Do you have to have TAG vehicle tracking installed before being granted insurance? I had to. I didn't do anything else. The InContol app has something called Guardian Mode which I enable now and then. It monitors vehicle interactions for a time that you set. You will get immediate notification on your mobile phone if the car is tampered with. Haven't experienced it yet.

 

I don't live in a metropolitan center so interestingly enough my insurance is expensive for this vehicle but not insane. I'm also not required to add one of those tags but frankly, what I'm looking to do is to prevent it from being stolen in the first place!

 

Reportedly, thefts are way down. The TAG system is used on a lot of cars and is very difficult to immobilize from what I understand. Using TAG may get you a premiium discount...I'd ask. It can be installed relatively inexpensively, if the dealer is not willing to throw it in. They etch the TAG symbol in the glass and would be thieves can see it and they avoid the car. The point being, TAG is very hard to defeat it and the car is tracked immediately, so stealing it will get you a lot of attention in a hurry.

 

Check with your insurer to see how it might reduce your premium or affect your deductible. For me it was signficant.

 

The lowest I got was $3500 through Gore. Curious what yours is if you don't mind sharing?

 

You can deactivate keyless in the regular car settings, very easily.

It’s the first thing I do with every car, the safest way.
Also the Battery of the key fob holds longer. On top, nobody can catch the signal and reopen the car.

For me (very personal view)it’s more convenient and worth to know my car is 100% locked and the signal is not to copy, than having this randomly working, still not perfectly executed, approach lock and unlock.

 

It does scream that. It was difficult to insure. At first my deductible was $5,000. If the car is stolen, you are out of pocket because at $5,000 it's not a vanishing deductible. I resisted that obviously. You obviously need the waiver of depreciation which was not that expensive as I recall. I live right in the heart of the city.

 

What's interesting is that Range Rover leases through Jlr/Scotia in Canada have automatic built-in gap insurance

So technically speaking waiver of depreciation is not needed if you're leasing

 

So my lessor is CDLS which is Canadian Dealer Lease Services Inc. Is that funded by Scotia? Gap insurance and a waiver of depreciation are a little different from my understanding. I understood the Gap is the difference between the depreciated value and what your obligation might be under a lease. The waiver makes sure you cover any deposits/equity and can replace the car, whether you lease, borrow or outright purchase. Some limits apply.

 

I spent so much wasted time on this, and yes it's CDLS. CDLS has their own insurance on their cars. So the way it works is this

Let's assume a car is $160K and the residual is $100K. Let's assume your total lease amount is $90K. Hypothetically, on day 1, it's $160K - $100K = $60K. $60K minus your $90K payment means you're out $30K. However, CDLS has their own gap insurance which means you literally walk away with $0 out of pocket even if your Rover gets stolen on day 1. CDLS will eat the $30K as their insurer will pay them back.

Now, let's assume you have OPCF43A. This doesn't help you on a day 1 theft, but let's assume your car gets stolen with 1 month remaining on the lease.

$160K cheque cut to CDLS. CDLS takes their residual so $60K is left. You have 1 month of lease money left so it's $60K - $1800/1mo (example), and you get a cheque for ~$58K.

You don't need OPCF43A on a lease because CDLS already has insurance to protect them on that one.

I wasted 2 whole days learning this

 

I understood the waiver protects any down payment on a lease. So in the case above if the 90k residual is combined with 50k in lease payments and $30K upfront that the lessee paid, does CDLS cover your down payment in that instance? Pretty good if they do.

 

A down payment is never ever covered. I was about to put $80,000 down and it was about to be my biggest single mistake in my life.

 

I understand it is with Waiver. No different than a down payment when you finance it or if you buy it outright. You pay to protect the purchase price.

 

I'm a member of the Canadian Bar Association. Your down payment is not protected.

In a lease you are not building equity. I would suggest you direct further questions to your FSI manager If you don't believe me. If you're putting excess money down in a down payment, all you're doing is reducing the amount in the lease and that's only paying down depreciation. It has nothing to do with equity. You don't own the car. Any decent FSI manager would tell their clients to not put down a down payment.

If you have money to burn to try and reduce the implicit finance charge then you can max out the security deposits. Those are refundable at the end of the lease. Each monthly payment reduces the leasing rate by 0.1% and you can pay a total of 10 deposits.

 

I directed it to my insurer.

 

And I ensured they would bifurcate payment to me and lessor. There is no question you don't have equity in the lease, you just financed less with a lease. But the replacement cost concept stands. You can't get the money from the lessor. Your have to get it from the Insurance Company. The lessor owes the lessee nothing.

 

That is where your understanding is not accurate.

Your insurer will tell you exactly the same thing that mine did. If you buy the waiver of depreciation, all it means is the check that they cut. Cdls is basically what you paid for it without depreciation

What happens afterwards has nothing to do with the insurer.

If you buy $160,000 car with $90,000 residual and you put down a $70,000 down payment with a $40,000 lease then you are out money.

