Does anybody have any idea how the buyout is calculated on a premier purchase and how the cash value of the car is calculated? I've proposed to swap my A6 for an S4, and my dealer is telling me that I have "around $8K in negative equity," which I take to mean that the buyout is $8K more than the cash value. They won't explain the methodology used. I'm skeptical, since I know (1) they assume too much depreciation in the ordinary course; and (2) my car is absurdly low mileage (12K after 18 months).

FWIW, I'd be halfway or a little more into the term by the time the S4 showed up.

The premier purchase is simply a loan with a balloon payment at the end that gives you lease-like payments.

I used the pp to buy an '02 A6 which I just turned in. Because they used a high residual to give me a good payment, the buyout was about $3K higher than what I could get for the car, so I just turned it in.

Give Audi Financial Services (the number's on your statements) a call and ask them your questions. They were very friendly and helpful over the course of my loan.

It's causing the Operations Manager of the dealer to balk at swapping my A6, which HIS body shop has totally messed up, for an S4 that I'd buy from them.

Presumably, if the third-party repair bill for HIS body shop's negligence/laziness/potential fraud is high enough (say, around $8K), he'll change his tune.

In the meantime, since I'm still within the VA lemon law period, I'm sending a notice letter to AoA. My fuel sender doesn't work right, they haven't fixed it, and I periodically lose my surround sound settings (I LOVE VA's really consumer friendly lemon law).

And I'm trying to be as big a headache as possible to my dealership until I get what I want. Anything I can find, I'm listing.

Don't get me wrong, I love my A6. But I don't love the fact that the dealer totally screwed it up and isn't making good.

Dealer's body shop did some collision repair work. It wasn't right when they finished it--for example, the quarter glass leaked and the paint was peeling off the wheel--and the advanced key had stopped working. So I gave it back to them to correct the deficiencies. When it came back, the trunk was misaligned, the quarter glass still looked like hell, the door wasn't aligned properly, and the tail lamp was falling out. Plus the finish was absurdly scratched. So I threatened to take it to another body shop; the body shop manager gave me his "personal guarantee" that he would make it right during the week I was gone on vacation and wouldn't otherwise need the car.

I came back from vacation, and not only wasn't everything fixed, they hadn't even touched the car. When they FINALLY got around to it two and a half weeks later, there's still a whole bunch of stuff not right. The tail lamp is still falling out, the trunk and door still aren't aligned right, there's a 1/4" gap on the inside of the door between two pieces, the headliner is cut in one place and falling down in another, there is corrosion on the door sill...and that's just the stuff that I was able to see. My third party body shop showed me stuff that I wasn't sophisticated enough to look for--non-spec welds, detached underbody components, etc. As for the manager whose "personal guarantee" I had? He's long gone.

All I want is for this to be over with minimal further inconvenience, whether that means FINALLY fixing my car right or swapping it for a new one. I've screwed around enough, and I'm sick of wasting my time with it. If that means I need to resort to legal relief, so be it.