Hi all,
I searched around so I hope this hasn’t been answered before, apologies if so.
I have a 2020 Mazda coming off lease in a couple months, and want to purchase the vehicle. FL law apparently requires buyouts to go through a dealer. The dealer I initially leased from wants $1100 processing fee to handle this which seems ridiculous for some paperwork. I know federal law prohibits charging fees that were not part of the original lease, but my lease is with Mazda Financial, not the dealer obviously. I’ve already tried to get the dealer to do it for less to save myself the hassle and they won’t budge. This is MF’s responsibility as counterparty but I’m sure they won’t see it this way.
Two options I can think of:
Shop around various dealerships and see if anyone wants to win a future customer by doing this cheap. Does anyone have experience with this in SE Florida?
Push Mazda Financial and point out the wording in the lease agreement which is very clear, and ask them to pay the dealer fee. The one caveat here is the lease says “at a location of their choosing” so I suppose it’s possible they give me an absurd location like Alaska to try and make me go away. I doubt I could even get anyone on the phone who understands what I’m talking about anyway.
Does anyone have thoughts on either of these or a third option?
I completely understand your frustration but unfortunately I don’t think you’re going to get very far trying to push Mazda Financial since in FL this is supposedly required “by law”.
Your most realistic way to accomplish the buyout is to just call around to a bunch of Mazda dealers and see if any can do it for less. I agree $1100 is a total ripoff.
Also, AFAIK, while you may have to buy it through a dealer that dealer doesn’t necessarily have to be located in FL (someone correct me if I’m wrong here). So try a few dealers outside in the state in other places where doc fees are not as high.
Option 1. The FL legislature at the urging of the dealer lobby is the one that requires this.
It doesn’t have to be just a dealer in SE Florida, it could be anywhere in FL. Cast a wider net. Perhaps one of the brokers on here could point you to a dealer contact that would do it for $500 would be about the best I would think you could hope for.
I went through this with my X7 last year, such a dumb law basically lobbied by dealers to rip people off.
Knowing I had to go into a dealer, I went in with contract in hand before I fully understood the law. I went in and said “I’d like to buy this for the price on this paper.”
I was told they needed to do a “safety inspection” before they could let me buy it, even though the agreement said “as is.”
I left the dealer, picked up the phone, called 4 dealers and one agreed to simply process the paperwork.
Moral of the story, just call around and let them know you simply want to buy the car and aren’t looking for nonsense… someone should hopefully comply.
Wanted to add my input here for any one looking for info. Charging any fee that was not disclosed in the original lease contract is against federal law. FL sucks because they force us to use licensed dealers. I just went through it with a Nissan dealership in WPB. When i called them out in it, the GM of the dealership called me in a belligerent tirade and verbally assaulted me.
This also applies to finance companies and not just dealerships. Nobody can charge any fee that was not in the original lease agreement. Period.
First step is to read your contract and verify that those fees (could be labeled as dealer fee, delivery fee, processing fee, document fee, third party tag fee) are not on the contract. While there, make sure there’s no language that requires you to bring the car in for a safety inspection (unless you plan on getting CPO status, which most car manufacturers require inspection). If you are buying out your car you are not required to have it inspected by the dealership.
If those fees are not in your contract, your next step is to call the finance company and make sure they didn’t get their dealer license. I found out after the fact that NMAC got their dealer license in FL a few months back due to hundreds of complaints. I did months of research and never found info that they got their license. Wish I knew, would have saved me so much grief.
If you are forced to use a dealership. Stand your ground. Do not budge. Make sure you get everything in writing, either on paper or through text/email. Ask for an itemized breakdown of every fee in the buyout. If they don’t back down, walk out and then call corporate. You can even go so far as to research the emails of corporate execs and send them an email (which I had to do).
I ended up finding a dealership in Orlando that didn’t “charge the fees”. On paper they still charged them, but they took the equivalent off my residual value so it evened out.
Once you are able to find a dealership that is honest and you get the buyout done. File a complaint with the FL Attorney General and the FTC about any dealerships you encountered that tried to force those fees. It’s disgusting what they get away with.
I’ll add to this because I know there are a lot of lawsuits (especially in Florida) right now regarding excessive buyout fees, and I know one lawyer who is handling a lot of those cases.
Because of the fees and the requirement to buy out the car through a dealership, when my mother bought out her car last week, the dealership still charged a doc fee and the nonsense $399 electronic titling fee, but they informed me that they were now required to subtract it from the purchase price of the car. The contract clearly shows the purchase price as the residual less the fees. It’s a win-win because the dealership still get its fees but you don’t pay it. I don’t know if this is unique to Volvo right now, but FYI.
The tricky thing is it’s not really the dealer’s fault the law requires them to be involved (well it is their fault I’m sure, but that’s a different issue), so they can just say no. I called around to several and the best offer I could find was a dealer that would waive the fee if I used their financing. Prepayment fee for the loan is $75, so effectively got it done for that plus a couple days’ interest plus a credit pull. Not an issue at the moment but there are definitely times the pull would have been very annoying. I could wait six months and avoid the fee but at current rates that would obviously be a bad trade. Overall paying 75 bucks to have the paperwork done for me is well worth it.
