Good suggestion, and was in the earlier post I shared about FFS FREEZE YOUR CREDIT
A Honda finance department is often (not always) indistinguishable from an HR Block on February 1st
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Go here
where’s the trade-in on this contract???
From what I recall about the discussion above, the broker/dealer simply grounded the car and did not treat it as a trade-in, and the OP ended up on the hook for excess miles.
The theory bandied about here is the dealer cleverly denied the OP a single dime of equity by grounding and then purchasing the Lease return from HFS. Effectively taking every cent of the estimated $10k in equity for themselves and the OP none the wiser.
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Almost forgot that part.
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i have to admit i’ve never heard of “grounding”. what the hell is that? it it some kind of convoluted process whereby you could sit across from me in a finance office and explain away the fact that the car I’m giving you doesn’t appear anywhere on the contract i’m signing???
In a sense yes because you as the consumer literally just did a lease return and forfeited any of your equity. The dealer however picks it up for the payoff amount and instantly gains that equity.
It won’t show up on the contract because the dealer didn’t buy the car in the transaction, and apply any equity or delta in trade value net payoff the way one would expect in a car that had 5-digit equity.
So in a sense it becomes a tax free gift or transfer of wealth from the consumer to the dealer that’s never credited nor applied to the deal.
The fact that the dealer also charged $3k over MSRP in dealer adds or addendum is just next level greed.
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I don’t think you can transfer a Honda lease if it’s with HFS.
This is true. But you can always… err… sell it to the dealer…
I’d even use the same broker 
i apologize but i’m really struggling with this. can you walk me through this please because i just cannot comprehend how this could have taken place looking at the contract that was posted.
The process by which you incur the disposition fee on a lease (with AFS/HFS you can incur the disposition fee even if the car is purchased and not grounded). You hand them keys and car, they hand you a signed OD statement, the car goes back to the bank. Once it’s grounded, many brands allow a dealer FROF to buy for their inventory.
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It’s literally a completely separate thing. No equity at all.
Picture this: you walk into a dealer, you have a car with $10k in equity. But instead you toss the dealer the keys and say, “take care of this. I don’t want to pay the $395 disposition fee.”*
Then you walk over to a different person at the dealer and then lease a newer version of the same car for $3k over MSRP. The earlier lease return has nothing to do with this second ‘transaction’.
*getting hit with the miles overage though, that’s just sadistic dealerism.
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As the risk of being pedantic, grounding a lease results in a disposition fee in all cases.
If the dealer buys-out the lease at lease end, in most brands there is no disposition fee / lease-end inspection/fees (the purchasing dealer takes the car as-is) — that isn’t grounding the lease.
We had a question about this today, a MB at lease-end worth the payoff. If a MB dealer buys it out, no disposition fee due (otherwise just turn it in).
It’s to the dealer’s advantage: lease is grounded, lessor owes any fees for mileage/excess W&T, dealer can usually purchase for less than residual.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope this dealership burns to the ground. But I understand why they did it: they extracted every nickel they could from this deal, with 0 customer service.
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You’re right. But also leasing the new Odyssey results in a disposition fee waiver by HFS. Granted that wouldn’t happen in the 2 part example I cited, but it was merely a bit of poetic license to illustrate the point.
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They literally took every win they could get, it’s unsportsmanlike at a certain point, just running up the score here:
- $10k of equity (presumably)
- made the customer pay the miles overage
- charged a few grand over MSRP
- made the consumer re-sign
- threatened the consumer
I wouldn’t be surprised if they delivered the car un-PDI’d and with the gas light on just because they could.
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Ironically, grifters are always looking for a mark.
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no way. come on, admit you’re fucking with me about this.
This is correct, my previous car (2019 odyssey) was leased through U.S. bank and it had equity at the end of the lease, so the broker told me that they would give me a “good deal“ on a new odyssey, and since there was like 2 scratches and it was a little over mileage so he would take care of that and I wouldn’t need to deal with that and on top of that give me a new odyssey at a “good price“