I'm a little surprised by the attitude of some here who seem to think it's just fine to employ all the gimmicks you can think of to make a bigger profit. Do you truly believe that it's OK to employ smoke and mirrors to sell something for more than a fair market value to a buyer who is not educated about the "tricks of the trade"?

Someone here said that things are not as bad as they used to be in the car business. We can all thank the information age and the invention of the internet for that. It's not like the people in the business are any different. It's simply harder to fool people in todays world and I for one am thankful for that.

I live in Florida and bought my last car from a small town dealer in Nebraska because it was the best deal and they played no games. We have the option of shopping anywhere in the country so there is no reason anyone should forgive a dealership for ripping off their customers as long as you are not one of them. Take a stand against all dealers who do this type of stuff and soon they will have to stop doing it if they want to stay in business.

 

I was there last week dealing with Rick and George. The only Corvette i saw there with add on price was in the front of the showrrom. None of the 2012 I saw had any additional dealer option.
Anyway Im from Land O Lakes Florida and i bought my ZO6 from Rick.
They treated me right and I'm for sure will deal with them again in the future.

 

My local Corvette club meets at a Chevy dealership. It used to be owned by Bill Heard, which didn't enjoy a very good relationship with consumers and is no longer in business.

We'd see dealer add-on stickers on many of the Corvettes on the showroom floor, sometimes adding as much as $15,000 to the MSRP on cars that were in high demand and short supply.

When the sales manager would ask club members to give him a chance to quote us a price when we were in the market for Corvettes, we'd tell him there was no way we'd pay a $15,000 add-on fee.

He said he understood and wouldn't expect us to do so, adding that anything is negotiable. He said the cars had those stickers on them because they had customers who would come in and write a check and drive a car off the floor without any negotiations -- typically some of the professional athletes who were working under multimillion dollar contracts.

It was beneath them to negotiate, they could afford the add-on charges, so they wrote a check and drove home the car that had struck their fancy.

While I was never a fan of the Bill Heard operation and never bought a car from them, I don't fault them for putting the sticker on their Corvettes for the add-on fee because of the situation cited.

I did buy a new Corvette from Monica at Maxie Price in 2001. That was while Rick was at Les Sanford and, obviously, before I banned Maxie Price as a supporting dealer in 2006.

They had this deal where they added on an "advertising fee." I think it was in the range of $400 and Monica was always very candid in referring to it as the fee to pay for Maxie's condo.

I thought it was silly to add on an "advertising fee," but it wasn't sprung on me as an after-thought. I asked them for a walk-out-the-door price on the car I was interested in, including all fees.

I compared that to the walk-out-the-door price from several other dealers and ended up buying the car from Monica because the bottom line price, including the "condo fee," was less expensive than the bottom line price I got from others at the time.

I did the same thing in 2007 when I bought a new Corvette from Dave at Kerbeck -- buying from the dealer who gave me the best bottom-line price.

When my daughter-in-law bought a new Corvette in 2009, she negotiated a deal at a Bill Heard dealership in the Atlanta area and they bumped the price when she went in to write the check and drive the car home. I think it was about $1,500.

I can't remember how they described the surprise fee, but it was some kind of add-on charge that had not been previously disclosed. When my son complained, they asked him if he was going to walk away from the deal over just $1,500. He said, yes, and walked.

When he called to tell me what had happened, I told him the car was over-priced even without the $1,500 add-on. By that time, I think Rick had left Les Sanford, but I called them and asked the sales manager if he would work with my son and his wife on a new Corvette.

He said, sure, and ended up saving them several thousand dollars. The dealer probably added fees on the deal, but disclosed them in the final purchase price. They were happy with the final price and didn't care how the dealership arrived at it.

My attitude about such things is at variance with many of you, it would seem. I don't enjoy the car buying game very much. The only thing I'm interested in is whether the dealer can give me a reasonable delivery time and at the price I'm willing to pay.

I want the dealership to make a profit because I want them to be there if I need them in the future for any issues that might come up with the car.

I don't want to pay more than I have to, so I focus on the bottom line price, including any and all fees that might be included. Then, I compare that price to what I can get elsewhere.

I always end up doing business with the dealer who meets my needs with a minimum of hassle. And I always check first with Corvetteforum supporting dealers because I like doing business with the people who do business with the Forum. That's worked out fine on the purchase of four Corvettes.

They don't give me any special price that's better than what they would offer any of you and I don't ask for special consideration because I don't want to be beholden to them.

In my mind, it's just not worth getting worked up emotionally on the semantics of how the bottom-line price is arrived at so long as I get the best bottom-line deal available.

YMMV.