Escape from the box: new technology and old tactics have made buying a car a death march of deception

Buying my car, my house, even all the different appointments for my wife's pregnancy, I constantly feel like I'm being railroaded through processes I know nothing about that are designed to take advantage of me.

I'm glad there are guys like Jase helping folks out with shit like this simply because its the right thing to do. I'm constantly checking my cynical side because it can be so exhausting at times, but stories like this remind me that trust is earned.

I wish I could take more things at face value. Sometimes I feel I've become too jaded, but the fact of the matter is its just plain safer to be skeptical of everything put in front of you, and walk away if something feels off.

The last time I purchased a car, I ended up having to stay for two hours after they closed putting up with their bullshit. The new car I had come to look at did not exist. So I settled for a used model. But of course the price that was listed on the car was not the actual price. There were a bunch of added stuff - the exact same things the article mentioned, no less - that were already installed and raised up the price by several thousands of dollars. It wasn’t until I picked up my phone and showed them another dealer was offering a newer version of the same model car for significantly less did they relent and actually offered me a discount on the price.

Then after all of that I had to negotiate financing and service packages. Financing was a real pain because they wanted to push me towards their financing company with super long terms that would raise the cost of the car by thousands, but after some effort I managed to get them to run it through the bank I preferred and a much shorter term. I told them I didn’t want a service package or extended warranty, but they wouldn’t let me skip their spiel.

And then there was the actual signing. There was so much paperwork, and it was rather obvious that the person I was dealing with did not appreciate that I was actually reading through them before I signed them. And of course, one of those were an arbitration agreement. If I refused to sign it, they would refuse to sell me the car - as would literally every dealership in the United States. It is a practice that should be illegal in all industries. It’s one thing to willingly waive your rights to the legal system, and it’s another thing to have no other option.

And after all of that I think there were another hour for them to finish registering the car to me and activating things like Sirius XM and OnStar trials.

If car dealerships disappeared off the face of the earth overnight, we’d all be waking up to a better world.

I've purchased two cars in the last five years, plus helped my dad and another friend purchase their cars as well. All four of these cars were different makes. So I've been to, called, and emailed a lot of dealerships and salespeople. And this article is spot on. The shit that dealerships say and do to try and get your money is ridiculous.

A couple of random thoughts about the subject that came to mind when reading that article, in no particular order:

• At least half of the dealerships I talked to said they had a dealer fee. Usually $1000, $1500, or $2000. Every single one of them said this dealership fee was non-negotiable and they couldn't take it off. Then when I showed them a better offer from a nearby dealership with no dealer fee, about half of them were willing to take off the dealership fee.

• While helping my friend buy his car, a Subaru, he was presented with one MSRP when speaking with the salesman. When it came time to actually sign the documents an hour later, I noticed that the monthly payments were based on an MSRP that was about $4,000 higher. Pointed out the 'mistake' to them which prompted a manager to get involved and say they would have never offered that first price because it was below their profit line. So either it was an honest mistake on the salesman's part to offer such a low price, or we were lying about the lower price. Well when we got up to leave, suddenly that price wasn't so bad for them and maybe they could figure out a way to make it work (i.e. give us the price they had originally offered).

• Every fucking car salesperson I have talked to in the last few years has opened with the same "how much do you want your monthly payment to be?" bullshit line. The article mentions it too, but I find it such a duplicitous practice for salespeople to open up with that. The monthly payment is based on a ton of factors, like length of contract, downpayment, and oh yeah the actual fucking price of the car. Every time I hear that line I reply with "I don't care about the monthly payment, I want to know the total price of the car". You can figure out the financial details after you know how much the car you're paying for actually costs.

• I am a STRONG believer in shopping around for most things, but especially for a large purchase like a new car. I literally called 20 Toyota dealerships before buying my Tacoma (all were within 1.5 hours driving radius). Around five of them didn't have the exact model I wanted in stock. Another ten or so weren't willing to come down on price or additional fees. And then the last five or so kept matching and lowering each other's offers until I settled on one that offered the best deal and financing. Had to drive to a town 1 hour away to get it, but saved me a few thousand dollars which was more than worth it. I didn't walk into a single one of these dealerships other than the one closest to me to test drive the car. Just cold called them with a scripted "Hi my name is ___ and I'm looking to purchase a _____ with _____ options. I'm going to be purchasing the car in the next few days and am calling around to find the cheapest price and best incentives." (Side note: At the very last minute, right before making the purchase, I called the dealership closest to me and explained that I was about to drive 1 hour away to purchase this car and was wondering if they could match that deal so that I didn't have to drive all that way. The manager essentially told me to pound sand, so I said thanks, hung up, and saved myself a few grand just by driving an hour there and another hour back.)

• As a former salesperson (not cars though), any salesperson that makes you feel pressured is not worth listening to. I've told many salespeople to please back off and give me space to breathe and think things through at my own pace. If your gut tells you something is off, then either something is indeed wrong or you just don't know enough about the deal you are making and are thus nervous. In both cases you should stop what you're doing and either walk away entirely or probe further to investigate what is causing you hesitation.

• One more I just thought of: never take the first trade-in offer you get. Price your car out on Carmax.com first, ask other dealerships, look up used models very similar in year/mileage/condition as yours on places like Cargurus.com or Carfax.com to get a good understanding on how much your car is actually worth before even contemplating a dealership's trade-in offer. I've been lowballed by nearly every dealership I asked.

This was a great read.

I, like most people who've bought a car, experienced my own version of it. I was also kind of lucky, because I ended up in an unusually "good" situation that let me dodge most of the bullshit.

