LeaseTrader lures customers by PROMISING TO HELP them get out of a vehicle lease easily (potential seller) or TO HELPING them acquire/assume a vehicle lease (potential buyer) easily. This implies a transfer of lease responsibility and therefore cannot be done without involvement of the lease/finance company, assuming this company would allow it.
The web site wording is crafted to make customers believe that LeaseTrader will assist during the entire lease transfer process and that you just sit back and relax. Their wording is almost indicative that LeaseTrader will act as a transfer agent. This is absolutely not so; both seller and buyer need to deal with the lease company directly to affect a transfer. The only thing LeaseTrader actually does after you enter into a so called Transfer process with them is tell you to contact the Finance company yourself and process all transfer documentation directly with them.
For this so-called service, LeaseTrader charges a humble fee of $249 TO THE SELLER *AND* $249 TO THE BUYER as well, so they rippoff almost $500 from both parts to a transfer for doing nothing!!! Well you would say, that this is a fee for providing a web site for listing the cars, right.? Well here are the rest of the listing fees, even before you can start a transfer.
Leasetrader has charged the seller (person who lists the car) $100 for the listing (non-refundable).
This is in addition to the above mentioned transfer fee.
LeaseTrader charges the buyer (person looking for a car) a web site subscription fee for 1 to 6 months (non refundable) to be able to contact any buyer on the site. Otherwise you cannot initiate the contact. This is in addition to the above mentioned transfer fee.
You would hope that the subscription fee is all you need to contact the buyer, well NO, LeaseTrader requires to RUN A CREDIT CHECK ON the BUYER to allow the person to contact the SELLER (note that buyer is still believing that LeaseTrader will help with the transfer process, so naturally they need to run a credit check). Well it turns out this credit check is FOR NOTHING because the Lease Finance company will have to run their Own credit check on the buyer.
This alone is absolute commercial mispractice and tantamount to fraud.
Other questionable practices of this company:
You cannot update billing information online on their site once you have provided it. If you want to change to a different credit card you have to call them and give them the additional info. They lock your billing information away from you.
They will charge your credit card directly on a transfer (if they think one is going on) without warning you or notifying you beforehand (credit card charged without authorization).
Customer support is unpolite and unresponsive, I made three calls to support: even before initiating a transfer with them, the attitude towards the customer is like the customer is doing something wrong. I also perceived like they easily play ping pong with the calls and will quickly transfer to another department before you finish saying your question if you hint anything that is related to another department.
If you use their site for communication with another party (Seller or buyer), they can (I never saw any authorization or warnings about this), they can monitor your communications without your express consent. Customer support admitted without realizing it that they do that, and they could make decisions about your account based on your communications on their site.
Be warned about using this service! If you do decide to
use it, know what youre paying for and do not use their messaging function!!
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