Lease Trade-In Question

[sdorn]

Who has traded in a leased Tesla on a new Tesla when the existing lease was not yet up? How did that play out? Did you get screwed on the early lease termination?

I've got a lease on a 2020 M3P that is about 18 months in, but I've only got about 3,700 miles on the car and it is completely pristine. It is black with white interior. If there was a buyout option in the lease I could easily buy it myself and sell it for as much or more than the original MSRP.

I was planning to trade it in on an MS Plaid I ordered, mainly just because I don't need both of them and that would be a convenient way to terminate the lease. It looks like Tesla is offering me just over $45k on a trade-in and the lease payoff is just over $50k. I pulled an offer from Carvana and they are offering almost $54k for it.

If I am able to sell out to Carvana, Vroom or CarMax I guess I will just do that instead of trading in to Tesla.

 

[Sigma4Life]

I’m in the same boat. I have a leased Model X that ends Nov 2022. I have a refresh X with an EDD of January 2022. I’d like to trade in my current X and upgrade to the refresh.

 

[moonm3]

Another option is to sell it to carmax, carvana, or vroom

They can buyout the lease and anything left over can be a bonus for you (especially with the low mileage)

It terminates the lease contract and gets you out of the early lease termination as well.

 

[Sigma4Life]

Another option is to sell it to carmax, carvana, or vroom

They can buyout the lease and anything left over can be a bonus for you (especially with the low mileage)

It terminates the lease contract and gets you out of the early lease termination as well.

Hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[sdorn]

Another option is to sell it to carmax, carvana, or vroom

They can buyout the lease and anything left over can be a bonus for you (especially with the low mileage)

It terminates the lease contract and gets you out of the early lease termination as well.

I wasn't sure if you could do that on the Model 3 leases that don't have buyout options. That might be a good option for me.

 

[moonm3]

I wasn't sure if you could do that on the Model 3 leases that don't have buyout options. That might be a good option for me.

Yep
Because the Model 3 has no buyout option for us we are able to sell it to a 3rd Party Dealer (Autonation, Carvana, Carmax, Vroom, etc)

There's an option if you go under your account -> Model 3 Page -> Lease Management (Manage Lease) -> Then you'll see the dropdown of options and the 4th option (Sell car to Dealer) is there

Assuming you have no negative equity on the lease (most leases now should be undermileage from terms) you can actually make some money as the Third party dealership will pay the residual value of the leasing agreement and anything left over will be paid to you

However I do see a LOT of used Teslas on the market now so your YMMV (but I was offered $7k over on my M3P 2 months ago from Carvana)

 

[jmgman23]

why can you sell
your car to a dealer but not buy it out yourself?

 

[Trunk Gap]

Yes. Going thru this right now.
Did a trade in, with an agreed amount, got a bill for a year of payments left on the car. Why would I give you the car AND pay for it, especially when the agreement clearly was a trade in. Terrible.

Tesla still hasn’t resolved. waiting.

 

[Hal9000FTL]

Yes. Going thru this right now.
Did a trade in, with an agreed amount, got a bill for a year of payments left on the car. Why would I give you the car AND pay for it, especially when the agreement clearly was a trade in. Terrible.

Tesla still hasn’t resolved. waiting.

Did you ever get resolution Rory? I'm trying to decide what to do if my X gets produced.

 

[Sigma4Life]

Yes. Going thru this right now.
Did a trade in, with an agreed amount, got a bill for a year of payments left on the car. Why would I give you the car AND pay for it, especially when the agreement clearly was a trade in. Terrible.

Tesla still hasn’t resolved. waiting.

Did you ever get resolution Rory? I'm trying to decide what to do if my X gets produced.

I’m in the same boat. I have a lease that expires November 2022 and an X order that originally had an EDD of January. Very interested to see what your resolution was.

 

[Trunk Gap]

yes - they are insisting I pay. Trade in listed on the site for months, was given a trade amount for the car, given a payoff, confirmed it was a trade when I handed the keys in…and still Tesla felt like categorizing it as an early lease return without telling me, insisting I pay them all remaining payments of the car I traded in, and not giving me the option to get the car back - just slapping me with a 20k bill they fabricated out of thin air. Despicable, and even more despicable is that the salesperson and store managers stance is “oh well, is what it is“.

Moral of the story thus far - don’t trust them, get everything in writing, to the letter, or don’t trade a lease in to Tesla ever. Can’t trust them.

disgusting. still in escalation mode.

