My son has a 2018 Jeep Wrangler with a 3 year lease. We got it for him for hs graduation. The lease is up in May of this year. Problem is he was hit a week ago (not his fault) and we all literally thought it would be totaled out! Even tow driver said it would definitely be totaled. Well, we got the call yesterday that they are going to repair it for $10,799.57. We had all intent on buying it out after the lease was up. I believe buyout was about $26,000. Issue is he is about 10,000 over on miles and we literally just put new tires and rims on it costing $850 just 3 weeks ago. Again we always had full intent on buying it out. Now we will not buy it out due to it being wrecked, BUT for an accident that was not my son’s fault WE will now have to pay $2500 for over mileage and loose the $850 with the new tires and rims. Anyone have any ideas on anything we can do? Can we sue the driver for the above since we had all intent on buying it out, until this happened. Any info would be greatly appreciated!!
You are paying these amounts because your son drove too much. Has nothing to do with the accident, but I understand that it sucks since you were planning on buying the car.
No- The drivers responsibility was to fix the damage, your intent won’t come into play.
The situation sucks, but you have the option to turn back in. If you had purchased it you would be stuck with a car that had an accident.
This is a lease forum, it isn’t an insurance or a legal forum…
But you want to sue somebody else for your own over mileage charges instead of taking responsibility for it yourselves?
Yeesh.
Have you tried getting any diminished value from the insurance company? There are a few companies around that offer a diminished value estimation services. I’ve used one before and it was well worth the $200 fee, got another $1300 from the insurance company.
He drove the miles and we put the new tires on 3 weeks ago, because we had FULL intent on buying out the lease.
Exactly!! We definitely would not spend that much for a totaled car. We had full intention on buying out in 2 months or we would not have put new tires and rims on.
This is a question about a leased car. Was hoping I could get some advice. I’m sure I’m not the only one this has happened to. We had FULL intent on purchasing this out in 2 months or we would not have put on new tires and rims. Miles did not matter then, but they do now.
Thank you!! I’ll look into it.
That gives me an idea. Is there a version of leasehackr for these topics?
I understand, but you leased the car in the first place, and that’s the beauty of leasing that you can walk away from a damaged car. Leasing and then buying doesn’t make sense in most cases.
It doesn’t matter if you wanted to buy the car out.
Insurance looks at the current market value of the car and you’re held to the terms set by the bank.
Then file in small claims court and argue intent.
If you want advice:
If it’s me, I take responsibility for my decision to buy new wheels/tires and my decision to exceed the allowable miles. This has nothing to do with anything in my mind.
Were the wheels and tires damaged by the accident? Did the accident add 10k miles to the odometer? If no, these are completely immaterial and only serves to water down any valid arguments about correct repair cost, diminished value, etc. If yes, seek compensation from insurance for damages.
Then it becomes an issue of maximizing your insurance payout by getting many quotes and negotiating with the insurance company, and getting the vehicle fixed as cheap as possible to minimum standards per your captive’s requirements if you’re turning it in.
There are plenty of Reddit sub forums that you can get quack advice on. $GME 
Leasing obligations don’t measure what you were intending to do in your heart. It’s not knowable or provable—and therefore it is not relevant.
Sounds like you needed a snowier off ramp.
What about putting the original wheels and some tires that meet spec back on the vehicle when you turn it in. Perhaps you can use the new tires / wheels on a future vehicle or sell them for some value.
Did you keep the original wheels?
Sucks that this happened. Hopefully your son was not hurt or injured (the most important thing). As @Ursus said, that’s the beauty of leasing. Get the Jeep fixed and walk away. The over mileage will be cheap compared to if you had bought it and wanted to trade it in with an accident on the Car Fax & higher than average miles. Do you still have the stock rims and tires? Take the new ones off and sell them. There are always people looking for Jeep parts.
So imagine instead of having a lease that you had a financed vehicle now, your son would still put on same miles and because of that you’d still have to put new tires on (wrangler tires go for nothing second hand!) but I presume he wanted the Nice rims with more aggressive tire setup?
Now in this situation you’d have financed Jeep with all money (very little money to be honest when it comes to Jeeps) invested in a vehicle with major accident on its record. What now? Would you still consider going after the other driver?
What I’m trying to say is that your blaming the other driver not only for the accident which presumably hes at fault for, but also for your decision to enter in lease contract with intention to buy instead of buying from the start…
Don’t be surprised if the captive of your lease is the recipient of any diminished value claims and they never pass it on to you.
You technically do not own the car yourself so you wouldn’t really be the beneficiary of those claims. With that being said, I have heard and seen some captives pass on diminished value to the leasee. It really just depends and it may be worth it just to pursue.
Best of luck. This is why we lease at times, to avoid eating the costs associated with incidents.
What a gift the accident happened a few weeks before buying it out, instead of that many weeks after you bought it out. For the low price of a set of Wrangler tires, you saved yourself a huge headache.