I’ve had my leased Nissan Sentra for a little over 2 weeks. I don’t love it as much as I thought I did, and the dealership is making it harder.
I’ve been occasionally checking to see if I could log-on to my online finance portal, which has always told me my VIN was invalid. Yesterday I called Nissan consumer affairs who told me they have no information about the sale of my car, and it was very unusual for it to take this long as most contracts come to them within a week of signing. I reached out to the dealer who told me they had submitted the contract, but Nissan rejected it because it had an “ink blot”, even though it didn’t cover any numbers. They said they would send someone to my house with a new contract for me to sign. (I find it strange that they did not tell me about this “rejection” until I started asking questions.) I called consumer affairs back, who told me they do not reject contracts based on cosmetic issues. They would just request an electronic copy be sent in addition to the signed copy. The phone agent also advised I make a copy of my current lease in to compare to the new one, rather than the original. She had apparently heard similar cases where the dealer would attempt to destroy the customers copy so they had nothing to compare the new one to.
My question is, if I refuse to sign a new contract, can I give the lease back and move on? This dealership is making me sick with their deceptive tactics and I want nothing to do with it. Seeing as they refuse to send the signed copy to Nissan, could the contract be considered void? I want my down payment back, and the $1,000 they gave me for my trade. I have put roughly 200 miles on this car in the last two and a half weeks. I feel that I may have the upper hand here since the dealer made the mistake and now needs me to do extra.
Am I correct in thinking my current lease isn’t active or therefore, “valid”? Would the dealership allow me to give the car back in this situation? How would I go about asking this? I could not find anything in my lease pertaining to any of this. Thanks for any advice!
Check the numbers on the new contract very very very carefully against the copy of the contract you brought home. If there’s been a change in any of the numbers, then yes, you can certainly refuse to sign and have reason to have them take the car back.
If they can’t get the lease funded, then you don’t have a car. Your two choices are to sign the new contract or unwind the deal. The dealer does NOT want the latter, but it is absolutely an option no matter how much they kick and scream.
Would I be able to tell if it got rejected because of funding? All they told me over the phone yesterday was that it got rejected because of an ink blot, they haven’t been answering my phone calls today (called 5 times over the past 9 or so hours)
If they need to re-contract for any reason it means that the deal wont fund. Even if you were approved and there’s an error on paperwork the deal will get blocked by the bank until it gets re-contracted.
We had a glitch in advent this weekend that caused us to re-contract 5 customers or we wouldn’t have got our deals funded.
If you don’t like the car then have them take it back and give you your money back 200 miles is nothing on the car that you drove.
Your trade on the other hand if they haven’t gotten rid of it yet then you’ll have to take that back or whatever the value you were given. Just be nice there’s only 2 outcomes to it sign new contract or get your money back and return the car.
I had a similar experience a few years ago. Me and my wife were cosigners and the dealer wanted to resign without me on the contract because they couldn’t verify my employment (or so they said.) I was disappointed the lease would not help build my credit (which was bad at the time) so I told them okay but I wanted my down payment back and another 10% off the monthly or they can come pick up the car. After a few tense days back and forth they said ok and we resigned.
I’m happy with the deal financially and on paper, I’m just don’t really like the car. Coming from a Taurus, the Sentra is a disappointing ride. If I can use this opportunity to get myself out of the lease and into a different car, I would like to seize that opportunity!
If none of this resigning stuff had come up, I would have waited my 36 months without complaint. But, since this situation is happening, I figure I may as well try to get out and into something I like more…
