VW Excess wear and tear plan

Our lease is up next October, but there is a bit of damage on the driver door after someone backed into it scraping it. They’re going to pay for the damages since it was a family member. The damage is subtle enough to drive and not bring it in to a shop to fix.

We are most likely not going to buy it out at the end, and we have their excess wear and tear protection. We might go over the milage limit as well so we were hoping to just trade it in.

My questions is should we just leave it for their lease end inspection to determine the price and if its covered? If we trade it in would the wear and tear protection plan apply?

If your wear & tear plan just covers $X amount of damage at lease end, then yes, you would just drive the car as-is until lease end, get the inspection done, then the plan should cover most lease end damage charges up to $X amount.

If you trade the car in, then the wear & tear plan wouldn’t come into play since you’re not grounding the lease. The car’s condition (including the scratch/damage) would be taken into account when the dealer values your trade.

Hmm, so I guess I need to figure out which makes more financial sense. The plan covers up to $10k in damages.

Trade it in at the end of lease - damage cost for another car

Return it at lease end and find another car

Which VW do you have? I’m not sure how real-world resale values compare in Canada vs. the US, but I imagine most VWs don’t have positive equity at lease end…

Its a 2022 Jetta, yeah I’m not expecting much positive equity at the lease end this time around. Our last lease trade in a 2019 Jetta gave us around around $7000 trade in for this 2022 one.