Escape From the Box
July 10, 2024 at 12:02AMIf you think buying a car is painless, you’ve never bought a car. As David Dayen reports for The American Prospect, though, most of the pain comes after the price has been settled; that’s when the F&I (finance and insurance) folks take over. The violations range from egregious price inflation to illegal bundling. That’s why Jase Patrick became a car dealer in the first place, and why he offers his services now to would-be buyers—so he can help people avoid getting fleeced the way he was back when he bought his first truck.
Once the customer chooses a car—or is steered to one—the haggling begins at sales. The sales agent makes a trade-in offer and tries to stuff in the ubiquitous extras, often claiming they are already placed onto vehicles and cannot be taken off. Jase showed me a list of the actual costs of some of these extras. An “edge guard” for car doors costs about $10 on Amazon; Mario was charged $695. The “nitrogen-filled tires,” the FTC states, frequently contain no more nitrogen than what is found in ordinary air.
The “ShadowMark” or “Etch” theft protection system is an engraving of the vehicle identification number (VIN) on the body or windows of a vehicle, which is purportedly useful in theft recovery. Mario’s car had ShadowMark booked at $550; the product itself, according to Jase, costs 50 cents. In several states, etching the VIN onto the vehicle is a free service. Jase talked to a woman at a local government auto theft task force in Lubbock County, Texas that does free etching. She could not recall a single vehicle being recovered because of it, and said it was mainly useful if the vehicle was disassembled. The woman added that a dealer once attempted to charge her $1,500 for VIN etching, and she had to tell them her employer did that for free.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/07/09/escape-from-the-box/
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