Can I request a list of recharges?
Quick answer: Yes, ask -- it is a useful thing to see. You may not get one, but if the lease company doesn't send anything it usually means their prices are fairly standard.
You can request a list of recharges from your lease company, and we'd say you really should. Seeing the numbers before the car goes back changes the whole calculation: instead of waiting for the bill to land after inspection, you get to decide panel by panel whether a smart repair before return works out cheaper than the recharge afterwards. The drivers who phone us in a panic, invoice in hand, almost always wish they'd had those numbers three months earlier.
Why the list matters more than people think
Most drivers only learn what end-of-lease damage costs once the lease return inspection is done and the bill arrives. By then every decision has been made for you. Asking up front turns that on its head. You stop guessing and start planning.
A list does four useful things at once: it shows you where the thresholds sit for your particular lessor, it lets you set each charge against a local repair quote, it removes the nasty surprise from the final invoice, and it gives you a real number to budget against in the last few months of the agreement. None of that is glamorous, but a couple of hundred pounds of damage on a doorskin is exactly the kind of thing that catches people out when they have no figure to weigh it against.
What a recharge list actually looks like
Where a lessor does publish one, it tends to be a short price sheet grouped by damage type rather than a line-item invoice: scuffs, dents, scratches, kerbed alloys, interior marks. The costs sit in bands rather than precise figures, and that is deliberate. The real price of any one repair depends on the size of the affected area, the paint code, and whether the colour has to be blended into the adjacent panel to stop a halo showing. A list can only ever give you the shape of the charge, not the exact number for your specific dent.
Typically you'll see charges grouped roughly like this:
- Cosmetic paint repairs, priced per panel
- Alloy wheel refurbishment, priced per wheel
- Dent repair, banded by size of dent
- Missing items: locking wheel nut, service book, parcel shelf, charging cables
Interior trim, seat and headlining marks, plus glass, lamp and mirror replacement, usually appear further down the same sheet. Those last few are worth reading carefully, because a replacement charge always dwarfs a repair charge, and the line between the two isn't always where you'd expect it.
Why some lease companies don't publish one
Plenty of lessors won't hand you a price list, and that isn't a red flag. Pricing is normally tied to whichever repair contractor they have on contract, so the numbers shift when the contract is renegotiated. Publishing a fixed sheet would just leave them with a document that goes out of date the moment a new agreement is signed.
A quiet lessor generally means their charges sit close to the market average: roughly what a competent local SMART repair firm would invoice for the same work. So if nothing arrives, don't read menace into the silence. It usually means the numbers are unremarkable, which is good news, not bad.
How to ask, and what to ask for
Ring or email the customer-service team named on your lease agreement and ask specifically for a schedule of end-of-contract damage charges. Use that phrase or something close to it; a vague "what do you charge for damage?" tends to get a vague answer back.
If they tell you no list is available, there's a useful second question: ask which damage categories fall outside fair wear and tear. Even without prices, that tells you what is going to be measured against you at handover, which is half the battle. You can then walk the car looking for those specific things rather than worrying about every faint mark.
Reading the numbers against the BVRLA standard
Lessors who belong to the BVRLA assess damage against the BVRLA Fair Wear and Tear guide rather than their own in-house rules. It's worth understanding what that guide does and doesn't do. It doesn't set prices; it sets the definitions -- what counts as chargeable damage in the first place, and what gets waved through as acceptable wear for the age and mileage of the car. A recharge list from a BVRLA member should line up with those definitions, so if a charge appears for something the guide treats as fair wear, that's worth querying.
Why two identical scratches can cost different amounts
Recharges don't stray far from the norm, but they aren't flat across every car either. Parts cost more on premium and prestige brands. Paint finishes like pearl, candy or tri-coat cost more to match because they're laid down in several coats and the match has to be right under different light. Large panels -- tailgates, bonnets, roofs -- cost more to refinish simply because there's more area to cover and more to blend.
The biggest jump, though, comes when a repair tips from cosmetic into replacement. A scuffed bumper is a refinish; a cracked one is a new part, paint and fitting. A kerbed alloy is a refurb; a buckled one is a new wheel. That single boundary is where a sensible recharge becomes an eye-watering one, and it's the line worth keeping a car the right side of in the last few months.
What to do once the numbers are in front of you
The list earns its keep when you walk round the car with it. For each bit of damage, weigh three honest options: leave it and pay the recharge, get a local repair done before handover, or accept it's within tolerance and won't be chargeable at all. Paint on a single panel, repaired on its own, is almost always cheaper than the equivalent lessor recharge, because the lessor's figure carries their contractor's margin and admin on top.
A rough way to triage:
- Recharge priced below a local quote: leave it, pay the recharge.
- Recharge priced above a local quote: book a SMART repair before handover.
- Clearly within tolerance: leave it alone, don't pay to fix what won't be charged.
- Missing items: replace them yourself, because those charges are reliably steep.
That last point catches people out more than damage does. We had a customer hand a car back recently who'd been quietly stung once before and brought us the whole picture this time: a couple of kerbed wheels and, almost as an afterthought, a missing locking wheel nut. The wheels were the obvious worry, but it was the wheel nut on his old recharge sheet that had cost the most relative to its size -- a small plastic key the lessor billed at a flat administrative rate far above what it costs to buy. We sorted the wheels; he sourced the nut himself for a few pounds online. The lesson stuck with us: damage is visible and gets all the attention, but it's the missing bits and pieces that quietly run up the bill.
When the list never turns up
If your request goes unanswered, don't chase it round in circles. Put the energy instead into the things you can actually control before handover: a thorough clean inside and out, a service brought up to date, and any obvious scratches or kerbed wheels dealt with. A clean, presentable car also tends to be assessed more generously than a grubby one, because a tired-looking car invites a closer look. That is what moves the needle on the final bill, list or no list.