If Your Car Lease Expired and Dealer Won't Take It Back, FTC Says You Have Rights

From Car and Driver

• Add to the list of unusual situations because of the coronavirus pandemic: If you're at the end of a lease and having trouble getting the dealer to take it back, consumer leasing regulations don't directly address that problem.

• However, as a Federal Trade Commission spokesperson told C/D, "If you have a responsibility to return [a vehicle], someone has a responsibility to accept it."

• Read the fine print of your lease contract—but if worse comes to worse, you can file a complaint with the FTC, which says it is "very interested" in problems that are happening due to the coronavirus.

Activity on car dealer lots has crawled to a near standstill, which makes sense. During a pandemic with stay-at-home orders all over the country, buying a new car drops down many people's to-do lists. But sometimes there's vehicle movement that is supposed to go the other way, and that has become a difficult situation right now as well.

According to USA Today, an average of 340,000 car leases expire in the U.S. each month. With auto dealerships closed in some states, it is proving difficult for some people to return their vehicles once the lease has officially ended. The customers USA Today spoke with came up against a number of problems, from dealerships that said their lots were full and then refused to take the car back to dealerships trying to get people to take "free" one-month extensions as their only option.

Those free extensions, of course, aren't necessarily free, since insurance payments and maintenance costs don't stop. The picture painted by the article is one of difficult situations being made more challenging by dealerships not communicating clearly with the people they should be pampering to sell or lease them another vehicles.

What Does the Law Say?

It's unclear what a person's rights are if they're in a situation like this. The rules, such as they are, differ from state to state, and each lease can have its own distinctions that make it a special case. An attorney USA Today spoke to said that the onus is on the dealership to take the cars back, even during a pandemic, but laws are not explicit about this. New York's Motor Vehicle Retail Leasing Act, for example, covers New York consumers with "the most comprehensive law in the country protecting consumers who lease new or used vehicles," according to the state attorney general, but it mostly focuses on making sure that customers are fully informed about the terms of the deal and have the right to compare offers before they sign on the dotted line. There are sections of the law that protect consumers who return the car on time and want to dispute wear and damage charges, but it says nothing about what happens when a dealer refuses to take the car back. In nearby New Hampshire, the state's Motor Vehicle Leasing Act is specific on some issues (the lease contract needs to be in at least eight-point type, for example), but does not say what happens if the dealership refuses to take the vehicle back.