$40,000 to be precise. (We are explicitly talking about opcf43a right now)

Conversely, if you put down $0 and your monthly payment is $2,200 a month for $48 months and you lose your car in the first month then you just walk away.

If you bought waiver of depreciation it does you nothing here. It's the Gap insurance in cdls that covers you and lets you walk away

That gap insurance does not cover down payment. It's as simple as that, but I'm not sure why we're arguing about that on this thread, which is about theft mitigation 🤣

 

Not sure either. I will confirm. Depreciation waiver is meant to replace the cost of the car and gap insurance is different, I agree. But the Deprecation waiver is meant to cover the price of the car, regardless of how you financed it. As I said I will confirm.

 

Yes, and you are right. Depreciation waiver does replace the cost of the car and it does. The insurer, instead of writing a cheque of $160K minus depreciation, now writes a cheque (for all intents and purposes) for $160K.

The most frustrating part about learning all of this is the insurer just says "not our problem". Most FSI managers I spoke to had no clue. I called JLR / CDLS and they said to talk to the dealer...

One FSI manager sheepishly told me to never put down a down payment, and it took forever to learn how they calculate total losses in Canada.

The thing is, the leasing company ALWAYS gets the residual amount first as they would have gotten that amount if the car wasn't stolen.

So $160K - $90K which is a very realistic P400 scenario here. So that means only $70K left. If the lease is for $100K (Total commitment), no issues, the buyer walks away due to gap insurance.

But if the lessor put down a down payment, they'd most likely (Depending on the scenario) be "out" of money. That is absolutely insane to me they don't flag this. In fact, this should be in legislation!

 

It's an interesting topic. I had this very specific discussion with my broker. Waiver of depreciation was meant to protect consumers with the actual purchase price of the car, regardless of how it is, or isn't financed/leased. I have a friend who's leased Jag was stolen and he had the waiver with Aviva. Car was replaced, brand new no issues at all. As I said I will confirm. The only place you are going to recover the money is from the insurer, given they write the policy.

 

You touched on the one topic we haven't talked about yet.

Yes, in a waiver of depreciation, one option is for you to get the equivalent same model.

I have financed or paid cash for cars my whole life and I've never had a concern of being out of pocket.

The only scenario that could be a very big issue is when people put large down payments on cars

As a simple Google search will share, it's never a good idea and it's for this very topic!

Sorry to hear about your friend's car though, but glad he got a new one

When I was learning about this topic someone gave me an analogy

Assume someone is renting a condo but instead of paying $1,500 a month they give the landlord $30,000. The condo catches on fire

... The person doesn't get the $30,000 back obviously

 

If you google search OPCF43 you will find that the consistent answer is that you do NOT lose your downpayment on a lease in the event of a loss. In the condo, is the landlord responsible for returning the rent if they cannot provide the tenant with the quiet enjoyment of the premises he paid for over the term?

I'm a CPA so I tend to boil it down to return. LOL

 

If you google search OPCF43 you will find that the consistent answer is that you do NOT lose your downpayment on a lease in the event of a loss. In the condo, is the landlord responsible for returning the rent if they cannot provide the tenant with the quiet enjoyment of the premises he paid for over the term?

I'm a CPA so I tend to boil it down to return. LOL

That's not the case even if you use a LLM but to be fair it doesn't really matter what you or I think

All insurers will say the same. With OPCF43A (A by the way, as we're talking about leasing. OPCF43 is for financing), all the insurer does is to cut a cheque to the leasing company for the amount paid. That's all. We can go around and around all day but why don't we agree to just hoping our RRs dont get stolen and we don't have to figure out the hard way 🤣🤣🤣🤣

 

I spoke with the insurer and the Land Rover Leasing. Assuming the waiver is in good standing, the insurer will cut a cheque to the leasing company for the amount owing pursuant to the lease obligation at the date of the loss and any difference between the full purchase price (or the current retail price whichever is less) and the lease obligation should be paid to me. The lease obligation is net of any downpayment . As you say, let's hope it doesn't come to this.

I was told under the waiver of depreciation, you recover any sales taxes paid too.

 

I was told under the waiver of depreciation, you recover any sales taxes paid too.

Thx for the follow up, and yes, you absolutely do recover sales taxes, but we can't recover freight, PDI, wheel locks, window tint, etc etc.

It's so silly that they don't break down the legal agreements to people who lease. It's just a ...hey, thanks for buying the car, sign here!

There's something called capacity and informed consent...I wonder how dealers get away with this!

 

Okay, moving more off topic a little more...I just discovered my lease has an very good option to purchase at any time before the Maturity Date, for a total of:

a) all of the remaining payments up to the Maturity Date (LESS unearned interest on such amount from the purchase date to Maturity Date at the Lease Rate), plus
b) the residual value, plus
c) $350 plus,
d) applicable taxes.

Pretty good if you have a hankering to buy it out early.

 

Yeah but the residual is freaking insane.

