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Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

themanual.com

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Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#201

Post by npteljes »

atestu wrote: post #96

Based on all other comments I have an unpopular opinion: I think this is fine. If 10 people want to buy 1 car, how do you choose which person gets it? You raise the price until there's only 1 person. How else would you do it?

It's called an allocation strategy[0], and what you describe is the "market" one. There's also queues / lines and lotteries, for example. In a line system, there's a first come first served principle, and a lottery consists of people signalling their intent to buy, and then the buyers are selected randomly from that pool.

[0] http://www.econoclass.com/allocation.html

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#202

Post by dano »

Loughla wrote: post #186
nixass wrote: post #74

When dealer's first question is how much am I willing to spend monthly rather than talk about final price of the vehicle he can just F off and I won't be returning there. They even try to convince you the total price is irrelevant, only monthly payment is what matters

The last time we bought a car, the salesman tried the 4 square nonsense. I declined to look at monthly payments and was evasive about how much I wanted to spend. I just said, "as much as I need to, to get the car I want at a decent price, which according to my research should be X" or "my monthly budget is not your concern, I am willing to pay X for this car". Once I had the final price on the car, and it was very co…

Ha ha, yeah, I remember a green sales person trying to use the four-square model on me. I looked at him and said "I'm paying cash" which confused him to no end. He had to go see his manager. In the end I didn't buy a car from that dealer. Where the cash comes from is none of their business; i.e., loan or something else.

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#203

Post by dawnerd »

nixass wrote: post #74

When dealer's first question is how much am I willing to spend monthly rather than talk about final price of the vehicle he can just F off and I won't be returning there. They even try to convince you the total price is irrelevant, only monthly payment is what matters

They got upset last time when they wanted my social right off the bay and I declined saying I would be paying cash. I’m now driving a Model Y I paid for in cash, so done with dealers.

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#204

Post by n4r9 »

coryrc wrote: post #195
millerm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Many people actually ”need” things, but always end up getting beaten by the person who has more $. It’s just constant battering of people that aren’t as well off as others. It’s often a disgusting system. The poor always suffer due to this “I’ll just hand wave to the ethics and talk about capitalism“.

Capitalism brought hundreds of millions out of abject poverty in the last thirty years. It has real consequences. The poor in the US have better living standards than half the planet and every opportunity to better except their own cultures holding them back. The left refuses to acknowledge or deal with this, creating generational poverty. What's not to blame is "capitalism".

You're making a few disingenuous claims.

Firstly, that it is illegitimate to criticise capitalism because it has created some benefits. As if we're not even allowed to dream of system reform because we're currently doing better than other countries. Very little social or economic progress would be made if we all thought like this.

Secondly, that those benefits are purely due to unadulterated capitalism. In reality, Western countries follow a mixture of capitalist, statist, and socialist policies. The poor in the US have seen improvements because of the minimum wage, anti-trust regulations, and various social safety nets combined with economic growth.

Thirdly, that the only thing holding other countries back is "their own cultures". This ignores widespread, long-term destabilising interference by Western countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and South America.

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#206

Post by JumpCrisscross »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #192
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got more cars coming, see you on Monday! This is sort of the problem, though, isn't it? There aren't more cars coming on Monday.

Have you run out of money? your assumption is that by buying everything I got from me and selling at an higher price than me (doesn't mean higher markup) you are pushing me out of business. Or that you are monopolizing the market buying all the cars, assuming that you can buy the tens of millions of used cars around. You're also assuming that I am stupid and I'll let you do that, in the name of principles. The second…

The point is dealerships have a limited number of cars to sell, and it's unclear when the next ones will come in. If I want a car and the dealership is out, I'm fine paying a premium or financing the car through them or whatever to get priority. That's how the market moves up.

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#207

Post by UncleMeat »

ReptileMan wrote: post #178
n4r9 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who can no longer buy the new car will instead buy a lower priced car, encouraging an upward trend in general car prices.

And then manufacturers will increase supply and prices will go down. I am fairly open to the argument that price gouging for necessities in times of sudden life threatening crunch is not ok, but car market is operating like a normal market.

> And then manufacturers will increase supply and prices will go down.

Will they? It seems like scarcity pricing is becoming a more and more common strategy.

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#208

Post by jrochkind1 »

TreyGuy wrote: post #128
jrochkind1 wrote: post #120

The (original) headline says "nonprofit", but this isn't mentioned in the text, which does say "take the plunge to form an LLC in November/December". Is it actually a nonprofit? Or... what does that mean, in this case? Curious to hear more about the business structure with regard to this if anyone knows.

its an error on the writers part. we are a "for profit" LLC

Thanks for quick info! I see it's already been corrected in the OP, thanks!

I'm always interested in novel business structures especially around non-profit-ness, but I guess false alarm here!

Paging @dang, correct HN headline here by removing "nonprofit"?

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#209

Post by mind-blight »

coryrc wrote: post #195
millerm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Many people actually ”need” things, but always end up getting beaten by the person who has more $. It’s just constant battering of people that aren’t as well off as others. It’s often a disgusting system. The poor always suffer due to this “I’ll just hand wave to the ethics and talk about capitalism“.

Capitalism brought hundreds of millions out of abject poverty in the last thirty years. It has real consequences. The poor in the US have better living standards than half the planet and every opportunity to better except their own cultures holding them back. The left refuses to acknowledge or deal with this, creating generational poverty. What's not to blame is "capitalism".

Capital markets are really great at some things, and really bad at others. Treating them as a one-size-fits-all solution for our problems is inefficient and dogmatic. We end up coupling our moral values with the system we use to try to enforce said values

Re: Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices

#210

Post by xenadu02 »

xanaxagoras wrote: post #3

Not for nothing, and this is a cool use of technology and the internet, but was I supposed to be under the impression that car dealers aren't greedy? Greed is the central axis around which capitalist economic activity is oriented. It works very, very well. I'll take greed over feigned compassion and breadlines any day of the week. Recently I bought a Toyota SUV for a $7000 markup. But I was able to sell my lease (whi…

The problem is the grossly inefficient market where vehicles have an MSRP but the actual price you can pay varies wildly.

In that sense it is no different than airline ticket fees (though not baggage fees) and similar schemes. The goal is to stop customers from doing apples-to-apples comparisons when shopping.

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