I have been looking on ebay and autotrader for a nice AWD car for the wife, she likes g35xs, 3 series xis, etc. I found a nice 330xi on ebay that I was bidding on. The price listed on there website was 13,500 so I though I would try to win it on ebay for the extra buyer protection they add. I bid 13,800 on the car and still didnt hit the reserve price. I thought that was odd until I googled the dealer and found out about the bait and switch they use on pricing. Basically they are adding 2-3k in dealer prep fees on to the price that they are advertising making it no longer attractive. Some dealers that I have seen use this are Maxspeed auto sales in valley stream ny and delux auto sales in NJ. Basically another case of if the price seems too good to be true it probably is.
unfortunately in NJ the dealers do not have a capped fee like NY. Here we are capped at 75 bucks, most states that do not have caps will see fees around 400 bucks… probably a bit much. I would say 200 is more than plenty since it usually costs between 100-150 per car just to detail it, NY charges us 5 bucks per DMV form (f***ing theft if you ask me since it’s a piece of paper!!), overhead costs and then fill it with gas and the cost is covered.
curious… how did you find out about the bait and switch online? Did they list the fees somewhere? dealer review site?
i just googled the dealers names and it came up with some reviews. Maxspeed auto sales is in NY so what they are doing must be illegal.
why not an audi for her?
you can snag nice b7 a4’s with a 2.0T for ~ 17-20k with under 30k miles and she would get 30mpg with quattro AWD
Well we missed out on a local bimmer and ever since then she had her mind set on getting one. Ill have to see if there are any nice a4s around locally.
lol ill cut you a good deal on a stock s4 avant
I see a lot of that bullshit on autotrader.com when looking at used cars.
Many places will have the lowest price, then in small print they say something like “not including $4000 cash or trade”, or “price only valid if financed in house”…