Should Brokers reveal damage to demos up front- or is it buyer beware?

Off-Ramp
1

So this week I was negotiating for a lease deal on a demo with a LH broker- got through 3 rounds of communications-

  1. Settled on specific Car.
  2. Finalized financial terms.
  3. Requested documentation to confirm color/packages
    Finally asked for the CarFax report prior to sending over payment- since I knew it was a demo- and then saw there was a report of minor damage on the vehicle. To be fair- broker never hid it, and sent me the report as soon as I asked for it. So, I won’t name the broker.

To me it just felt a little dishonest with no disclosure right at the beginning- the broker saw no problem with it- the deal died right there and we both wasted time on it.

Wanted to see what the LH community thought- should the broker have revealed it when we agreed upon the vehicle- or was it my responsibility to bring it up and ask for the CarFax report?

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Probably more likely the broker wasnt even aware until it was brought up.

What kind of minor damage are we talking about?

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3

And I assume we are referring to damage history on the CarFax, and not any current (apparent) damage?

4

CarFax reported damage- noted as minor.
Damage to trunk- no other comments in report.

5

He’s talking about reported accidents. They should be disclosed in a damage disclosure, anyway. Highly likely a broker doesn’t even know. Hell - when I sell volvo loaners, I don’t check their faxes. I’m positive my dealers don’t. I’ll even give you another example - Park Ave Acura, which used to have a salesperson post here, prior to the shortage, sold a ton of RDX and TLX loaner cars, which are now coming due. I’m getting a ton of those people coming to me since that guy is no longer at park ave. i haven’t seen this many carfaxes on loaner cars, while they were IN loaner service ever…

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6

I wouldn’t expect a broker to know that level of detail about each car, I would think that would fall to me to do the research about - but that aside, I wouldn’t care about minor repaired damage either. It’s a loaner with tons of farts, some damage is to be expected IMO which is why it’s discounted.

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The general rule of thumb with loaners is that as long as there is no damage that you could be charged for at lease end, anything else is fair game.

I can’t imagine why you or anyone would care if a loaner you’re borrowing for 3 years that you got a massive discount on has a bad CarFax. I’ve actually used a bad fax as a negotiating point in the past on loaners/demos.

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I agree - that is likely the norm 99% of the time