LeaseBusters.com
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Misleading Practices and Poor Customer Service - Avoid Leasebusters!
My experience with Leasebuster was not as positive as I had hoped. When my partner and I came across a listing for a 2021 BMW X1 with a set of snow tires, we contacted Mr. Andy Kapadoukakis, the Commercial Manager of the captioned vehicle, to inquire about the car. Unfortunately, our initial interaction was not very pleasant, as he immediately asked for a non-refundable commission of $300 + tax before he would move anything forward, including seeing the car. I don’t know others, but we didn’t feel comfortable with this “policy”…quote and unquote. After taking some time to think about it, we decided to proceed because we thought the deal was workable. Then we asked about the lease transfer fee. Andy informed us that we could negotiate this directly with the seller. Once we paid the $300 fee, we received the seller's information and were left to communicate with them on our own. It was then that we discovered some misleading information from Leasebuster and/or Andy: The snow tires were not included in the transfer, contrary to what was stated in the listing. The seller informed us that they had told Andy the buyer was responsible for 100% of the transfer fee, which was non-negotiable. When we tried to review the listing again the same night, the post was already taken down. We’ve been explained that once the buyer had a prospect who paid the commission the post would be pulled down to eliminate competition with other prospective buyer. We have some reservation with this explanation because if we were the seller we would think that it’s not fair because no deal had been made…not even an offer…why taking the post down?? The site could have stated ‘deal pending’ or something on the post (as some representatives do) instead of taking it down completely to eliminate other the opportunities to the seller. Feeling misled and frustrated, we reached out to Andy to understand why this had happened and why we were charged the $300 fee without much support but instead had to deal with the discrepancies and confusions. In his initial response, he mentioned a refund of the $300, but subsequent attempts to follow up with him were met with silence. In the end, we had to complete the transfer with the seller, incurring additional costs of $800 for the snow tires and $1500 for the transfer fee. It was a disappointing experience overall, and I would caution BOTH sellers and buyers against dealing with Leasebuster. It's puzzling to see that there are five-star reviews for Leasebuster, considering the issues we encountered. I have all the email correspondence if anyone wants to see the details. I hope that Leasebuster can improve its communication and transparency in the future to avoid similar situations for other potential customers.