I leased a VW Jetta a couple of years ago and the lease period is up. I went about 16,000 miles over the allotted mileage and I was wondering if anyone has ever head of dealerships with payment plans for overages or if a lump sum is due when you turn the car in?

 

The dealership won't help you out on this. Not that they don't want to, but they can't. Depending on the manufacturer...you have 3 choices with being over on miles...

1. When you realize that you are going over, you can purchase more miles for your lease and you can build that into your payments...but that is generally not offered during the end of your lease. You have to do that early on.

2. You can pay in one lump sum. Not necessarily when you return the car though. You will get an invoice from VW in the mail later on.

3. Once you get that invoice, call them. Most manufacturers will accept a payment plan. For instance, I had a BMW X3 lease and went over by 10k. I received an $1800/invoice from them a month later. I called and simply said I can't pay it in full. They asked me how much I could pay and they required it to be auto pay. Long story short, I was able to do it in a 3/month payment.

So you can call VW now and ask them what your options are or wait until after you turn it in.

This isn't 100% with every manufacturer, but pretty much how it is.

Hope this helps...good luck

 

Your lease contract is not with the dealership, it is with the manufacturers leasing and finance company. The lease agreement you signed specified how much you will have to pay for overage and return condition issues. If you like the car, you also have a buy out residual price that you can purchase the car for. It may be cheaper to buy the car than to pay the overage and buy another car.

 

You also be able to negotiate the amount. I have heard from friends they did this on a Saab which was way over. They only paid about 1/3 of the original amount owed.

 

I just leased an A4 with 15k miles. Negotiating with them the salesman AND the finance guy said if we go over, but lease another Audi from them, they could totally "sweep it under the rug" for us.

They'd probably just build the overage into our new lease price....

Now my wife years ago had a Lexus and she had hit her milage limit but still had 1 year left on the lease.... she took it back to her same dealer and got into a new lease without paying any penalty.

So it's worth trying.