If you do not maintain your lease car, it will cost you a lot of money

If you think that a lease car gives you a free pass to not do any maintenance, you are wrong. In fact, it will cost you a lot of money.

If you have a lease car, you may be treating it like a piece of old trash. Under the motto “that thing isn’t mine, I’m not doing anything to it” you could let it deteriorate and not do any maintenance on it.

But be careful with that. Because besides the fact that it is not neat, it can also cost you a lot of money. As the driver of a lease car from Stern Lease also noticed. After returning the car, it turned out that the car had not had any form of maintenance in three years. And the damage goes largely to the driver.

Maintain your lease car, it saves you money

Stern took the driver to court, because his negligence had caused a lot of damage. For example, the oil had never been changed in three years and over 65,000 kilometers. That caused such a thick sludge in the engine that it could not even be turned by hand.

It cost 2500 euros to fix the whole thing and Stern didn’t want to pay for it himself. So a court case followed. It turned out that it wasn’t as simple as you might think, but the leaser was negligent.

He had indeed been to the garage a few times, but that was to have faults resolved that were indicated by lights on the dashboard. And although those problems were resolved, no regular maintenance was carried out.

The driver of the lease car could have taken more action, the judge believes. He therefore sentenced him to pay 75% of the damages, plus the legal costs. All in all, quite an expensive joke…

So remember; if you have a lease car, don’t forget to maintain it. It just saves a lot of hassle. And money, too.

Comments

1. Ernst-Jan say

   in any case strange not to do maintenance on a lease car. it is in the contract and does not cost you anything extra (at most the loan car if your employer has cut back on that)
   They should have made him pay double the amount as Darwinian tuition…..

2. GJZ say

   This is also stated in the lease contract, often also in the company’s own lease arrangement.
   “Treat the car like a good father”

3. dare2think say

   With regard to ex-lease cars, it is often better to buy them third-hand than second-hand, as the second owner will have already carried out all the maintenance that was not included in the first owner’s meager maintenance contract.

4. lpg barrel say

   Very clever too… Maintenance is included in your contract and prevents downtime. Seems to me that is enough reason to do it!

5. Design_Driven say

   It is also strange that when visiting the garage for the lights on the dashboard, a service was not included. A service does not take that long (unless the engine is full of slurry)

   • Richmond say

     They will probably have alerted the preparer to it, but if he keeps saying never mind, they won’t do it. You can’t just take it with you if it’s not in the planning. And if there is no replacement transport, he will be without a car again and he doesn’t want that and they don’t want to pay for the other one either.