We're So Free, Apparently It's Considered Solicitation

We started TradeMyLease with a pretty simple idea. If you're trying to get out of a lease, you should be able to list it for free. If you're shopping for a lease, you should be able to see what's actually out there. And if there's another website, broker, forum, or resource that can help you, you should know about that too.

We don't think consumers need us deciding which parts of the internet they're allowed to see.

Apparently, that's a little more controversial than we thought.

It started with a BMW 840i

Recently, someone on Leasehackr posted a 2025 BMW 840i xDrive Gran Coupe they were looking to transfer.

Nice car. Nice listing. We figured the owner might benefit from putting it in front of another group of BMW shoppers, so we sent them a private message:

"Nice listing, feel free to post it up for free on 'Get Out of Your Car Lease Early - Free Lease Transfer Marketplace - TradeMyLease'; we get a chunk of BMW viewers."

That was the entire pitch, if you can call it one.

We didn't offer to broker the car. We didn't ask for a fee, a commission, or a lead payment. We didn't ask the owner to buy anything from us.

We told someone trying to transfer a BMW about another place where they could list it for free — in a direct message, not even a public reply on their thread.

The response was almost immediate. They replied in the message thread:

"Admins, community mods, please see the above solicitation."

Fair enough. We thought that was a bit dramatic, so we responded:

"Well, that escalated quickly 😂 Just pointed you toward a free place to get more eyes on your BMW. No sales pitch, no fee, no strings attached. Carry on!!"

Then a moderator stepped in:

"You know the deal. Register as a business or remove your advertising from your profile and don't solicit business here."

Shortly afterward, our account was banned.

We couldn't respond to the moderator. We couldn't clarify anything further. We couldn't even go back and grab screenshots of the conversation, because we'd been locked out.

So yes, "that escalated quickly" turned out to be fairly accurate.

Their forum, their rules

Let's get one thing out of the way.

Leasehackr is a private community. They can decide what's allowed on their forum, who can participate, and how they want businesses - or people affiliated with businesses - to identify themselves.

We're not claiming otherwise. And we're not going to dress this up as some constitutional free-speech issue. It's their website. They can moderate it however they want.

What we disagree with is calling what happened "soliciting business."

If the rule is that someone affiliated with another automotive website can't mention that website without registering as a business, that's their rule. Just call it that.

We recommended a free resource to someone trying to transfer a lease. There was no transaction being proposed and no money being requested.

Maybe Leasehackr considers that advertising. Fine. We see it differently.

And yes, we're linking directly to the original Leasehackr listing above. The exchange itself happened in a private message thread — and since we're locked out of the account, we can't show it to you, so the quotes here are from memory and you only have our word for them.

We'd still rather point you at the source and let you make up your own mind.

This wasn't our first run-in with a walled garden

Interestingly, this isn't the first time we've run into this mentality in the online leasing world.

Previously, we shared TradeMyLease's Top Lease Broker Deals in the U.S. page with the r/leasehacker community on Reddit.

That page has nothing to do with transferring an existing lease. It's another part of TradeMyLease where we collect some of the strongest brokered lease deals we can find around the country and put them in one place. Instead of making someone bounce between dozens of posts, spreadsheets, and broker pages, we try to make the deals easy to compare.

The Reddit post did extremely well. According to the analytics we had available at the time, it received more than 100,000 views.

Then it was removed.

The issue involved brokers appearing on our deals page who weren't among the brokers approved by that community.

One important clarification: to our knowledge, r/leasehacker on Reddit is not affiliated with Leasehackr. These were separate incidents involving separate communities, and we're not suggesting otherwise.

What stood out to us was the mentality behind both experiences.

In one place, telling someone about another free marketplace was treated as solicitation. In another, a page showing consumers lease deals from a broader group of brokers ran into moderation issues over which brokers were represented.

Different communities. Different circumstances. Same question for us:

Who benefits when consumers see fewer options?

We're building TradeMyLease differently

We have no interest in building another corner of the automotive internet where everything outside our own ecosystem has to be treated like a threat.

If Leasehackr has a great piece of information that helps you negotiate a better lease, go read it.

Yes, you read that correctly. We're linking to them.

If another lease transfer marketplace has the exact car you're looking for, go look at it. If a broker gets you an incredible deal, tell people about them. If you find a dealership, calculator, forum, YouTube channel, or other resource that saves you money, share it.

And if another website does something better than TradeMyLease does, you're allowed to say that too.

We're not afraid you're going to discover the rest of the internet.

We would rather earn your business than restrict your information.

We don't need an approved version of the internet

Someone shopping for a lease doesn't care about the politics between websites, communities, and brokers. They want a good deal.

Someone stuck in a lease they no longer want doesn't care which marketplace gets credit for the transfer. They want someone to take the lease.

Someone looking through broker deals wants to know what the car costs, what's due at signing, what the terms are, and whether the deal is actually available.

That's what matters.

Of course communities need moderation. Nobody wants spam. Nobody wants fake accounts pretending to be happy customers. Nobody wants every discussion flooded with advertisements.

But there's a legitimate difference between moderating spam and deciding which useful resources consumers should be allowed to discover.

We're comfortable letting people make that distinction for themselves.

Competition is good for this industry

The lease business is already confusing enough. Money factors, residuals, incentives, acquisition fees, MSDs, mileage allowances, taxes - and thousands of dollars that can disappear into a poorly structured deal.

The last thing consumers need is less information.

More competition between brokers is good. More competition between marketplaces is good. More transparency around actual lease payments is good. More places to advertise a lease transfer are good.

And when another company builds something useful, acknowledging that it exists isn't going to hurt us.

If TradeMyLease succeeds, we want it to be because we built something people genuinely like using - not because we kept them from discovering alternatives.

What free means at TradeMyLease

When we say TradeMyLease is a free lease transfer marketplace, we mean it.

Listing your lease is free. Browsing leases is free. Sharing your listing is free.

We're also building tools and resources to help people find strong lease deals and make better decisions about their next car.

And if another legitimate resource can help you accomplish what you're trying to do, use it. Seriously.

The goal isn't to keep you on TradeMyLease forever. If you're trying to get out of your lease, the goal is to help you get out of your lease. If you're looking for your next car, the goal is to help you find a great deal.

That's it.

No hard feelings

We're not writing this because we expect Leasehackr to change its rules. Their forum. Their rules.

We're writing it because the experience reminded us exactly what kind of marketplace we want TradeMyLease to become.

We want more information available to consumers, not less. We want more competition, not less. We want people sharing good deals and useful resources - even when those resources aren't ours.

We don't need a walled garden. And we don't need to pretend we're the only website on the internet.

If somebody else can help you, we'll tell you. If we can help you, even better.

Welcome to TradeMyLease - a genuinely free lease transfer marketplace built for people who would rather have options than gatekeepers.

And if telling somebody about a free place to list their BMW counts as solicitation?

We'll happily keep being that kind of disruptive.