End of Lease Repairs and Inspection Video

It's our aim to save you money, not just by making sure you do everything you need to do, but also stop you wasting money on things you don't.

The first part of the video shows our video report. This gives us and the customer a record of the condition of the car, which can be used in disputes further down the road. It occasionally happens that somebody gets billed for damage which happened after the car left their possession, but it's far more likely that they are billed for damage which is listed worse than it actually is. Having a record can help in the rare occasions this happens.

It is important to know that the vast majority of lease companies have a threshold. If the total value of the estimated repairs comes in under the threshold, they won't send you a bill. They don't want to punish you anyway, they want you to be happy customers and lease another car, and besides, sending out bills and chasing people for money has admin costs.

So our aim is not to make your car perfect, what we are trying to do is to recommend the most cost-effective repairs to get you under the threshold. And if we can't do that, then we aim to ensure the recharges are as low as possible. Sometimes, it is cheaper to accept some recharges than to have the work repaired yourself.

One of the first things you may have noticed is that we recommend in this case that you don't refurbish the wheels. The reason for this is that if you did get charged, they would likely only charge you trade prices for the repair. So it's unlikely you can get it done cheaper.

Additionally, lease companies seldom ever actually do the repairs, so while they might look at a small scuff and deem that a partial refurb would repair the damage, the reality might be that you would have to refurbish the whole face of the wheel, depending on the type of damage and type of wheel.

This doesn't mean we never recommend having the wheels refurbished. We need to run the numbers, look at the car wholistically. Refurbishing a wheel or two could bring you under the threshold and mean you won't get charged for some other repair which would be much more expensive to fix.

A millimetre here or there can make all the difference. A scratch under 25 mm is acceptable, but if it's over, then they go down their flow chart to see the cost of repair. If they have "large panel - repair and repaint" listed, then that could cost you hundreds of pounds.  So even if we can't remove a scratch by machine polishing, reducing it by a few millimetres can save you a small fortune, especially if doing so keeps you under threshold.

Broken paintwork is also a big deal. The vast majority of cars have some chips on door edges, and if these expose bare metal, they go down the flow chart to "repair and repaint" and you are likely to be billed for the door to be resprayed. As Gary mentions, they are likely to charge less than the actual cost of a respray, but it's easily avoided with a small brush and some paint.

If you follow the video to the end, you will see we get out most of the scratches, or reduce them, so they aren't chargeable. It isn't perfect, but it's the most cost-effective way to achieve what we are aiming for.

What we are left with are the marks on the bonnet and two scuffed wheels. Hopefully, this will come in under the threshold and the customer will avoid a bill. If not, then the cost of recharges should be less than if they had paid to have the work done, and you avoid all the hassle of leaving the car with body shops and wheel refurbishment companies.

However, this all depends on you having not missed anything, which is why we recommend having a pre-end-of-lease inspection with us. When people try to do this themselves, if they are going to get a nasty surprise, it's because they missed something such as the spare key, the locking wheel nuts, or they didn't see the crack at the bottom of the back bumper, or the scuff under the sill.

There is no checkbox for "But you can't see it unless you get on your hands and knees". The scuff under the valance that you didn't see still goes down as "repair and repaint", could cost a hundred pounds, and could put you over threshold, so you get billed for all the other little bits.

We also noted that the interior has some stains and needs a vacuum. It doesn't need an end-of-lease valet or a full detail, and it doesn't need a professional. The stains were not serious and can probably be improved with a wipe over using a damp cloth. The customer can save money by doing this and vacuuming the car herself using our coin operated self service vacuum cleaners. 

Sure, we would make more money telling our customers that they need to get the wheels refurbished, the bonnet repainted and having the car detailed, we suspect that's what some companies do. But our customers leave us knowing they have saved money and having the peace of mind that they are not going to get an unexpected bill. 

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