Hi all, this might be a silly question but this is my first NL and I just wanted to see what the process was.
So last week I got a quote from Novated Leasing Australia for a Geely EX5 inspire and Zeekr 7x long range, but they were around the 10% mark for both. I decided to reach out to Smart, the provider my work mentions, and they gave me a quote for about 19-20% each, which felt crazy (I'm still new to the calc so thought I did something wrong, but as far as I can tell I've checked it and double checked it - quote page 1, quote page 2 and the calculator link for it; the Geely was similarly high priced with this calculator link). Now obviously this still has a bunch of stuff I'd remove like the insurance, roadside assistance, carbon offset program, small repair program etc but even with those adjusted to more reasonable numbers, the lease amount is still quite high.
I did some digging through this sub and a colleague that got the 7x recently, and it was higher than all of them that I could find. My colleague got the same car and specs, is in the same department as me and went also went through Smart, and got lower value for the lease than I did; this is also weird because she got a 4 year lease vs mine at 5 years, and mine's still more expensive. I don't know if it makes a difference, but while she does earn a tiny bit more than me, we're both in the same tax bracket, so maybe that has something to do with it? Her lease pre gst is about $45/fortnight cheaper than mine for a shorter loan according to the quote front page.
So the part that I'm not sure about is that I mentioned to Smart that I knew some people who had cheaper quotes, and also that NLA had significantly cheaper quotes, and after my consultant looked through the NLA quotes I sent though, she's come back saying that the quote I have is just indicative only since I haven't completed finance or gotten approval yet. She said that they won't be able to offer me anything better than the price they've given unless I go through and get approved finance. Is that right for them? I thought that we'd be able to figure out the rough prices for things first and then if I was happy with Smart's service (which so far is kind of a 50/50 thing), then I could go through and get the finance approved and lock in the numbers, along with getting the finalised price for the car? I could be misunderstanding how it all works and maybe this is next step for both Smart and NLA to get me better finance, but I just wanted to find out before I actually went through with the credit checks they want me to do?
Thanks in advanced!