1. No, Audi does not allow that on a lease, or a finance through Audi

To the OP, a few things

Quoting a monthly payment, at what you perceive is low, high, or average, is, unfortunately useless. There isn't a $74k Prestige that is going to be $800 a month at 12k a year. Prestige Residual is much less than Premium Plus.

Also, comparing your payment is only useful if you have the whole deal structure, and are comparing it to people in your region, in the same month. Otherwise, the numbers you get anywhere, will largely be useless. What someone paid November of 18, or March of 17, is inconsequential in January of 19. Those numbers will also likely change tomorrow as well (or tonight), as programs are not only regionally based (incentives too), but change monthly

I'm at 11% now and dealer said they would increase if better factory support at time of delivery.
Did OP clarify if there was a trade and is the unit in stock or ordered?

Then dealerships are breaking the rules a whole lot - either way, the message to the OP is the same, make sure they are not marking up the AudiCare.

OP here; final update from me, so to recap I shopped around at 3 dealerships total and the best deal BY FAR was $880/month for almost the exact car I wanted (P+ 3.0 with assist, warm, cold). 12k miles/year. Got the price down a bit more by putting down $10k up front. Inventory car; not custom build. No trade in. Definitely do not want to purchase; lease only.

Audicare was NOT included I actually didn't think to check until after verbally agreeing to the deal. They wouldn't budge and I decided to sign the deal without it since it was clear to me this was the best deal I was gonna get.

Thanks for all your help. This is a great community and I look forward to joining the family and contributing to the forums.

In order to get paid for the car by Audi, assuming Audi is doing the financing, you have to validate the deal electronically. You can't validate a deal that has marked up AudiCare - it won't push through and you won't get paid for the car, period. With an outside bank, different story

They tried to sell me a bunch of service packages I was in a hurry so at the time said no. Are there any that are worth getting?

You put $10k out of pocket to lease it, when you were already at $880 with a true nothing out of pocket (no taxes, inception, first payment, registration, true sign and drive), am I reading that correctly? Did someone explain the inherent risk in doing that (I hope they did)

Yes I usually start negotiating with zero down then put down a significant amount in order to squeeze out an even better deal in this case they decreased my my total lease value by about $1,500. There is inherent risk with large down payment but so far no problems with any of my leases, knock on wood :)

money down won't change the deal, just changes when you're parting with your money. It's the same $10k either way, just when you pay it. One way you're amortizing it, the other way you're giving it up front. A dealer doesn't care if you put money down - they get paid for the whole car either way. Audi doesn't care either, so long as the credit worthiness is where they want it to be. If you're in a state that allows prepayment of sales tax, that's usually a safe "down" amount, because they will generally pro rate the tax paid as a refund back should the car be totaled, stolen and no recovered etc. If you're using $10k as pure cap cost reduction, then all that money is spent as soon as your signature is on the contract. That's a big risk should something go left. It gets you no equity position, doesn't change the residual, it just buys down the price of the car (which is why the payment drops).

the math is always the math - $1000 +/- is around +/- $30 a month on a 36 month term lease

no im referring to the total lease value, they gave me a discount. Hope that made sense. Im not an expert on any of this lol but the math from my perspective is straight forward.

You are right about the everything else you said though. I totally get the opportunity cost. There are personal reasons I wanna get my monthly payments lower; story for another day perhaps.