Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

themanual.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 272 posts

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

#211

Post by ghaff »

waffle_ss wrote: post #187
jeromegv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they advertise one price but actually have tons of mandated fees when you show up to purchase I had a similar experience booking a hotel room recently. Despite advertising a rate of $x, when I'd click through to complete the booking, towards the end of the process every single one would tack on a mandatory "service fee" of somewhere between $40-80. It seems to me to be a way to keep their room rates artificially lo…

"Resort fees" are a thing but in my experience you don't see them a lot outside of what are plausibly actual resorts, i.e. typical hotel chains don't usually have them. Of course, there are always lots of taxes that get tacked on. Especially pre-pandemic, I booked lots of hotels. (AirBnB also has cleaning fees etc. although what little I've used AirBnB they seem to be pretty prominently displayed.)

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

#212

Post by a2tech »

_fat_santa wrote: post #179
bradfa wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is leading the way today (somewhat painfully in some areas) but they're not the first to try fixing this. GM's Saturn tried to make buying simpler in the 1990s and surely there were other previous examples, too. Ford seems to be testing the waters about how to simplify the car purchase process: https://fordauthority.com/2022/05/ford-dealers-will-likely-s... There's plenty of dealerships who have historically ha…

Ford Corporate is livid with their dealers. Back in 2018 when they put out the Focus RS, dealers basically killed that car with markups. Dealers all marked them up 20-30k which put them around 70-80k OTD. While some bought it at that price, they all just languished on the lot and Ford eventually cancelled due to sluggish sales. An almost similar thing happened to the F150 Lightning, Ford had to threaten dealers that…

From what I'm hearing from friends that work inside Ford, the dealers have burned all their bridges. Ford is sick of their crap and is working to move to direct customer sales (their electric vehicles I believe have already made steps towards this).

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

#213

Post by mint2 »

beowulfey wrote: post #112
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?

I also think it is precisely within the rights of the dealership. That’s how it is supposed to work. Similarly, I also love that this website exists as a consumer, to provide balance to the market and better distribute demand (keeping prices overall lower).

Why is it “supposed” to work that way?

American society is structured such that a car is considered more or less a requirement. Is it okay to charge the max people will possibly pay for other requirements of living like medicine? Martin Shkreli Was universally loathed for that.

Dealers aren’t supposed to charge extreme markups any more Than they are supposed to give cars away for free. They do it because right now they can, but that doesn’t make it moral or American. It is just greed, which is often waived off as “how capitalism is supposed to work”. It’s just greedy usury because they can get away with it.

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

#214

Post by yellowapple »

tptacek wrote: post #170
yellowapple wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also they actually look and drive trade-ins before making an offer. Do they? I brought in a prospective trade-in that had a misfiring cylinder (and thus a perpetually-blinking CEL and a very rough idle) and they were still willing to give me close to the top of the Blue Book range for it.

Recently, or years ago? The market is definitely fucky right now.

Last October, but in any case I'd expect KBB to at least try to reflect the market fuckiness.

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

#215

Post by programmertote »

agrippanux wrote: post #145

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.

I tried to use Costco Auto program when I bought a car in late May of this year (2022). Once the dealers heard I came from Costco Auto program, they acted disinterested even though they are part of Costco Auto program (e.g., Al Hendrickson Toyota). Plus, there is no Honda dealer that is part of Costco Auto program within 180 miles of where I live (I live in just a little north of Miami). I went to Mazda of North Miami which supposedly is part of Costco Auto Program, and guess what, they gave me $500 discount and they said that's all I get as part of Cost Auto (but the car was like $4000 above MSRP).

I hope that when I purchase my next car, I'll never have to deal with dealerships and can buy it off online. I'm happy to pay 6-10% commission for dealership as long as I don't have to deal with haggling and being pushed to buy shady insurance and other add-ons that I don't need.

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

#216

Post by alach11 »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #193
alach11 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about ticket scalpers who use bots to buy up concert tickets, then relist them for higher prices? This is only possible because the the tickets are being sold originally for under market value.

