Dumb friend leasing his car, need opinions

[bcneil]

Well long story short, my friend is leasing an Audi, his 36 months were up in August. I just found out he still has the car, Audi leasing hasn't contacted him. His bank account shows the payments were finished at the end of the lease, 6 months ago.

My buddy figures since they never contacted him when the lease was over, its not his problem and he will drive the car until they call.

He still has the same address, phone number, job, and work phone number, as when the lease began, so its something they seemed to have screwed up.

He doesn't want to keep the car, and is still well under the maximum km's.
He just figures he will drive it for as long as he gets away with it. The car is still insured and everything.

Now eventually they are going to figure it out, can he be charged anything?

He seems to think all they can do is ask for it back, and he wont ever owe a dime unless he goes of the 20,000km/yr thing, and it will have nothing to do with his credit rating or anything like that.

What can they do?

 

[uncleg]

Depends on the lease. I think you will find most have a clause that makes it the responsibility of the lessee to return the vehicle to where he leased it from. If he doesn't they could come after him for lease payments for whatever time he keeps it past the end of the lease. They could also have a clause, that says if you don't return it, you buy it. One thing you can pretty well be certain of, he's not getting a free ride.

 

[goalieman]

Definitely no free ride. The onus is always on the lessee to return the vehicle. The lessors not going to be chasing him down. The lessor will either report the car as stolen or go after your buddy for bad faith in not keeping his part of the contract.

 

[Rammstein69]

I don't know if all auto leases are setup essentially the same, but, most of them require the lessee to return the car, or buy it out at the end of the term.

 

[bcneil]

Well yeah I know he should do something.

But doesn't the lease company generally contact you before your lease is up?

Hey has even received recent parking tickets sent to his home from the leasing company. When ever he gets an impark ticket of whatever, the ticket goes to the leasing company, not him directly then they forward it on.

For some reason the leasing company doesn't seem to have him on their computer right.

I just wonder how much he can be charged, his monthly lease was very low, he put a larger downpayment on. Think the payments are like $250, on a nice car, I think it's an A6. So charging him extra $250 payments isn't a big deal.


I told him to call them up with a bullshit story, of how he thought it was a 48 month lease, and he never noticed the payments stop coming out of his account, because it was coming out of an account he rarely uses. And that he would have expected them to try to contact him. I think they will let it go. He plans to lease a newer Audi through them, so I figure they will forget it, just to keep a customer.

 

[Ray]

I think your friend is in for a surprise when he gets the fee for the 'buyout' at the end of the lease.
And it will hold up in court because he hasn't returned the car and continued to drive it after the lease expiry.

 

[sevenofnine]

i just bought a car actually and returned one,

the car market seems to be in a flux. no one is sure of anything when it comes to cars, these days

no one wanted my trade in, i couldn't sell it privately even though i was the lowest priced car for that model and year,
i finally just gave the keys back to the dealer,

it was a lease and they went over it with a fine tooth comb, trying to get me to pay for everything,

i think your buddies paper work just got lost some where along the way,
or maybe the dealership is having issues or somthing, could be going bankrupt
i heard they are hurting bad car dealerships.

chances are they will catch up with him at some point and he will have to pay.