Pretty sure the “Market Adjustment” is the same as the “ADP” GeorgeSanJose mentioned. By the way, I’m amazed he would admit that its “additional dealer profit”.
I wonder if the salesperson gets a hefty cut of that $295 as commission to incentivize pushing it?
I’ve read on these boards that the nitrogen fill is worth it if it is free of charge. Even in that circumstance, I would insist on regular valve caps as opposed to those green caps they put on when they fill the tires with nitrogen. I think those green caps would mark you as a sucker for all sorts of other con artists who might see you with your vehicle.
Agree wholeheartedly, what this country needs is Critical Thinking Skills taught in all schools. (Gotta restrain myself from digressing here. . . )
Regarding the “market adjustment”, if this car is so popular, how come the dealer has an extra one to put on display in a half-vacant mall?
Edit to add: I guess I’m just dumbfounded that anyone would fall for something like this, but they must, or it wouldn’t be on there, unless this is something brand new that the dealer is “running up the flagpole” so to speak, but I’m usually among the last to stumble across these things, haven’t bought a car from a dealer in many years.
Maybe its the Monthly Payment Buyers (or Fleecers) that fall for this, they’re so focused on driving away in the shiny new car TODAY and what the monthly payment will be that they don’t bother to read this stuff.
I don’t get too upset over this. The thing is when you buy a car you aren’t negotiating on the line item costs but just the bottom line. So it doesn’t really matter what they tacked on for air or extra profit or what because all you are concerned with is the one out the door price. Same reason I’m not concerned with $5 band aids in the hospital, its just the last figure that counts. And if band aids were cheaper, something else would be more expensive because there is a bottom line figure that needs to be met. Now if it is ad ons like wax or something after the fact, that’s different. If they want to let the factory air out of the tires and put in nitro for $300, its take a hike.
The sale of filtered air is the result of so many customers offering no more than the dealers invoice price they found on the internet. Dealers have been reduced to selling annual wax applications, upholstery protection, window VIN etching and other services of little value to make a profit.
Twenty five years the $2,000 market value addendum was standard in my area. This price is the negotiation starting point to keep the sale from going too far below MSRP. This is sometimes necessary to support real estate and advertising costs of a particular area.
The wheel/decal package may be legit in that it may have upgraded wheels. But if they want to charge you $300 for tire air, it’s probably equally likely that the “wheel package” is a set of 5 spoke hubcaps from Kmart.
The nitrogen thing really makes me shake my head. It’s as though tire shops have decided that nitrogen is not subject to thermodynamics. The one obnoxious thing about getting tires at Costco is that I have to remove my valve stem caps before I go in, because otherwise they throw them away and replace them with ugly green ones so everyone knows I’m one of the cool cats rollin’ with nitrogen.
I can’t say whether Forte’s are hot selling enough to command a price premium but ANY hot model in short supply will. Honda Civics and Accords used to sell for sticker plus $1000 in the midwest in the 80’s because the demand was so high. Dealers couldn’t get enough of them. This is just capitalism at work.
Newer examples are the new Hellcat versions of Chrysler products or the resurrected Ford GT from a few years ago. The announced price on that car was about $130,000 or so and dealers marked it up $50,000 and more because the supply was very low and the demand was very high. By the time the last one was built they were worth $250,000 at auction. The new one planned for 2017 will sell for about $400,000. Wanna bet this one sells for sticker plus “ADP” as well?
What people don’t realize is that nitrogen has an atomic weight of a smidge over 14 and oxygen a smidge under 16. The difference is inconsequential… and air is roughly 77% nitrogen anyway!
If schools still taught science instead of sex ed, people would know this.
Now xenon, as circuitsmith suggested, is at 131+ protons a REAL difference in size! But I doubt if it’d make a difference in tire leakage… and the air (gas) in your tires would be very expensive!
I blame out totally broken and political educational system. Primary and secondary students to day are mostly learning WHAT to think, not getting the foundations that give them the ability TO think.
Unfortunately it’s NOT just kids or even 30 somethings who fall for the gimmick of filling the tires with nitrogen. I think you’ll find that there are equally number of 60 somethings who fall for it too. They didn’t get the proper science education either.
@“the same mountainbike” Uri Gellar was fooling people in the 70’s by pretending to telekenetically bend forks and see through objects, long before the current education system.
People in the 60’s tried to lose weight by vibrating the fat off with motorized belly massager belts.
People in the 50’s were still buying patent medicines to cure themselves of various ailments when the only ailment the medicine would cure you of was sobriety.
Today’s students aren’t any dumber with regard to science than any previous generation.
Bing, I saw that interview too. Chris Rock also said in that “special” that young people can’t tolerate real comedy anymore, everything has to be politically correct. It’s truly tragic.
