What To Do When Your Uber Car Rental Or Lease Is Up!

If you’re a subscriber, you may have been following Jay Cradeur’s car saga: His rideshare lease ended, then he made several videos about the various different options he had for getting a new car.

This video is from early in the saga, right when his lease ended. It covers the initial decision making process he went through to decide on his best next steps.

Take a look at Jay’s video, and scroll to the video transcript to read the points he covers.

Jay Cradeur with The Rideshare Guy, coming to you live from Mexico City, Mexico. I had to get a little work done on my teeth so I decided to come down to Mexico City, got it done yesterday, got a new crown and a filling. Feeling pretty good. Ready to chomp down on some steak!

Decisions, decisions: New car for Uber, rental, or lease?

So, your lease expires. Do you rent, lease, or purchase your next rideshare car? Now, what I want to do is share with you some factors which I have considered in the past when determining whether to lease or purchase a car. So we’re going to go to a screenshot right now.

How to calculate your best vehicle option

This is a calculation that I did three years ago when I was first getting my Prius. I knew I was going to be a full-time driver and I wanted to first figure out how much depreciation would be if I had my own car. I went to Car Gurus and I looked up two different cars, same make and model. One that had 90,000 miles and one that had about 30,000 miles, and I could see that for that 60,000 miles, I depreciated the car $7000 or approximately $600 per month.

Then I compared the purchase price of a new car to a lease, and added the depreciation to the purchase, and then insurance I had another $200. My monthly cost if I purchased the car was $1233, whereas if I leased the car I was only going to spend $860, for a savings each month of $373, which is over $4000 a year. So it definitely made more financial sense to lease the car.

I knew I was somewhere in March but I started to get a phone call from this company called Digital Dog and they’re an auto-recovery company which is hired by Xchange Leasing and they were asking when they could come to tow my car away. I said, “Wait a minute, I need some time to think.”

I asked them if I could have the pickup in four weeks, and they were generous and they said, “Yes, that would be fine,” and we set a date. And that gave me four weeks to figure out what was I going to do? So with this new situation there are some new numbers for me to evaluate.

How much is too much for a rideshare car?

How much would I have to pay to get this car and would it be worth it? I went to Kelley Blue Book, and I found out that a 2013 Toyota Prius with 220,000 miles in fair condition had a blue book of about $2500. And I thought, wow, for $2500 I could buy this car, spend a few thousand to really fix it up, and have a good car for no more monthly payment, right? Just buy the car outright.

However, when I called Xchange Leasing and I said, “I’d like to buy the car for $2500,” they said, “Hold on. We do not negotiate and the only price we can sell you the car for is the price negotiated in the contract when you first got the car,” which was $5000. Still a pretty low price, but something inside me wouldn’t allow me to buy a car at twice its value, even though the amount was very low.

I don’t understand why Xchange Leasing was so adamant about the price but they held their ground because I asked several times, I contacted different customer support people and they said it was going to be $5000.

Enter Fair Uber rentals

Now about this time the Fair Car Rental Program came online through Uber and this allowed me to try out a car for a couple weeks, see how I liked it. The numbers were very comparable. I was spending about $200 a week for a car with unlimited miles with my Prius and I would be spending about $200 a week for a car with unlimited miles with the Fair Car Rental Program.

The next thing I looked at is the comfort of the car. In this case, the Elantra really won me over quite a bit. It was goodbye Toyota Prius, hello Elantra. So there went my car. And I just want to share with you that it was a rather emotional experience letting that car go. I did the numbers and for the amount of time I was in the car, that would be staying in your car for seven and a half months solid, 24 hours a day. I had 20,000 people come in and out of that car.

It was not easy to just let it go. I had a few trips with my daughter that we took, within California, but had to let it go, and I took out the floor mats from the Prius and I put them in the Elantra and I guess that made it, the transfer a little easier. So there it goes. That was my final decision. Now I’m driving the Hyundai Elantra.

How should you pick the best car for your situation?

In summary, your situation will be completely different. Are you driving full-time or part-time? What kind of car are you looking at? What’s going to be your monthly payment? Do you have a lease option available where you can get unlimited miles? How important is the comfort of your car?

You can drive a Mercedes Benz or you can drive a Ford Fiesta. One costs a lot more, one’s got a lot more comfort. What’s more valuable to you? Saving the money or the comfort and the status and the different things that come with the more expensive car? These are all things to consider and I hope this has helped you to put all the pieces together into a little formula so you can make a sound decision.

Everybody, this is Jay Cradeur with The Rideshare Guy. Go out and have a great day, and be safe out there.

More articles about Jay’s car saga

• Fair App Review
• 8 Weeks of Earnings With a Fair Rental
• The Easiest Way to Buy a Car For Uber & Lyft