I recently found myself in the situation of wanting to get out of a lease before its contractual maturity date. The most cost-effective way to do so is to transfer the lease to someone else. swapalease.com is one of the companies that promises to bring together people for such transactions.

I will say straightaway that I was very skeptical. Swapalease charges not just a provision when the lease is actually transferred, but you also have to pay to list your vehicle (if you want to get out of your lease), and you have to pay to contact sellers (if you are looking for a lease). The charge for listing a vehicle is about $ 100, the price for contacting sellers is $ 59 (you have to join a "Buyer's Club"). To me, this seems quite a lot. On the other hand, it is relatively little when compared to the other options for getting out of a lease.

Since I also couldn't find any reliable reports of how big the chances of finding a buyer via Swapalease are, I decided to risk the $ 100.

My car has now been listed for about a month, so I think I am ready to comment on whether this was worth the expense. The answer is a clear No, and I hope this report will prevent other people from making the same mistake.

For comparison purposes, I posted the same ad on Craigslist (for free). In about a month, I have had about 10 people contact me about the Craigslist ad and not a single contact from Swapalease. I received one email from Swapalease telling me that a buyer was "interested" and that I should get in touch with him. I did so, but never heard back. I am not sure what criterion Swapalease uses to trigger these emails, but they do not seem to be the result of direct action by the buyer.

What I did receive was phone calls and emails from Swapalease sales agents. They helpfully pointed out that with my chosen listing, it would take an average of 180 days to find a buyer (something they did not mention before for obvious reasons), but that they would be happy to upgrade me to a (more expensive) "Platinum package" to speed things up.

In summary, I don't think Swapalease is worthwhile. As long as potential buyers have to pay a fee, the audience is most likely very small, and even if buyers weren't required to to pay a fee, I consider the listing fee to be disproportionate. Stay away!