Dealership Sold My End of Lease Purchase and Lied That It Was Being Prepped
 

So we decided to return our 2011 S4 at another dealership and signed a new lease on a 2014 S4 but also doing a end of lease purchase on the old one. Well the dealer kept the car to do some touch-up and put new brakes on for us. We took the new car home and after a few days I emailed the dealership on the status of our old car and they said due to weather they were a little backed up and give them until the end of the week. Well I gave them an extra weekend and finally they got back to me and said the owner of the dealership has given it to a friend and that they had no control over these matters but apologized.

Has anyone ever heard of this ever happening? I thought the during the lease process that I have the first right of refusal to purchase the vehicle at the lease end. Since the car is somewhat limited I had some equity in and had told them I wanted to purchase it. There was a verbal agreement, and an email acknowledging the purchase process. Am I out of line to be furious? Does anyone know what options I should consider?


Thank you to everyone that is reading this thread and giving me your inputs.

That's crazy. Unless you signed paperwork saying otherwise when you returned it, you have first right of refusal. I'd contact AoA.

I am beyond angry as the vehicle had a predetermined price when I initially signed the lease and now I will not even get that on the vehicle that I am familiar with and taken care for. On top of that we just signed a new lease from this dealership 2 weeks ago. I feel so misled and will see what AoA will say. This is almost beyond a bait and switch tactic. I am sure there was some equity on car because based on the residual the car end of lease price was $31k for my vehicle with 35k miles.

I am a bit confused. Either you purchased out the lease that night, in which case they sold your car which is illegal and difficult to do. Or you returned the car in which case it came off lease and they can do whatever they want with it even if they gave you a verbal or email agreement otherwise. Either way there should have been some paperwork involved indicating what was done. Still a crappy thing to do if you had an agreement otherwise. BTW you can purchase out a lease without the dealership involvement.

The reason the car was in was for an extended warranty CPO process as well as transfer the name on title.

Transfer the name on the title to whom?

There's the rub. Title transfer can be done by AoA but it's the CPO where they got you. In order to do the CPO the car comes off lease (dealership owns it) then they "certify" it and sell it back to you. At that point they do not have to give you the buyout price either. I still think what they did was low. Sorry.

Wife is on was on lease and we wanted the purchase to go into my name.

Additionally, the dealer has to pay Audi for the CPO warranty and would pass that along in the rebuy price. Most dealers also charge a fee to do this as there's time involved in the transfer paperwork. Normally, this would all be agreed to and done in writing at the time of the transfer (with an included proviso that the car would pass a CPO inspection fpr qualification). It sounds like either there wasn't a firm commitment either way, a misunderstanding or the dealer pulled a fast one. The latter sounds more like what a generic used car lot might do but seems very surprising for an Audi dealer, especially with a customer who leased/purchased a new model.

The CPO extended warranty was right under $2k so it was not free.