Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by sleepdreamy » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:02 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #121

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?

The concern is not that. Yes increase price if demand is high and supply is low. However, they play those games where they advertise one price but actually have tons of mandated fees when you show up to purchase. So it makes shopping around very hard, you can’t compare between 2 dealerships as even calling them won’t give you that info. It’s predatory and anti consumer.

This is literally the process of purchasing a vehicle in 2022. I needed a car (My old one had broken down after 9 years of service)

Advertised price was 24,500. I walked out totaling 30,000 after all the bullshit and that was with a 4000 downpayment. I left an honest review on Google Reviews about how misleading and unhappy I was with that dealer in particulars process but I loved the car so I just sucked it up.

When we bought my wifes car I had a much better experience. Some dealerships are just sleazy, and if you need the car you need the car.

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

#142

Post by t_mann » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

Somewhat tangential, but I'm surprised that a concise domain name like markups with an attractive TLD like org was still available. In the spirit of a non-profit, I'm wondering whether they couldn't have made do with a name that specifies their (laudable, but quite specific) niche (US-centric comparison of car dealers).

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

#143

Post by SamuelAdams » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #66

I feel like consumers writ large are forgetting they can protest. If everyone collectively rejects higher prices, the price will come down. Everyone is manipulating this inflation sentiment to wring consumers out of every penny until they're broke. Stop paying for things where the price has exploded higher and force businesses to deal with tighter margins. Prices will normalize.

Unfortunately many people do not care about the total cost of the vehicle. They care about the monthly payment. As long as they pay less than 700 USD a month it’s affordable. Even if it’s stretched over a 7-8 year loan at 5% interest.

So if you want people to stop paying high prices, you need to get them to look at the total cost of the vehicle. And you need to get lenders to stop handing out loans longer than 4 years. Unfortunately they don’t have an incentive to do this because long, high interest loans are profitable.

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

#144

Post by nuker » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

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?

> How else would you do it?

Sell to first buyer, easy.

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

#145

Post by agrippanux » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:06 PM UTC

Comments in this thread remind me why it’s so efficient to use the auto buying program from Costco. You deal with the fleet managers instead of regular sales staff and all required/optional costs are upfront and non-negotiable.

If you are an expert haggler you can likely negotiate a better price than what you get through Costco, but for the rest of us it gets you 90% of the way for very little effort.

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

#146

Post by rdtwo » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

zachshefska wrote: post #134

zachshefska wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is SO inefficient. While you’re right in describing the principles of supply and demand, the reality is that buying a car should be 10x simpler and the price should just be the price. No games, no haggling, no BS add-ons that increase dealer profits. Retail auto is due for a wake up call, and I sense it’s happening right now. You wouldn’t need markups to make extra profit if the cost infrastructure associa…

And to be clear, consumers shouldn't have to negotiate for hours to try and get a "fair" price during "normal" market conditions. The current "markup" phenomenon is the same as the prior experience (pre-pandemic) where OEMs intentionally subsidized the purchase of their vehicles well below MSRP, and savvy customers could negotiate thousands off a car deal. It's mind boggling to me that we allow for such an inefficien…

Even during normal times if you wanted a trim that was somewhat desirable you would get hit with this behavior. Plus you get so many hidden fees that don’t have to be listed like the “Toyota Advertising fee” for over 1k. A few of those different fees Added 3-5k in normal times

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

#147

Post by andrew_ » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

drc500free wrote: post #37

LeoPanthera wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dealershi…

The old guard like Leo are still resisting the new truth backed by stats. As of Q2, mobile represented nearly 60% of web traffic [1]. You don't need to develop sites with mobile compatibility, but it'd be foolish not to.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-...

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

#148

Post by autoexec » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

TreyGuy wrote: post #133

autoexec wrote: post #63

Shame you can't sort by markup and easily see who the worst offenders are

top right hand corner of the list view... select the sort order and pick "price (low)" or "price (high)" https://markups.org/?sort=price-desc

Thanks! I had tried that, but I guess I saw the kinds of cars at the top of the list and assumed that "price" meant "actual price of the car",

I was looking for something labeled more like "markup as a percentage of what this car was actually worth".

A dealer with a $1,500 markup on a car worth only $1,200 is much worse than a dealer with a $20,000 markup on a car worth $80,000

I guess it just makes sense that they'd be able to throw a larger markup on cars which are that much more expensive to start with.

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

#149

Post by throwthere » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

svnpenn wrote: post #4

$150,000 for an F-150? https://sunrise-ford.com/inventory/new-2022-ford-f-150-light...

It's a big sticker but that's a luxury F0150. Making luxury stuff go to the people who are willing to pay the most seems... like the system works. It's the markups on Camrys (Camries?) and Corollas that matters more.

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

#150

Post by detaro » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #10

andrew_ wrote: post #6

The 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.

> We shouldn't limit ourselves just to make everything work on an iPhone.

I don't see anything this site would have to "limit itself" by to support mobile.