After spending the whole afternoon on the phone with variousdealerships, MB Financial, and finally MB USA themselves, I learned that uponlease turn in, your car MUST have Goodyear run-flat tires with tread more than1/8”.

A quick search will find that Goodyear actually makes thesame tire in a non-run flat tire that starts about $150 (or cheaper dependingon brand) at some online tire distributors. The “run flat” tires start about $300 ($500 at the dealer).

We can all see the obvious difference. I am going to dismount all the run flat tiresand install the Goodyear non-run flat tires and run those for the leaseduration rather than getting charged $2000 upon lease turn in. With these Goodyear tires only lasting about20k miles, you should be considering the long term. I did talk to some dealers and the salesperson said “as long as the tread is good you will be OK”! I called dealers in Dallas, Cincinnati,Minneapolis, Los Angeles and three different people at corporate. However the next office said the exactopposite and the original run-flat tires must be installed because the vehicledoes not come with a spare. Either waythe answer was inconsistent and before talking to one of the supervisors atcorporate (800-367-6372 opt.4 then opt.5) and got me to thinking this isexactly how they generate revenue on the back end of lease deals.

Rarely does someone change their own tire these days so theidea of a run flat tire is literally reinventing the wheel. Most of the time someone (especially in a MB)will either keep their tires in good shape or call a tow truck to take care ofa repair. Either way, when you turn inyour lease and you have other than OE RUN FLAT tires, be prepared to fork oversome cash..

 

And this is news to you? Did you not read your rental - lease agreement first? What makes you think you can modify the OEM specification and return it in an altered state without penalty?

 

I did read the contractual language however, no where does it say you must have "run-flat" tires installed upon return. With these tires only lasting around 20-25k miles, just about everyone will be replacing tires whether you are "renting" or "financing" through a bank owned vehicle.

 

No, there is a point here. It looks like a bit of a scam on part of the tire suppliers.

I just got new tires for my wife's Mazda6. The OEM Michelins in the required size were very expensive, although both smaller and bigger version of the same tire are much cheaper.

I dug into it a bit and the reason for this is that the price has been hand-crafted for lease return victims. My wife didn't lease but she needed new tires right around those 36 months.

 

I bet it states that is has to have MB approved parts upon return. That means that if the car came with run flats of a certain brand and type it has to have them at turn in unless you can prove that the particular vehicle had multiple options in that regard.

 

Yes, however, there can be at least 3 different kinds of tires on your new Mercedes, for the same spec.

Why not allow a choice of the same 3 for the lease return? Looks a bit one-sided to me. Especially if that particular tire model turns out to be exceptionally expensive when a certain batch of cars is up for lease return.

 

1) He didn't read and fully understand his rental/lease agreement
2) Vehicle being too new to have exposed others to the different available OEM tires supplied by MB
3) All we have is his word of mouth recollection of his discussions
4) People always exaggerate when posting on forums especially when it affects them

 

I am impressed as a "super moderator" you are undermining "your" members on here. Takes a lot of class. The contractual language is ambiguous to say the least and all over the web MB talks about a "3 step inspection turn in" whatever that means. This thread simply points out "interpretation" and the fine print that does not really exist.

https://www.mbfs.com/mbfsr/en/faqs/f...inish.do#three

All I am simply saying is ensure you have the right tires on when you turn in or trade in because there is a very likely chance the dealer (whichever one) will charge you for new tires at $500 a piece. The point is there is more than one tire that fit on this vehicle run-flat or otherwise from multiple companies. It is also important to point out that tire company's change tire "make and models" all the time and with all these cars potentially being returned around the same time, I am sure this will be on the radar for MB.

I would be interested to know if there is any performance gain i.e. cornering, mpg, wear and etc. on the run-flat vs. traditional???

 

I have leased many vehicles through various car dealers (Mercedes, Cadillac, Hummer, Infiniti, Range Rover, etc). Between my experience and other family members, I think we've had close to 10 lease exchanges with Mercedes-Benz alone.

I can say that the process for vehicle turn-in is far from standardized. It all depends on which dealership you turn the car into, who checks it out and possibly if you're re-leasing a new mercedes or not (which can affect how lenient they are when it comes to certain questionable items).

I commonly heavily modify my vehicles. For one of my prior C-Class's (sig below), I've had Rims, grilles, tints, exhaust, sidemarkers, intake, tune etc. The guy who did my lease turn-in check didn't care about anything except wanting the original rims.

I even specifically asked him about tints, aftermarket grille, exhaust, side markers, intake, tune, etc. He didn't care about any of it except the rims. However, I decided to return the car as OEM since my aftermarket parts cost a bit and i would re-use or re-sell them. I highly doubt one will get into particular details as to ensure all 4 tires are run-flat. Most inspectors probably wouldn't even know to check, they will simply check tire tread (but you may never know for sure).

However, contrasted with Infiniti lease turn-in (which was the most rigorous in all of my experiences). They had a 3rd party service come to my house to check out my vehicle before I had turned it in for lease. They went so far as to check brake pad thickness, had tools for checking the sizes of dings or dents. Even counted how many rockchips or scratches were on individual body panels.

I had to pay $750 to get out of that lease between some minor body damage, brakes and tires (luckily I had a tire and rim insurance policy which covered curb rash and tires).

 

any car dealer wants the car to be in re-sale condition. If its not, they have to wholesale / auction it

CLA's are promoted with the run flats.... which I hated when I test drove it.

I just turned in a leased Passat to VW, They too had a 3rd party inspection guy come to my house. I got dinged for door dings, but the tires were above 50...maybe it was 80%. Think "used tire store" a month before for some take-offs

the idea of taking the OEM's off and remounting when turning in is the BEST way to go.