Just registered and it's my first time posting, though I have lurked here from time to time over the years. We leased a brand new 2015 S w/QC in December 2014 from a local Phoenix area dealership, and it's been my husband's trusty commuting car for the past 42+ months. Being Phoenicians, we never anticipated that we would want to *own* this car, figuring we were lucky to get one of those great 3-year promotional leases at the end of 2014 to try out EV "ownership" to see if it worked for us, then maybe look at buying a fresh EV (with a new battery!), or leasing another new EV, if the 3-year Leaf lease was a success. Amazingly, after two lease extensions (with the three free months), we completed an end-of-lease buyout of our 2015 yesterday.
I'm taking the plunge to post here both to share our buyout experience, and to express our sincere gratitude to leafer007 (if he's still here) for posting the then-current Leaf GPO Discount bulletin on 7/2. Because of you, leafer007, we were firm and relentless from the day I read your post (7/5), and managed to get the published Minimum Purchase Price for the 2015 S of $8300 at the 11th hour, yesterday.
So as not to bury the lede, here are the car and buyout deets:
2015 silver S w/QC, 42+ months and 42k+ miles, 1 bar lost shortly before the 36-month mark;
Total $$$ in vehicle before buyout, including cash down, all lease pmts, dealer fees, TT&L, inclusive ("all in"): just over $12,000;
Gross Payoff amount reported by NMAC to dealerships: just under $11,300 (Note: This amount was about $800 *less* than the amount showing on our current NMAC statement, after the most recent lease payment had been credited);
Buyout terms: $8300 "Minimum RPM Purchase Price" + $300 contract end-of-lease fee + sales tax (high in AZ, 7.8% in dealership municipality) + title & license (low in AZ) + $35 in misc dealership admin charges = just a hair over $9300 out the door.
I still can't quite believe we pulled it off -- we told ourselves that unless we could convince a dealer to give us the published deal, we just weren't going to do it. (In the Phx area, used 2015 S's are currently listed on TrueCar generally in the $10,000s and $11,000s, with at least 2 particular specimens under 25k miles including all 12 bars advertised at $10,990. With supposedly around 230 used Leafs for sale in the Phx area on TrueCar right now, there are a few 2015s advertised under $10k, but their battery status is unknown to the online looky-loo.)
Getting the deal done was incredibly time consuming and painful, including one fruitless trip to a dealership (where they wouldn't budge on their made-up $500 doc fee), and another false start toward the dealership where it ultimately *did* happen, but not without strife, tumult, bad mojo and some yelling (from me toward the salesman we ultimately got the deal done with).
Like others have posted before, some dealerships refuse to admit that the incentives or discounts exist (even when you send them the bulletin), others insist on padding with so much dealer crap $$$ that it was taking the price over $10k, a no-go in the current market conditions. (As I said to my husband, we might be better off by letting this one go back, and buying one of those $10,990 2015s with half the miles and all the bars. Of course, who knows what the *real* cost of one of those would be, after all the used-car dealer add-on fees, plus TT&L, naturally.)
Well, I'm out of time and that's plenty for an inaugural post . . . if you made it this far, thanks again for paying it forward, leafer007!