I had put in a pre-order for a 2023 Chevy Bolt and put a deposit down on it. I also signed a document offering me the car at MSRP.

Eight months later I get the call that my car is available, so I go in, document in hand, ready to have to argue about the price (I didn't think they were going to honor the MSRP).

They did, which was nice, but they outright tried to cheat me on extras. When I preordered the car, I had sat with the salesperson and chosen each of my options, "yes" and "no"-ing to the specific build of the car and all the different options. During this process, I watched the salesperson enter all of these into the order myself, so I was fully aware of what was and wasn't available with my car.

So, when I went to sit with the finance guy, he led with the monthly payment. I confirmed the MSRP and interest rate. So far so good. Then he tells me that for a small additional amount (I think it was $10 or $20) I could add an extended warranty.

This was very fishy, because he had prices on the screen regarding the extended warranty, and they didn't match a small additional monthly fee. It would have been more like $100 a month instead of $10.

He gave me his pitch about everything the extended warranty covered, and here's where I was "lucky" again. I was buying an electric vehicle, but the pitch wasn't really updated for those, so his screen was showing things like having the cost of the fuel pump replaced. He also wasn't great at selling it. He literally said "well, if your car had _____, that would be covered" multiple times as he was running through the different coverages. It's clear he was used to the script for ICEs, but not EVs.

I asked if my car's battery would be covered. He told me no.

I declined the warranty. He asked why. I told him "because the battery isn't covered and that's the main part of my car."

He then pulled up a big scary list of different car failures and how much each of those would cost without an extended warranty. Again, this was tailored mostly to ICEs, and I was also mad at this point at his blatant fearmongering. I again declined the warranty.

Once he accepted that he wasn't going to get me with the extended warranty, he started to finalize things. Here's where it was clear I was attempting to be "boxed in" as the article calls it.

After declining the warranty, he told me that, surprise surpise, the salesperson had added some options to my car that I actually didn't ask for, and in removing those, my new monthly payment would actually be lower! By about $90! What a win, right?

He was clearly lying. Again, I'd sat with the salesperson and chosen each option myself and also watched them get entered into the system. What I suspect was that the monthly price for the warranty was something like $100 extra, and they rolled $90 into my payment automatically to make it look more appealing -- "only $10 more!" When I declined the warranty, they "discovered" those extra unwanted options as an excuse to give me the actual monthly payment instead of the inflated one.

It sucks that my experience, which was pretty bullshit, is actually sort of an ideal one. I consider myself "lucky" because I was able to dodge most of the bullshit. Reading the experiences shared in the article reminds me that it could be so much worse.

It also sucks that, unfortunately, the bullshit didn't stop after the dealership. I assumed I was through it all once I had the car myself, only to later learn that Chevy was tracking me without my consent. Just like the dealership, Chevy tried to bullshit their way out of it by saying we consented, but evidence mounted that they too were lying.

What's sad is that I really love my car. It's awesome. The vehicle itself is amazing. Everything else surrounding it though? Awful. I'm hoping that, by the time I need to buy another car, more direct-sale options (like Tesla) are available.

It’s an uneven negotiation from the beginning. Customers don’t spend their every waking hour thinking about how to buy a car, but they’re up against an entire architecture that does

I agree with this 100%, but it isn't new - it's basically modern capitalism 101. Every modern supermarket has thrown decades to centuries of man-hours analyzing exactly how to maximize the chances of you impulse-buying after you walk into the store.

FWIW I don't think dealers are fundamentally the issue here, just practically - car OEM direct-dealers don't do anything shady because they have a lot to gain by destroying the dealership industry. Once the dealership industry is already gone, that will no longer be true, and car OEMs may well start pulling the same scams that current dealerships are pulling.

Dealerships are basically dinosaurs, they existed because car OEMs couldn't practically handle the repair side back in the 1920s and needed a local repair shop (also some financial hedging stuff), but nowadays car OEMs increasingly don't even want to make things repairable, and AFAICT would prefer to get rid of dealerships entirely.

I expect not wanting to handle dealership nonsense is a significant part of the reason people might buy a Tesla.

The best car purchase experience I’ve ever had was a new Scion FRS (aka Toyota 86) from a Scion dealership before the brand was completely folded into Toyota.

Scion had a policy called “Pure Price”

[…] the price posted, whether on the vehicle, in an advertisement, or on a menu display board in the dealership, was the price customers would pay. This included the vehicle, accessories, finance and insurance products.

Only one trim level offered, no negotiation, no surprises.

Great car, by the way. A blast to drive and held its resale value well. Back seat was a joke though.

It's been a few years since I've bought a vehicle, but I've purchased quite a few over the years.

My experience has been.... don't deal with the sales floor, ever. Do all of your negotiation with the internet sales manager.

My process has been:

• search the inventory of every dealership within ~200 miles online, start a spreadsheet of car, options, color, and VIN
• email every dealership w/ the vehicle that I want with a lowball offer OUT THE DOOR, let them know that I'm contacting multiple dealers and ready to buy the same day from whoever can give me the best offer, fully itemized, out the door price
• take my best two or three best offers and email the others and say "another dealer has offered to sell me the same car with [same/similar] features for $X, if you can beat it I will buy it from you, but I need an answer within X hours"
• Once I get down to the best offer I get them to commit to the exact itemized dollar amount and agree upon a time to come in

...every time I've been able to get through the process with only 2 or 3 rounds of emails and then showed up signed the papers and drove away paying exactly the price that I expected to pay with only an hour, maybe two to get through the whole process.

Maybe things have changed in the last few years, but it has worked for me many times.