A bit long winded - but here's a summary of our deal which I think is pretty great!
About 6 weeks ago, three of us Washington staters got together and started shopping as a team for the best lease deal we could find... A huge tip of the cap to Kumar (user name Abhik on this forum!), who scored a fantastic quote of zero down, $219 per month for an SV with the QC/LED package.
Well, a quote is one thing, but getting the actual deal? The challenge was that the dealership with this quote had to order the three cars in. So of course we gave other stores with stock on the ground an opportunity to match, but no one would get down as low as we needed... So, we confirmed as best wee could with Olivia and Adam at Advantage Nissan in Bremerton that the deal was real, there were no hidden gotcha's, and we waited...
Yesterday, the first of the three cars ordered arrived - it was for my brother in law, so the two of us trekked down to Bremerton (about 120 miles from our homes up in the Bellingham area). I was still skeptical - since we got the quote, the money factor had changed, and the residuals had changed - how was this going to work?
Well, I was very pleasantly surprised! The deal was exactly as we had agreed, with the only fee outside of $219 per month being the disposal fee ($390) at lease end, which we had already agreed to.
The General Sales Manager, a nice guy, gave props to us for being good negotiators, he had written a confirmation email to me last month when I pressed the sales people Olivia and Adam to put things in writing. I was really impressed by this dealership by the way, very professional and not a hint of sleaziness - highly recommend them! Adam is the Leaf expert and gave us a very thorough walk through of the car.
Here are the details that I could glean from our paperwork:
MSRP: $34,615
Price as agreed: $31,015
No sales tax (Washington state)
Federal rebate on an SV: $7,825
acquisition fee: $595
documentation fees, licensing, local fees: $354
residual - .60
adjusted residual (buyout at lease end): $20,769
24 month lease, 12,000 miles per year
Price paid, including all doc fees, taxes, etc: $219 per month, or $5,256
Couple lessons I learned along the way that might be of help to others:
1) Approach every dealership you can! Your best price might not come from a dealership that stocks a lot of Leafs.
2) Patience will be rewarded - if you have to have a car right away, then you rob yourself of negotiating power.
3) Team up for better bargaining! This dealership was happy to sell three cars at once, and they knew we were serious right from the first phone call (we had done our homework!)
4) This might be the most important - GET IT IN WRITING! We confirmed three different ways with two different dealer employees that our deal was legit. The General Sales Manager told me they had to work with NMAC on our deal because of the changes in the money factor and residual from June when we got the quote till now. If we didn't have every detail squared away, who knows what might have happened!
My brother in law loves his car, and we are going to make the same trip next week to pick mine up (it's supposed to arrive today!) We stopped at the QC station in Burlington on the way home after about 75 miles, and easily made it home after that. Kumar is getting his I think today or tomorrow also
Hope this is of some help to anyone shopping for a lease!
