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Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences MINI Cooper Lease Questions
224 messages, Last post on Jul 02, 2009 at 10:03 PM
You are in the Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Forum. Your Hosts are car_man & kyfdx
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I went to the Princeton, NJ Mini dealer yesterday and had a less than favorable experience. I inquired about the national lease deal and they confirmed my understanding (once on the phone, and then again in person when I went into the dealership). $999 up front (security, down payment and first month's payment) and $249 per month (plus taxes, tags, etc.) After the test drive, when it was time to talk numbers, I ended up at $340 / month and $200x up front. The $90 monthly was made up of taxes and fees. The extra $1000 in up front was primarily made up of $925 in 'bank fees'. Best I can tell, this is not included in any of the literature, and is not even included in the potential list of additional fees not included (taxes, registration, dealer fees are included as additional). Has anyone else had a similar experience? I guess, more specifically, has anyone walked away with $999 up front? Overall, a very unpleasant experience. I'm not sure how much of it is due to dealer shennanigans (at a minimum, they definitely handled poorly from a relationship perspective) a or legitamiately poor / unclear advertising by mini on the lease deal.
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Replying to: jupiter475 (Jun 21, 2009 7:11 am)  12K miles/yr. The $999 doesn't include dealer fees, tax or registration (which is all in the disclaimer). However, it does include the acquisition fee... If the actual car you leased had an MSRP of $21,700, then the variables are taxes, fees and that acqusition fee... By charging you the acquisition fee upfront, when it was included in the advertised lease deal, they basically made an extra $925 on your deal. To add insult to injury, the base acq.fee is $725.. they even marked it up for an extra $200 (typical, actually). I think tax in NJ is 7% on the total payments, charged upfront... they most likely rolled this into the lease payments.... That probably represents around $23/mo.. 3 yrs registration, paid in advance (typical of NJ) probably adds another $400? So... maybe $40/mo tops for tax and registration.. The other $50/mo.? Jacking up the money factor on the lease is also typical, and likely, since they did the same to the acq.fee.. That would add around $15/mo... The rest probably comes from bumping the selling price by $1000. So, unless you added a lot of aftermarket accessories that weren't included (Ipod connectors, floor mats, etc..), then they took you for around $2700 over the advertised deal.. Other possibilities: 1) MSRP.. Did the car they quoted have a higher MSRP than the ad car? 2) Accessories.. Items not on the sticker are paid for 100% over the lease term.. $500 in accessories adds $15/mo. to your lease payment. 3) Mileage allowance.. Did you ask for 15K miles/yr? That would add about $13/mo. to the lease payment. I'm assuming that you haven't taken delivery of the car... If you don't like the deal, then turn it down... It certainly seems as though they are going for the maximum mark-ups... Even taking into account taxes and registration, you should be able to get under $300/mo, with $1100 due at signing on a car that is identical to the ad car.. regards, kyfdx Host-Prices Paid Forums
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Replying to: kyfdx (Jun 21, 2009 7:36 am) Sounds like they were just trying to make a buck. I'll resume my search at a different dealership. I had heard bad things about the BMW dealership that's in the same building...sounds like the Mini side needs some work, too.
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Replying to: jupiter475 (Jun 21, 2009 5:19 pm) MSRP 29,450 Price paid: 28,650 Money Factor 0.0023 (same for everyone, approx 5.5% apr) Residual 66% (this is for Clubman S, residuals are even higher on the reg. hardtop in June) Bank Fees $925 (no way around this) Cap Reduction $1514 (this is whatever you want it to be) Total Drive Off $2500 (incl. cap reduction, first mos pmt, CA lisc, and related taxes) Pmt before sales tax $349 Miles 12k/yr Hope this is helpful. Pretty good deal if you can keep the miles under 12k. All of the finance deals at Mini are good right now. Hard to go wrong - depends on your situation on lease vs. buy. |
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Hi all-- I'm very excited to be purchasing my first MINI, tomorrow at 5:30pm PST! I jumped on a silver hardtop, base, manual with a few nice options ( multi-function steering, ipod/bluetooth, spoiler ). But before I sign, I wanted to run it by you wise folks ( I've read this thread and you guys obviously know your stuff ) to see if they were trying to sneak any charges in last-minute. For my feature set, Edmunds lists the MSRP as $20,700 + $650 destination charge = $21,350 I talked the dealer down ( in writing ) to $20,300 *including* destination charge. I decided to lease based on the terms of the June lease special. Here are the terms the dealer sent me: Msrp $20,700 ( correct, destination charge doesn't count as part of the residual calculation ) Total mileage :36,000 Residual % 70.00% Residual value $14,490.00 Initial cap cost $20,300 ( car price + destination ) Bank fee $925 ( same as jadynsdad ) Lmf: 0.00230 ( same as jadynsdad ) Total tax $900.55 ( I live in CA ) Base monthly payment $268.41 (??? - this is higher than $249/mo advertised, even with same money down and lower MSRP ) Monthly tax $24.83 base on 9.25% Total monthly $293.24 Doc fee $52.00 Security deposit $300 License $320 Drive off: First payment $293.24 Security 300.00 License 320.00 __________ $913.24 *Summary* So, $913.24 drive off, $293.24/month all-inclusive for 3 yr/12K per. My 3 questions: a) how can my base monthly payment, before taxes, be higher than the special of $249/mo? My car is worth less than the $21.7K car listed in the special. Is it because they rolled the bank fee into the monthly payment? b) The destination charge isn't listed---I assume they are doing what I asked, and rolling into the "Intial Cap cost" of $20,300? c) is this a good deal? Thanks so much for any insight you can offer! Isaac |
