When we bought our 2024 Subaru Outback the adm. fee was 279.00 but the salesman added that amount to the dealer discount. That dealer now has a 579.00 fee
I have been thinking about a new vehicle and now I see fees of ( 579 - 785 - 399 - 489 - 698 ). Plus some I look at have dealer added nonsense on top of that. Maybe if they were all with a few dollars of each other it might not be as annoying.
Dealer fees = additional profit
These are ways to advertise a car online for lower than you actually will pay.
Some websites, like CarGurus add that into the price they show.
In many states the doc fee as it’s more regularly known is capped, in WA currency it’s $200 but our Ford dealer only wants tax, title, and registration on top of the sales price. With a recent case before the ftc dealers are supposed to include the doc fee online.
How macmulkin in mew Hampshire does it while selling new corvettes at msro or less
This is part of why many people intensely dislike buying a new car . . . ?
Good luck @VOLVO-V70
It’s all just a numbers game. Just like the independent auto shop down the street. Once upon a time there was parts and labor, and maybe sublet like towing or machine shop.
But now you have waste disposal fees, shop supplies, shipping and receiving fees, 3% credit card processing, etc. I was once on the bandwagon for that stuff, but eventually I realized many of my customers just wanted one final number, so I increased my labor rate and parts markup to absorb all those costs.
New vehicle delivery specialist and technology specialists = sales department expenses.
With the growing complexity of vehicles during the last 20 years, there are people on staff to assist customers in turning off unwanted features like Lane Keep Assist or to teach customers how to place a phone call from within a vehicle or streaming music from a phone.
Ironically, they buy so many new cars.
Yeah I dislike buying a new car but we decided just to order a new Buick and be don3 with it. Surprise surprise, the Gm dealer doesn’t sell Buicks anymore. Second dealer down th3 road doesn’t either. I guess it was Mary’s plan to eliminate dealers thst didn’t want to pay for her ev vision. So we’ll see what the metro folks have but kinda wondering about Toyota or something. No wonder these peopl3 are losing sales.
Buick halved the number of dealers to make the remaining ones more profitable, at least that was the official line. Also to eliminate dealers that couldn’t or wouldn’t upgrade to sell evs. Our dealer and one 25mi away kept Chevy and sell the ev’s dropped Buick. Our dealer you could have parked a Gmc,Buick, Cadillac, and Chevy next to each other if you wanted.
It wasn’t just GM. Stellantis also dropped a lot of dealerships that didn’t sell large quantities. Near me, there was a family-run Chrysler/Jeep dealership that the locals love. They’re surviving as a Massey-Ferguson tractor dealer, and by repairing their customers’ old Chryslers and Jeeps
The Honda dealer where we bought our new 2019 Odyssey used the sales staff for that. Our salesman explained all the electronics and said that the owner insisted he do that. I imagine all the salespeople had to know the electronics. There’s quite a menu for customizing the car. It’s a lot more complicated than the same menu on my Tesla.
Several years ago the vw dealer we bought our 78 rabbit from and looked at a new vw more recently suddenly announced they were loosing the franchise but keeping Subaru and Kia, a month or twi after a banner at the former Volvo showroom announced vw Co ming soon. Different local deale tree group that owned all the centrailia dealers 25mu away.
Other brands are purging dealer, mitsubishi is getting rid of poor performing dealers to be replaced with up ro 30 new ones. The seattle-tacoma market has lost at least 6 dealers since the heyday of the mirage down to two, one that’s mainly a Kia dealer and the other co located with a longtime Nissan franchise.
Mini of Tacoma is still servicing in their building with the Seattle dealer handling sales, but when we passed by on the freeway the showroom was filled with classic BMW cars, a M1 right up front
Tesla opened up next door, Rivian now has a deliver center and service on the other side of i5 near Lexus, just allowed to have showrooms in Washington this year, leaving the possibility for scout and other direct sales.
. We have a fuat dealer close technically but they’ve undoubtedly tried to give it back. Only got fiat as a new CDJR franchise in a smaller market.
Soon after GM announced that Oldsmobile would end production, a local Chevy dealer became an Olds dealer too. That seemed odd to me. When Olds became defunct, that dealership picked up Cadillac. My guess is that it was a deal with GM. Be an Olds dealer for a few years, then they got the still operating Caddie dealership. That turned out to be a smart move. The closest Cadillac dealer is 20 miles away, near DC.
In a town near me, there was a long-established dealership that sold Pontiacs and Cadillacs. When Pontiac was discontinued, they suffered a large loss in sales, but they bravely soldiered on for ~10 years with just Cadillacs in the showroom.
When they finally realized that they couldn’t survive on just Caddy sales, they dropped Cadillac and became a Kia dealership. They now move a LOT more cars per month than they used to.
Adding “Dealer Profit” items is nothing new.
