I had a very hard time adjusting to college after high school and elementary school. It took perilously long for me to find my footing and start to get good grades. When I look back as to why I had such a long and torturous start to my post-secondary education, it’s easy to pinpoint.
In college, nobody checks to make sure you got your homework done.
When I knew that someone was going to check to make sure I did my homework, as my teachers in elementary and high school were wont to do, I did it. In college, where the professors really don’t care if you did your homework or not, I didn’t do it. And my grades suffered until I became more self-disciplined.
I wonder if that same dynamic would help lessors when it comes to improving the remarketing values of their portfolio of leased vehicles. Why not offer a lower monthly lease payment in exchange for more frequent inspections of the vehicles? I think this would help boost remarketing values on a couple different levels.
First, more routine inspections — and I think that every four-to-six months is sufficient — would dramatically reduce the “surprise” factor of receiving a vehicle that has significant damage or excessive wear-and-tear that lowers the remarketing value from the original estimate.
Second, I think that by agreeing to routine inspections, consumers would be more apt to take better care of their vehicles. For a lot of people, fear and the spectre of disappointing someone can be tremendous motivators.
Someone is likely to mention that if a vehicle has excessive wear-and-tear or damage then the consumer is held liable. That should still be the case. But there is tremendous value in knowing things beforehand. Knowing how many consumers a lessor is going to have to chase after for this kind of fee is very valuable information. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, as the saying goes.
And the proactive approach to more routine inspections could act as a catalyst to have lessors get problems with their vehicles fixed before the next inspection, or lose the reduced monthly payment.
The inspection would not need to be as thorough as an end-of-lease inspection. A walk around the car, pop the hood, and check the odometer would be enough for a trained eye to get a good sense of how the vehicle is being maintained. And enough to raise red flags earlier in the process.
