Dealer fees. Whats acceptable?

I bought a Drz400sm in september heres my invoice, im in maryland and the bike was discounted $1800 off msrp

 

Yep. I'd never heard of them but there's only two RE dealers in Kentucky and the other is in Lexington. I'd just as soon go to NKY, I can stop at Hofbrauhaus afterwards

 

A royal enfield……..woooooohh you are a gamblin’ man

 

The new ones are pretty slick. It's either that or a used KTM 500, but I don't really need a bike like that (since when has that ever stopped us)

 

They do it so the bike seems cheap and they leave it to the dealers to be the bad guys.

 

Well………..break a leg

 

I don't understand paying shipping costs. That cost should be baked into the MSRP.

Do car dealers charge shipping costs? I've never bought a new car in my life.

And at this rate looks like I'm never buying a new bike.

 

Yes. It's called a destination charge. It's on the Monroney label as a separate line item.

 

On my Q5 they did but it was to redirect the truck from the dealership the car was supposed to go to to the dealership I was dealing with. There was almost none of the ‘19s left, the ‘20s were still way off shore and mine was originally going to a dealership to go on the lot but we snipped it as it was being put on the truck.

 

Problem is if baked into MSRP they can't charge you so much for it . Their cost is probably around $100.
Few years back I was to buy new Vespa. Price was around 6k before they started adding fees, otd was 10k. They had shipping cost at 1400.

 

Maybe if all a brand's dealerships were in a single location....

 

Figures this place is as good as any, do I have to pay tax/title/registration through the dealer? Or could I tell them that I am going to handle it myself when I register it? Have a feeling I know the answer, but never know.

 

Depends on the state. Maine wants the dealer to do it for example, save for registration.

 

Florida, you're paying taxes and reg if it's from a licensed dealer.

 

The dealership I work at in Chattanooga made a name for themselves and became the biggest Honda dealership in the world by simply not charging any dealer fees at all. Anything over MSRP is a racket.

 

Good deal to me. I wish the bike I am trying to buy had fees that low,

 

So are you implying that dealers should absorb the cost of actually shipping and receiving motorcycles (expenses they do have to pay that are not included in the MSRP set by the manufacturer, not the dealer)? Meaning tough, build it into your business model and just make less money? That'll basically close down most dealers overnight. I think a more realistic solution is to have manufacturers include at least set up / PDI into their MSRP. The problem with the rest is shipping a motorcycle to NY or Florida or Los Angeles is going to be significantly different depending on where the bike originates from. Additionally, reg/doc fees vary by State, County, etc.

I'm not at all for "hidden" fees, but there's a lot of variables you're implying the dealer should always absorb which shifts the responsibility off the manufacturers and basic commerce.

 

Pre Covid, I never paid MSRP or more for anything I ever purchased and I never will. When supply was low and demand was high, people got greedy. Funny how dealers survived for so many years with negotiations starting at MSRP and going down from there, and not having a bunch of BS fees in the deal.. How were they able to pay there bills.

Manufacturers have made it so easy to just order from them for a reason. Dealers aren't selling volume like they used to because the are greedy fucks and want to hit a home run on every deal like the did through the pandemic.

 

Like I said, this dealership became a monster because they don't charge any of it. We don't even charge the destination fee that Honda hits us for. I remember when Griffith started this business model inside a little tiny family owned dealership and started selling so many units so fast within a few months he bought an old grocery store and opened the first massive dealership. From there, they have built a completely new building in a different location and became what they are today. We sell more Goldwings then anyone in the world simply because we are cheaper. It's amazing how far people will travel to save money

 

It's hard to have a fair discussion on this topic without laying out all the above and below the line dollars that dealers make on each deal. That's just on the deal itself. Then there are the operational costs like floor costs, carried debt, and back of house revenue, etc. etc. that make up the balance sheet for each of these businesses. In my experience, there's a lot of money in each line item for a dealership that would need to be evaluated in order for anyone to make the assessment that dealers will make less money or go out of business if X, Y, Z fee, finance product, insurance product, maintenance product, choose your business artifact is removed from the equation. If that were the case, they'd have gone out of business decades ago when OEM stopped offering smoking packages as an option or any other short term change that the dealers simply didn't want to accept because it was a change. Any change.