 

[Sigma4Life]

yes - they are insisting I pay. Trade in listed on the site for months, was given a trade amount for the car, given a payoff, confirmed it was a trade when I handed the keys in…and still Tesla felt like categorizing it as an early lease return without telling me, insisting I pay them all remaining payments of the car I traded in, and not giving me the option to get the car back - just slapping me with a 20k bill they fabricated out of thin air. Despicable, and even more despicable is that the salesperson and store managers stance is “oh well, is what it is“.

Moral of the story thus far - don’t trust them, get everything in writing, to the letter, or don’t trade a lease in to Tesla ever. Can’t trust them.

disgusting. still in escalation mode.

You should tweet Elon and Tesla about it. Perhaps attach an influencer like @WholeMarsBlog. It’s a long shot but public shame seems to be the only way to get corporations to behave at times.

 

[Trunk Gap]

Trending in the right direction after the most recent escalation.
Will post back soon hopefully with good news restoring my faith!

 

[Trunk Gap]

They reversed course and honored the quoted trade instead of the fabricated early lease termination.
This was after the store manager sent me a patronizing email defending why they would not reverse course. Tesla leasing reached out shortly after, adjusted the account, and did the right thing. All paid off and case closed.

heads up for those trading in a current lease, get it in writing that it’s a trade and not an early lease termination or you may be in for a ride

 

[Sigma4Life]

They reversed course and honored the quoted trade instead of the fabricated early lease termination.
This was after the store manager sent me a patronizing email defending why they would not reverse course. Tesla leasing reached out shortly after, adjusted the account, and did the right thing. All paid off and case closed.

heads up for those trading in a current lease, get it in writing that it’s a trade and not an early lease termination or you may be in for a ride

Happy you were able to get a fair resolution. How was the trade processed? Did they give you credit towards the car as if it was a trade-in minus the residual value and remaining payments?

My back of the napkin math:
+ $100k trade-in
- $80k residual value
- $20k remaining payments
= $0 owed or due

 

[Trunk Gap]

Yep. They honored what their site and documentation said all along.
Car was valued at $77k
Owed was $80k
Just pay $3k diff and its a wash
(Dont remember exacts, something along those lines)

Versus - their original stance of who cares what the car is worth, and who cares that we told you it was a trade, its now a lease termination and you owe us $25k in payments so pay up and no you cant get your car back if this surprise changes things, its long gone, we sold it for a healthy profit, so sit down, shut up and pay. Thats basically what the store managers stance was.

I logged into my acct after they emailed the update that they were going to honor the trade vs the lease-termination. The numbers were updated to reflect that minor difference in value, I paid up, case closed.

Learning for others for the future - could I have gotten more via carmax/carvana/vroom? Yes, I think so, maybe 5/10k. None of the 3 were able to give me a quote straight up, all 3 said they need more time to evaluate, and never got back to me with offers despite emailing/calling. 2019 Ludicrous S, cant get an offer. 0 for 3. My main interest here was convenience so after all 3 ghosted, i just moved fwd with the trade in to hurry up and get it all done. Tesla made some $ on this one for sure, which Im OK with, but made the situation that much more frustrating when the trade was a lowball to begin with AND they were trying to screw me...didnt sit well.

Alls well that ends well. Im a loyal tesla customer who has bought/sold/referred many cars, I want to see them succeed, I pay a premium for my cars, always wanting the new product, and cut them slack at every turn given how much I believe in their mission. Glad they did the right thing and I will resume chugging the kool-aid

 

[sdorn]

I'm still sitting on my Model 3 lease. Took delivery of my new S back on 9/15. Finally got Tesla to confirm I could sell it to a dealer, but that took about 2 weeks of emailing and calling them so not sure how the actual sale process will work. I broke my leg in the interim which makes it very difficult to deal with all of this, so likely will just keep making the lease payments for another month or so until my leg heals up enough to be able to deal with everything.

 

[Trunk Gap]

Or just do carvana. That service is crazy convenient they literally show up take the car and hand you a check. That was my preference but the system couldn’t figure out how to value a model s for whatever reason, and no one would return outreach. I have used it for other cars - fantastic.

 

[stossie]

No more dealer lease buyouts as of 10/29.

 

[Sigma4Life]

No more dealer lease buyouts as of 10/29.

View attachment 728144

You can still buy out the lease, then sell it to a third party. More moving parts but ultimately I believe you can get to the same end result.