing.
That does not prove anything. That’s just one person’s guess.