Is the company actually a non-profit? When I click the donate button Stripe says I'm giving to "Markups, LLC" and the IRS exempt organization search doesn't return results for orgs containing "Markups".
Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
31–40 of 272 posts
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's very little difference between a dealership, and a scalper. Both capture all the items in the market, then work together to inflate the value, artificially. The difference is that many places have laws preventing scalpers, and many places have laws requiring that you buy a car through a dealerships.
Dealers and scalpers provide liquidity. Sellers want the item off their hands now, buyers want something without waiting months for a seller. Dealers link these two needs together and take a cut for the service. There is no monopoly or requirement to sell a car through a dealer. It’s just that people find the service worth the cost.
Actually dealers have monopoly protected by law in most states.
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#33As if car buyers are any different. They would not take anything less than the highest offer for selling their used car, just like the dealerships. Is a dealership wanting to sell for the highest price any different than a labor seller wanting to sell for the highest salary?
Former owners aren’t middlemen, which is a huge difference. I’m much more ok with a brand deciding they need to raise prices as opposed to someone in the middle doing it and pocketing the difference.
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#34carmax has been doing this with teslas. visited a carmax lot and saw around 10 model 3s, identical specs, with less than 50 miles (the 1k miles is the lowest the site will show) and selling them for 10k markup. they’re literally scalping teslas now, not to mention the rest of their overpriced inventory. https://www.carmax.com/cars/preview/23029935
Oh jeez, ya I know CarMax is bad. We dont really have a clean way of reporting teslas or scalping of resold vehicles by 3rd parties like that right now at markups.org
I wouldn't buy a Tesla from Carmax (I wouldn't buy a Tesla from anyone), but for everything else, it's pretty great. I bought my last car from them online at an extremely sane price, and they delivered it to my door; a few weeks later a better trim of the same car popped up on their site (many hours away), and I was able to exchange without any drama.
I got pretty decent at car buying from dealerships over the years, and I kind of feel like a sucker for playing that game now.
Again: I'm sure you're right that buying a Tesla from Carmax is a terrible idea.
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#35If this downturn really deepens into a true recession (however it is defined) won't new vehicle markups go away naturally as fewer customers will be buying new cars? Isn't Markups a business that only is relevant during an inflated economy?
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's very little difference between a dealership, and a scalper. Both capture all the items in the market, then work together to inflate the value, artificially. The difference is that many places have laws preventing scalpers, and many places have laws requiring that you buy a car through a dealerships.
Dealers and scalpers provide liquidity. Sellers want the item off their hands now, buyers want something without waiting months for a seller. Dealers link these two needs together and take a cut for the service. There is no monopoly or requirement to sell a car through a dealer. It’s just that people find the service worth the cost.
We’re talking about new cars though. There are laws in some states (see everywhere Tesla doesn’t have stores) requiring dealers to be used instead of going direct to manufacturers.
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#37The mobile experience is so incredibly bad. Tried to add a markup to the site, brutal time trying to navigate it. Moved to a different tab and lost all my input. Image upload is capped at 5mb; which is under the average size my s10e takes by default. Great concept, garbage execution.
Is it really necessary for every website to work perfectly on a pocket sized screen? Some ideas just work better on a big screen, mouse and keyboard. We shouldn't limit ourselves just to make everything work on an iPhone.
At this point it's not preference. A large number of people - especially lower income and young - are mobile-only.
This sentiment has become equivalent to "is it really necessary for everyone to access this?" Buying an entire desktop computer for home use just to cover the fringe cases is now a luxury.
(Not to mention the two primary use cases are reporting and viewing prices on your phone when you are at a dealership)
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#38Is the company actually a non-profit? When I click the donate button Stripe says I'm giving to "Markups, LLC" and the IRS exempt organization search doesn't return results for orgs containing "Markups".
No we're not, we are a for profit llc and need to make sure the writer fixes that.
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh jeez, ya I know CarMax is bad. We dont really have a clean way of reporting teslas or scalping of resold vehicles by 3rd parties like that right now at markups.org
I wouldn't buy a Tesla from Carmax (I wouldn't buy a Tesla from anyone), but for everything else, it's pretty great. I bought my last car from them online at an extremely sane price, and they delivered it to my door; a few weeks later a better trim of the same car popped up on their site (many hours away), and I was able to exchange without any drama. I got pretty decent at car buying from dealerships over the years,…
My personal experience was that sites like carmax and vroom had significantly higher mark ups then dealerships and lots of complaints that their “360 inspection” had terrible quality control problems and frequently shipped bad cars.
I can see these sites working for very specific models and trims but overall bad.
Honestly it’s all bad unless you get lucky it feels like.
Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices
#40If this downturn really deepens into a true recession (however it is defined) won't new vehicle markups go away naturally as fewer customers will be buying new cars? Isn't Markups a business that only is relevant during an inflated economy?
Indeed, it will flip to the opposite side of the pole. Getting the best deal under MSRP. Pre covid if you were good at searching forums and Facebook groups you might find the select dealers advertising 3-5% below invoice pricing on certain custom orders.