My 3 year lease commenced January 3, 2017 and I projected that I would hit my mileage cap (45,000) by mid September. I did not want to “waste” any payments on mileage penalties, so my decision was to buy out my lease for the residual or purchase a new vehicle.
In early July, I received a letter from a Chevy dealer with a “July 4th certificate” to purchase a new Bolt EV with an accommodation on my current lease payments.
Due to recouperation from knee surgery, I was able to schedule an appointment at the dealer (25 miles away from my home) for three weeks later.
To make a long story short, this offer was bogus: they rolled the remaining lease payments into the cost of the new Bolt EV putting me in the unenviable position of paying for a lease that I no longer possessed.
When I expressed incredulity, the salesman simply replied that I did not have to accept their offer! I didn’t!
I then surveyed three other dealers offers for a new Bolt EV. The best offer came from a dealer 45 miles from my home, but would expire July 31st. I drove down to that dealer and they lived up to their offer and I purchased my 2019 Bolt EV (msrp $44,250) for $36,500 out the door.
I continued to drive my 2017 Bolt EV intil I hit 44,640 miles on September 10th and returned it to a local dealer ( to end the now “double payment” of car insurance). I owed three more payments at that point.
Some weeks later, GM Financial sent me a bill for the remaining three payments plus the $495 end of lease payment. I contacted GM and resupplied paperwork that showed with the new purchase, the $495 was supposed to be waived.
They corrected the bill and agreed to two equal payments, which pushed these payments out to November; close to the original last payment due in December.
