Hammer Time: Bogus Fees

I had to travel 1000 miles to buy my first car. At the time Toyota dealers in the Southeast didn’t have Camrys with optional ABS (1994). Why? Supposedly you didn’t need it. Unless you bought the top of the line model, which cost an extra $3000. Thanks to this pearl of wisdom from Toyota’s Southeast distributorship, I went to New Jersey where my brother and I bought respective Camrys. Should I have bothered? I’ll put it this way. Back in the Clinton era this regional cabal offered a really nice Scotchguard protection deal that had the word ‘Toyo’ in it along with windows etched with your VIN and about $7 worth of hocus pocus that no one really cared to have. The surcharge? $699. They all did it. After my third or fourth visit to the local new car rodeo, I said “screw ’em” and headed to [New] Jersey.

Fast forward 15 years and the bogus fee world of new car selling is alive and very well. For every lowball price advertised in the newspaper there are documentation fees ranging anywhere from $299 (for a few pieces of signed paper) to $799 (for a few signed pieces of paper) that drive the final cost to the stupid-sphere. One dealer in Daytona Beach advertised a 2009 Hyundai Accent for $6990. In the small print was ($3000 customer cash, $799 documentation fee) and a full paragraph of exemptions and supplementation. The final cost for a Hyundai Accent with no A/C? How does $11,400+ sound?

It always pays to know the real cost of whatever you buy. Title and tag costs are unfortunately an area where profits, smoke and mirrors are commonplace. The real costs for where I live? In my state of Georgia it is $18 to process a title, approximately $2 to provide a temporary tag and anywhere from $5 to $25 to get someone to physically go to the title office for you. That’s it. So far as I know no finance company has ever charged a dealership for the few pieces of paper needed to sign a finance agreement. The blank ones with pages worth of small print usually cost no more than $1.

My advice to anyone shopping for a car, new or used, is ask your DMV what the actual costs are for title processing, add maybe $30 for the temporary tag, and make sure your final out the door price is negotiated BEFORE you ever get to the dealership. If they won’t work with you or play the “let me ask the manager” game, go to the private owner or eBay. Life’s too short and wallets far too thin these days to contribute to a bogus cause.