So I've bought cars my whole life and I've never leased. But this Range Rover leases made me realize something really weird.

If you do the maths, you'd have to own the Range Rover for 7 to 8 years before you break even with leasing

It makes absolutely no sense to actually buy one of these things. Plus the extended warranty on this is like 10 grand depending on what you get

 

The residual is high if that is what you mean. It is on my RRS and it keeps the lease payments low. I don't like to take residual value risk - you never know if you might have a car with a systemic problem. I maintain if the interest rate is low enough, why not lease it and see how it is.

How long of an extended warranty does $10K get you?

A Porsche is about $4k for 2 years BUT you must keep up maintenance by the book. With a Porsche you can keep going up to 200,000 km or almost 15 years. Overall it's expensive since you have to maintain the car to very high standards anyway.

 

The residual is high if that is what you mean. It is on my RRS and it keeps the lease payments low. I don't like to take residual value risk - you never know if you might have a car with a systemic problem. I maintain if the interest rate is low enough, why not lease it and see how it is.

How long of an extended warranty does $10K get you?

A Porsche is about $4k for 2 years BUT you must keep up maintenance by the book. With a Porsche you can keep going up to 200,000 km or almost 15 years. Overall it's expensive since you have to maintain the car to very high standards anyway.

The extended warranty for a brand new RR was double or triple that of my Audi A8L. The issue is that it's price A when you buy the car new, but price B if you buy it at least end. Price A for the RR on the high end is ~ $10K which maxes out at 10 years (from in service date - so bumper to bumper 4 year + 6). That's insane to me. That said, the MAX repair bill they'll pay as the car gets older cannot exceed the price of the car at the time. So if you need a new $30K engine when it's 10 years old...claim denied.

My 10 year warranty on my A8L from Audi Canada was $3400 (yes, I got it at a discount). But still.

Range Rovers are not meant to be bought, that's for sure.

I mean, even if you take the MSRP of the vehicle you bought and divide that by the least payment - well, at least in my case, breakeven is like 7.5 years.

But, when I lease - I don't care about rust, I don't care about waxing it, I don't care about fixing every single tiny scratch (I do this now). I don't need to spend money on PPF etc etc

I don't know - I could get used to leasing haha

 

I like leasing because the opportunity cost of a cash payment is too high. But I do take care of my cars, even use PPF so if I decided to return it, I don't have trouble and if I decided to buy it, I don't mind owning it. I find you can negotiate PPF costs, better for all concerned. I have purchased lots of cars. I don't do it now unless there are special circumstances. If you have a high end collector car, I get it, but otherwise, if you can leave your capital to work, do it. Plus I hate prepaying tax.

7.5 years whoa.

 

I like leasing because the opportunity cost of a cash payment is too high. But I do take care of my cars, even use PPF so if I decided to return it, I don't have trouble and if I decided to buy it, I don't mind owning it. I find you can negotiate PPF costs, better for all concerned. I have purchased lots of cars. I don't do it now unless there are special circumstances. If you have a high end collector car, I get it, but otherwise, if you can leave your capital to work, do it. Plus I hate prepaying tax.

7.5 years whoa.

I just wanted to say it's been such a pleasure to meet your acquaintance today, and a fellow Canadian! A CPA and a (now non practicing) lawyer walk into a bar....who knows what will happen

PPF on a lease - you're a better human being than I am. My dealer wanted $500 to tint two windows today...seriously.

The luxury tax these days is a big reason to own a car but hopefully the next government will topple this craziness!

I'm really excited and scared for my first RR, but if it does work out, I might end up buying one, but for now, I'll lease the pretty gal!

 

Got the PPF for free. I have a good tint guy - these cars are so well tinted until...the front ! Well when you get your new RR and you have occasion to put up with Toronto traffic, there are a lot of bars to experience. That **** luxury tax. And we pay tax on it. No wonder seniors get free dental.

 

Sent you a PM

 

Block visibility to the VIN through the windscreen (slip small square of paper down between dash lower corner and glass)

Disable approach and walk away unlock/lock

TAG incl window etching

OBD2 port lock (Sherlock.ca etc)

Club on steering wheel

Custom stealth AirTags (2), hidden inside vehicle

Always parked inside locked garage

Follow web tutorials to break in proof garage doors against common weak points (dangling release cord etc)

Kickproof reinforce home entry doors/door frames

Keep Fobs in bedroom, not in entryway

Park another vehicle directly behind RR in driveway

Use Guardian Mode when appropriate

Disable vehicle Wireless setting (this turns off the WIFI Access Point named after your VIN, that can be communicated with from outside the vehicle)

Use dedicated email alias login and unique very strong password for your InControl account

 

So, don't laugh or laugh too hard, I mean, laugh all you want...

So I have a wireless home security system - why don't I just add a motion sensor or door sensor in the RR as it sits on my driveway? If anything moves inside, or they open the door - BANG, my home alarm system goes off.

Seems like a quick win, no?

Cops are called immediately too.