> How do you feel about ticket scalpers who use bots to buy up concert tickets, As someone who used to attend more than a 100 concerts/year, I sincerely hate them. > This is only possible because the the tickets are being sold originally for under market value No, this is only possible because tickets can be made artificially scarce. And because there is a portion of the population who owns more money than is able to…

> this is only possible because tickets can be made artificially scarce

Surely you agree there's a supply and demand curve for concert tickets, where if the price is sufficiently low, all tickets will be bought, and if the price is sufficiently high, few or no tickets will be bought?

Market value is what people are willing to spend for something. If people are willing to spend more on the tickets (the scalper's price), there's an incentive for the scalper to create bots to scoop up the tickets and resell them. That means the artist performing at the concert is leaving money on the table and letting the scalper profit off their underpricing.

The artist should increase ticket prices and cut out the middle man. Of course there are other systems the artist could use to improve the perceived fairness to fans, like linking ID to tickets, or using a lottery system, or selling tickets to anyone willing to wait in line for days. But all of these have their own pros and cons.

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

#217

Post by deelowe »

a2tech wrote: post #212
_fat_santa wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford Corporate is livid with their dealers. Back in 2018 when they put out the Focus RS, dealers basically killed that car with markups. Dealers all marked them up 20-30k which put them around 70-80k OTD. While some bought it at that price, they all just languished on the lot and Ford eventually cancelled due to sluggish sales. An almost similar thing happened to the F150 Lightning, Ford had to threaten dealers that…

From what I'm hearing from friends that work inside Ford, the dealers have burned all their bridges. Ford is sick of their crap and is working to move to direct customer sales (their electric vehicles I believe have already made steps towards this).

Doesn't help that their service centers are just awful.

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

#218

Post by ghaff »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #191
chevman wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I negotiated to buy my most recent car online back in 2016, the term to use was 'final out the door cost'. I reached out to maybe 7 or 8 dealers, had a couple that refused to provide a total itemized cost, and then got back 5 quotes that varied quite a bit (like $7500 on a $30k car). Did one round of negotiation which ended up lowering the lowest price another thousand bucks or so and went with that dealership.

Things are drastically different now. Bought a 1 year old car for cash last year after an accident totaled my old car. Dealerships have no/low inventory. We had cars sold when we were on the way to the dealership to test drive them. Any negotiation was laughed at. Absolutely brutal.

You're lucky if the dealership actually has the car. Indeed, you're lucky if it's even been built yet. I was able to get the car I wanted for a not unreasonable price but I did have to wait 6 weeks.

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

#219

Post by saveferris »

beowulfey wrote: post #112
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?

I also think it is precisely within the rights of the dealership. That’s how it is supposed to work. Similarly, I also love that this website exists as a consumer, to provide balance to the market and better distribute demand (keeping prices overall lower).

Generally, I would agree with you...let the market decide the price. But, car dealers have successfully "cornered the market" with state franchise laws. It is not a competitive market so it won't operate normally.

So much is "wrong" with the dealership model relative to a competitive market I don't even know where to start. But, I do believe over time the franchise laws and dealer cartels will change dramatically. We're seeing that start to happen now with Tesla's model and Ford is creating a new model that looks a lot like Tesla's. Some states, looking at you TX, will continue to protect the local dealers cause the dealer associations donate a lot of money to state politicians but the tide will eventually turn...at least I think it will.

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

#220

Post by Wistar »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #191
chevman wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I negotiated to buy my most recent car online back in 2016, the term to use was 'final out the door cost'. I reached out to maybe 7 or 8 dealers, had a couple that refused to provide a total itemized cost, and then got back 5 quotes that varied quite a bit (like $7500 on a $30k car). Did one round of negotiation which ended up lowering the lowest price another thousand bucks or so and went with that dealership.

Things are drastically different now. Bought a 1 year old car for cash last year after an accident totaled my old car. Dealerships have no/low inventory. We had cars sold when we were on the way to the dealership to test drive them. Any negotiation was laughed at. Absolutely brutal.

Yep. Wholesale prices for desirable used cars are now often more than the new MSRP and they sell instantly. Especially for things such as the RAM TRX trucks, RAV4 Hybrids and any EV.
Post reply on HN