Does anyone remember years ago when you couldn’t find a new car on the lot without a markup for “pinstriping”? When that got old it became a markup for “glazing”, then spray on “undercoating” then “mudflaps” and then “nitrogen inflated tires”.
Dealer Profit markups haven’t gone away but today it’s now called Extended Warranties and Dealer Financing.
Likewise, Dealership Culling is as old as the hills. Back in the late 1960’s when Japanese imports were new, dealerships were seeming handed out to anyone who had a garage, a parking lot and 2 nickels to rub together but 10 years later, when the demand surged many of the original dealerships were pulled by the manufacturers.
Same with the German and Korean manufacturers and more recently by the domestic manufacturers who couldn’t sell enough of the vehicles that nobody wanted to buy.
Did you not know how to negotiate? I’ve had a few dealers in the past try that ■■■■. So I walked. Walking away is a GREAT negotiation tactic.
Again - You don’t know how to negotiate? Tell them NO or the deal is off. Simple.
This past year that has been a relief in SOME manufacturers/models. But just 2 years ago dealers didn’t have to do any of that because the inventory was so low. They were asking (and getting) 2-5 thousand OVER invoice without adding anything. Nothing was negotiable. But that has eased somewhat as inventory is no longer in critical stages. Some vehicles are still critically low. Toyota Highlander and Rav4 are very critical. All the dealers around here have several on their site, but everyone is sold.
Unfortunately buying a vehicle is an adversarial process. My wife and I have become very good at it. I don’t like playing games with these people. They want to play games they don’t get my business. In the past I’ve driven 30 miles past dealer A to buy from dealer B selling the same vehicle because dealer A was playing games. I negotiated a deal from Dealer B that was $5,000 LESS then Dealer A. Dealer B didn’t have the exact vehicle on their lot but they knew were to get one. They got it from Dealer A.
+1
The Datsun dealership in Jersey City, NJ (Rick’s Datsun) was given to a couple of Mafioso-type guys who wore shiny suits, and who ran a used car lot with a lousy reputation. The “Datsun Service Department” was actually non-existent, and when cars were brought in for service or repairs, as soon as the customer left, the cars were driven to a Gulf gas station a couple of blocks away.
The Gulf guy hadn’t been trained in the repair of those early Datsun imports, and it appeared that he wasn’t interested in learning on the job, either. I was with my brother when he brought his wife’s problem-ridden SPL-310 back for yet another problem, and one of the shiny-suit brothers convinced us that it would not be good for our health if we came back again.
Our experience wasn’t unique, as a friend’s uncle had essentially the same experience. He finally told one of the shiny suit brothers that their sign had a letter missing. When “shiny suit” looked confused, the friend’s uncle said, “you forgot to put a ‘P’ at the beginning of your name”. He ran before “shiny” could punch his lights out.
Yep, The art of negotiation is making sure the seller needs to sell it more than you need to buy it… or at least making it seem that way…
The key is being genuinely willing to walk away…
My days of going to a dealership in person or walking away over sales tactics are over. My last car was purchased entirely through the dealership’s online sales group. I didn’t step foot in the dealership until delivery, went almost directly to the F&I office to sign paperwork and hand over my check.
The locally owned/operated dealership is a dinosaur now. When I lived in Oregon, virtually every brand was operated by a large corporation. All the GM, Ford, Toyo/Lexus, Honda/Acura, Subaru, Nissan/Infiniti, and CDJRF dealers were part of either Kendall or Lithia Auto Group. The Hyundai/Kia, VW, Volvo dealers were part of a local ownership group, and Mazda was one of a 5 state ownership group. All the local, family owned dealers were swallowed up by larger groups.
Yeah, but you’re a smart and attentive guy. And I’m sure you also inspected the vehicle you bought before signing anything, right? I was recently talking to someone who is unhappy with his selling dealer because they sold him a “new” car with 350 miles on it. I saw that the vehicle sales form showed 350 miles as the odometer reading, he says “nobody ever reads that stuff.”
Also, the vehicle has a “serious” vibration that was present from the moment he drove off the lot, yet he didn’t bring it in for service until 4 months and 7500 miles later. But that’s a different story.
Nothing irritates me more than junk fees and “drip pricing”. Businesses should be free to charge whatever they think their products and services are worth, but they should be required to disclose the price transparently, and not advertise a price, but oh wait that isn’t really the price, because you have to pay blah blah fees on top of the advertised price.
For example, if a hotel thinks its room is worth $200 per night, just tell me it’s a $200 nightly rate. Don’t advertise it as a $99 nightly rate and then load the bill with a bunch of Beeyess fees. If an apartment complex thinks its apartment is worth $1600 per month, then just tell me it’s a $1600 monthly rent. Don’t advertise it as a $1100 monthly rent, and load the bill with $500 per month of Beeyess fees, etc. The same can be said for airlines, restaurants, etc.
