Agreed. Do you know when engineers do real world testing? When they think something will work, want to confirm their educated guess, *and* there isn’t a cheaper/faster/easier way to get it.

Obviously the assumption is that all rentals are pretty much new, and in working order. If you got one that was broken, you should have switched it out.

I had a worst/best day like that with my first car purchase. This was right around the time when invoice pricing info was just starting to become a thing on the newly burgeoning “interweb” and most dealers still operated under the premise that customers didn’t know jack about the true price of a car.

Point of order - There’s no bad rental car.

Yeah. I didn’t think you would actually try to answer that legitimately. Because at the end of the day you don’t know brain 1 about what is truly a legitimate price for any of those things. Just like most all the rest of us. So why waste your time playing their game?

Alright, so what do you believe is an acceptable amount to charge for each itemized fee you are likely to find on a sales contract?

Didn’t you also post that you sold cars and that your dealership put bullshit fees on them then lied to customers that asked about what they were for?

Again, there seems to be a misunderstanding here. It isn’t surprising as dealerships break up all these different itemized things to try to confuse you into paying more.

Either I’m not following your analogy, or you’re not following the way I buy cars. I test drive and check out the car. Then I try to get the dealer to the lowest dollar figure he will accept for me to write on a single check. If that number ends up being agreeable to the both of us, I write that number on the check…

I think you’re better off getting a PPI than trying to endlessly divine the tea leaves of a Carfax report.

Well, yeah. You should fully understand what they are trying to sell you. If they are selling you paint protectant or an extended warranty, you should know that before making an offer. That's not the same as dicking with itemized bullshit fees.

But it was the final price, inclusive of the dealer installed options, that you were ok with, right?

Meh. You bring your price down to my happy spot, and you get a check written out for your troubles. How you get there is of little concern to me.

I actually make a habit of refraining from looking for my trade in on their website after buying a new car. I don't need to see how much the spread is.

How do you figure? A lot if dealerships dump trade ins straight to auction if they don’t sell that brand.

Yup. I once had an amazing trade in value assigned to my frankly unappealing trade in back when my wife wanted to buy a clearly unpopular vehicle at one of those “we never haggle on the price” dealerships. If I would have been adamant that he met my buying price before looking at the trade in, we wouldn’t have gotten…

It really depends on the dealership you go to. We have the deal in our metro where one or two families each own about 14 different dealerships from all the different carmakers. They really don’t let outrageous shenanigans like that fly when one shitty dealership could tant their reputation across the whole metro.

Could you expand on that? I mean, all the other figures on a sell sheet are kind of like passing yards, and time of possession figures. Interesting, but really not the deciding factor.

You don’t even need to itemize it for me. Just tell me the number I would have to write on the check to take the car home, and then we can decide from there if this deal happens.

I really don’t know why people even bother for an itemized price sheet. It only gives them a chance to screw with you psychologically. Give me your out-the-door quote and I'll see if you've made the cut.