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After calculating the numbers on the above deal, I realized: 1) The lease special calculates its residual as 70% of the MSRP of the ( car + destination charge + acquistion fees ). However, if you look up the edmunds MSRP valuation, $21.7K for the stated model of an automatic, premium package base hardtop is enough dough for only the car itself + destination charge---there's no room for the acq fee. The residual in the ad is indeed 70% of $21.7K This leads to the question of, what is the "bank fee" of $925---does any one know if this is supposed to include the acq fee or not? I'm waiting a response from the dealer on this. If it's the same as the acq fee, then it should be rolled into the calculation of the residual ( which is good for us consumers )---this would lower my monthly payment by almost $20. I bet that they are going to argue that the bank fee is a separate fee from the acq fee, and therefore has nothing to do with the residual, and that the acq fee was someone infused into the vehicle's initial cost. But as seen from paragraph #1, the #'s don't add up--no room for any additional acq fee there. 2) my lease actually has me putting 0 money down, which is interesting.
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Replying to: isaacyho (Jun 23, 2009 5:49 pm) A couple of thing about the ad.. First, it doesn't give any information about the selling price... By doing some rough calculations, I'd say it assumes a $700-$900 discount from sticker.. Also, it assumes a downpayment (or CAP cost reduction) of $500 within the $999 due at signing. And... it does include the acquisition fee. (bank fee is acquisition fee) Now.. about your deal.. 1) You have a lower MSRP by $350.. You don't save this much, because you aren't buying the car, you are only using a portion of it... This would lower your payment by $4-$5/mo.. 2) The acquisition fee is a separate line item, and added to the CAP cost. It is the same way in the ad, only you don't see the calculations. However, the base fee is $725, and your dealer has marked it up by the maximum $200. 3) In the ad, the $999 due at signing includes a $500 downpayment that you aren't making ($249 1st payment, $300 security deposit, $500 downpayment). So.. between the $200 markup on the fee, and the $500 less you are contributing, you have $700 more to pay on your car (vs. the ad car).. Thats about $21/mo. on the lease... subtract $4/mo. for the lower MSRP, and we are right in the ballpark of the ad numbers... Remember... the ad doesn't include any dealer fees, title, registration or taxes.. So, even the doc fee adds a little bit, if you didn't pay that upfront. I'd say you have a pretty decent deal... Within $5-$10 per month of the best you could do... regards, kyfdx |
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Ok, today I bought the car! And I did so after getting their finance guy to come clean about the lease special, item-by-item. Thanks to kyfdx for his insight, as it made me realize that I was paying more than I should for the bank fee as well for the car itself: as he figured out, there is a dealer incentive worked in to make the $249/mo work out. So, here are the #'s for the lease special: $21700 MSRP incl dest charge $750 dealer incentive (? partial dealer/factory, said the dealer, who knows ) $725 acq fee .00230 money factor $15,100 residual $500 down ( against the cap cost ) + $250 sec. + first month This comes out to $249.89/mo + sales tax. + doc fee/title ( I verified this ). So in my case, I got them to give me the straight bank fee of $725, not $925. Then, instead of $20,300 for $20,700, they took off the full $750. I opted to put $0 down. This worked out to a lease payment of $252.69 + $23.37 in sales tax = $276.06. Again, $0 down! Not bad! I got the full benefit of the national special as advertised, but on a lower-priced car, and thus, a slightly lower overall cost. You can see that these clarifications knocked almost $20 off the initial price they quoted me in previous posts. They tried to play it off like they didn't know what was going on, and "had never done this deal before", but I'm not really that naive. They only changed their tune once I called them on it. I do give them props for even agreeing to do all the exchanging of #'s via email. It made my life much easier to be able to calculate stuff in my own sweet time on my own, and hear advice from you folks! Hope this info helps some of you all, this national deal baasically is good because it ineffect wipes out the bank fee, and you get a 70% resid and 5.5% interest rate on a 3-yr loan. I went to MINI of Concord in the Bay Area btw... |
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Dear car_man & kyfdx: Is this a good deal Copper HT : MSRP : $20,300 Negotiated price : $19550 Residual: 71% MF : .00230 3 year/30,000 Miles $958 initial (Deposit + first month + DMV) and $261/Month |
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Dear car_man & kyfdx Do you know the MF and residuals for the july program? thanks. |
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