<story><title>Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices</title><url>https://www.themanual.com/auto/markup-exposes-car-dealership-greed/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zachshefska</author><text>The market is SO inefficient. While you’re right in describing the principles of supply and demand, the reality is that buying a car should be 10x simpler and the price should just be the price. No games, no haggling, no BS add-ons that increase dealer profits. Retail auto is due for a wake up call, and I sense it’s happening right now. You wouldn’t need markups to make extra profit if the cost infrastructure associated with selling cars was lower than it currently is.</text></item><item><author>atestu</author><text>Based on all other comments I have an unpopular opinion: I think this is fine. If 10 people want to buy 1 car, how do you choose which person gets it? You raise the price until there&amp;#x27;s only 1 person. How else would you do it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bradfa</author><text>Tesla is leading the way today (somewhat painfully in some areas) but they&amp;#x27;re not the first to try fixing this.  GM&amp;#x27;s Saturn tried to make buying simpler in the 1990s and surely there were other previous examples, too.&lt;p&gt;Ford seems to be testing the waters about how to simplify the car purchase process: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fordauthority.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;ford-dealers-will-likely-switch-over-to-new-business-model-by-2023&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;fordauthority.com&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;ford-dealers-will-likely-s...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s plenty of dealerships who have historically had simple purchase processes with standard no haggle pricing but often buyers have to do extensive research in order to find such dealerships.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nonprofit markups.org is exposing the most egregious new car prices</title><url>https://www.themanual.com/auto/markup-exposes-car-dealership-greed/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zachshefska</author><text>The market is SO inefficient. While you’re right in describing the principles of supply and demand, the reality is that buying a car should be 10x simpler and the price should just be the price. No games, no haggling, no BS add-ons that increase dealer profits. Retail auto is due for a wake up call, and I sense it’s happening right now. You wouldn’t need markups to make extra profit if the cost infrastructure associated with selling cars was lower than it currently is.</text></item><item><author>atestu</author><text>Based on all other comments I have an unpopular opinion: I think this is fine. If 10 people want to buy 1 car, how do you choose which person gets it? You raise the price until there&amp;#x27;s only 1 person. How else would you do it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kspacewalk2</author><text>The market is inefficient because dealerships form a cartel, divvy up the geographical areas where they operate and don&amp;#x27;t allow any competition there. If it was an actual market, carmakers would sell off cars to dealers (e.g. at mega-auctions), who can set up wherever they want (or sell online), and all the games, haggling etc. would disappear.</text></comment>