The whole “market adjustment” thing is one of things that I absolutely hated when I was selling cars. The Nissan dealership I worked for at the time had a market adjustment on everything. Sentra with no A/C? $695 market adjustment. Loaded Maxima? $695 market adjustment. It was embarrassing to try to explain to a customer what it was. I ended up just flat out telling customers that it was total BS and to just ignore it and that any negotiation would be based off of the stated MSRP on the original sticker. Then there were other salespeople who would make up reasons for the market adjustment, my favorite being “well there’s a lot of demand for this particular model in this area.” Okay, but why does every freaking vehicle on lot have this mark up? You known damn well that we maybe move four 2WD four cylinder base model Frontiers a month. But yet they have the $695 market adjustment. It was pathetic and unethical in my book. I couldn’t help but put myself in the customer’s shoes and think " If I came up on this lot and saw that they were actually going to try to gouge me for an extra $700 just because they could, would I want to do business with this dealership? Hell no. I would feel insulted.
The sad thing is, that the dealership was a pretty successful one, and even though I was never a top sales guy ( I tried to stick to my morals more than others did), I sold around 9-12 cars a month, while the top guys were doing 17-20+ and the bottom salespeople were doing around 4-8 units a month. The money was quite good. I actually did better financially at the Nissan dealership than I did later on at Ford dealership down the road, where I usually sold more cars on average than I did at the Nissan place. I chalk that up to the GM at the Nissan dealership being pretty stiff when penciling deals, he didn’t give up much. Whereas the GM at the Ford place would routinely slash prices on the 1st and 2nd pencils, which took a lot of the gross out for the salesman. He seemed to be more concerned about making the dealership money and getting kickbacks for selling x number of units, then then was with preserving the deal so that the salesperson could make something on the deal.
It’s a fascinating business, and I’m glad I did it for a few years, but it’s not something that I could see myself doing for 30 years. There’s very little job security, you’re asked to do some morally questionable things, and most of the time there’s no guaranteed paycheck.
I learned almost all of my critical thinking on my first job after college.
After about 10 years on that j of, I had a group of seniors for an internship. I gave them a real problem that I needed an answer to. They did a terrible job, and a lot of it was a lack of critical thinking. These were all smart kids (Johns Hopkins Univ.). I was appalled. Then I thought about it a little more and decided that I was probably just like them when I was 21. I don’t know about you other college graduates, but I had my hands full and then some with the regular engineering course work. I didn’t have time for a critical thinking course. Besides, there was plenty of time to develop that skill on the job after graduation. On that same job I worked on a tiger team with several hourly workers. They had no job related critical thinking skills. If they came up with an idea and agreed it was a good one, they were ready to declare success and move on. I had to ask all the critical questions. They weren’t stupid, just untrained in this area. At least they were coachable, and they had a lot of excellent ideas. Those ideas just needed a little polishing.
The funniest one to me was the day I was lunching with the chair of the liberal arts department and he suggested that the automotive technology (associates degree) students should be required to take more liberal arts electives because it “teaches them how to think”. He really believes that liberal arts electives develop thinking skills better than (for example) Engine Diagnostics.
I remember taking “The History of Humor” for a free elective. Perhaps it did indirectly help me learn to think. It allowed me to concentrate on my technical courses.
I treasure the days in my 44 years as a universitty professor when a student would come up with a uniaue,solution to a problem or challenge something I presented in class. I often told my classes at the beginning of a term “Here is the grading scale. If you know no more than I do about the subject, the highest grade you will receive is a " C”. The higher grades are reserved for those of you who know more than I do. I would hope that civilization will progress. That can only happen if you take what I give you and run with it and further develop it". I have had students come up with wonderful solutions to problems and show real insight into how to tackle a problem. My very last semester of teaching, one young lady in my class came up with a much better solution to a problem than what was presented in the text book. I said to her and the class “You have made my whole career seem worthwhile. I can now retire on a high note”. We do have students that can think critically. I always felt itwas my job to make them do it.
The funniest one to me was the day I was lunching with the chair of the liberal arts department and he suggested that the automotive technology (associates degree) students should be required to take more liberal arts electives because it “teaches them how to think”. He really believes that liberal arts electives develop thinking skills better than (for example) Engine Diagnostics.
Oh, I don’t know that your friend was that far off the mark @“the same mountainbike”. I’m by no means trying to be arrogant but I consider myself a pretty fair mechanic or automotive technician. My formal training in the automotive field is nonexistant–meaning I never even took auto shop in high school. I do have a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Philosophy and a minor in Physics.
As I started my career, and even to this day, what I believe gave me the edge over some of the other people I worked with was critical thinking skills. The ability to sift through a pile of scan data and sort out the irrelevant info, the ability to understand the logical processes built into automotive systems, being able to spend 10 minutes with nothing more than a wiring diagram to figure out how a system works gave me an advantage. Even the rudimentary use of a torque wrench with extensions that seemed to baffle some was no mystery to me.
I have yet to take part in any automotive training course that teaches the students to think as well as my college classes did.
