Hi All, I am pretty new to this whole car leasing game so I was wondering if I could come to you guys for some help. I traded in my leased Yaris (waived last three payments) for a Prius C for the 4th of july sale. I recieved the $500 hybrid rebate and $750 college grad rebate. Apparantly toyota is calling and saying the college grad rebate was suppose to be $1000 and they're wanting me to sign another lease. I was wondering if there were any hazards or glaring cheats I should be aware of. I check on online and apparantly this is a common way to get some more money out of the buyer. Below I attached the new lease and old lease. Thanks in advance! Here is a link to the pictures of the lease (old and new), apparantley the resolution is degraded quite a bit when I embed them.: ImageShack - New Lease A.JPG
First a lease almost never makes good economic sense for an individual buyer but it's too late for that now. Second, not wanting to be nasty here but what differences do YOU see in the two documents ?? As a college grad you should be able to do the math, right ?? If the rebate is MORE, you should end up paying LESS somewhere along the line. If you don't, it's probably a ploy of some kind. Tell them it will be a few days because you need to have your lawyer look at it........and see what they say about that.
I posted the link to my pictures for better resolution: ImageShack - New Lease A.JPG I do notice the increase for the rebate $250, but I guess I'm confused about box 3 amount due at signing because that also increases. The language in these types of documents are a little vague and difficult for me to understand.
Your saving $11.03 per month, $264.72 total. That sounds about right for a rebate increase on $250 Plus related interest.
As excellently stated above, I'd go over the lease agreement line-by-line and highlight anything that's different. You may also want to explore the possibility of buying the car instead of a fleece. You're a college grad now. You're at a point in your life (presumably) where you still have a lot of rudder input over what your retirement is going to look like. The C-type is a good, frugal car. Make it better by either buying it outright and running it until the wheels fall off, or getting out of the fleece ASAP and buying used next time. End of unwanted lecture. Best of Luck!!
If they made a mistake, they shouldn't need for you to sign a new lease, they should just give you the money. A "rebate" has always been about giving you back a portion of your own money. If they want to give you a $1000 rebate, chances are that they want to take more than $1000 from you beforehand. I'd be very skeptical about re-signing a lease before reading it very carefully. It could be a tactic to get more money out of you. The advertised terms are not the whole contract. There could be a number of hidden costs buried in the fine print.
OP: You cut off the top of each contract so we cannot comment whether the new contract is from Toyota As I understand the 'new' contract, the sum total of the changes is a drop in the monthly payment equal to about $250 over the lease period. Looks OK to me -- instead of giving you $250 in cash, they are dropping your monthly payment. The new lease will cost you the $3000 you paid upfront + 23 payments of $142.23 for a total of $6271.29 for 24 months of use. That works out to $261 a month. Do really think about avoiding leases in the future until you are rich*. The $261 a month you are paying in lease fees, if put towards a car purchase instead, would buy you the car free and clear after about 7 years. *And then it is still wasting money, but at least then you have the money to waste.
I do not know about leasing. I bought my Corolla for $15500 (used) drove it for 3 years, put 50k on it, and sold it for $9400. Net cost: $169/month.
For me I would look at the old and new monthly lease prices. If there is a lower price of $10 for 2 years or $7 for 3 year lease I'd say Toyota is doing you a favor. BVyut there's change, or an increase, then you and an attorney need to talk.
