Does Edmunds get a kick-back from the use of Edmunds Price Promise?
Yes, Edmunds gets money from the dealerships in this program. According to this USA Today article from 2013, dealers pay Edmunds a monthly fee to participate in the program.  This contrasts with TrueCar.com, a similar service, where dealers pay a fee for each sale. And yes, it is certainly possible to negotiate a lower price than the Edmunds Price Promise quote, if you enjoy haggling.  The purpose of the program is not to get you the best price, just the easiest buying experience.   From the USA Today article: Edmunds.com's price promise business model is designed to take the uncertainty out of pricing, speed up the buying process and also comes with the expectation that the customer will be given top-notch customer service. Dealers who have participated find that they are able to sell their cars for $300 to $500 more than consumers who go through the more traditional price quote request process. Customers, [Edmunds.com president and chief operating officer Seth] Berkowitz said, are willing to pay a little more than the best possible deal if they can save time, get great customer service and know they are getting a fair price.
I'm not familiar with the deal, nor is this my specialty, but a cursory Google search yields that Greybull (the buyer) also [agreed to invest £400m in Scunthorpe](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/11/greybull-nears-deal-to-buy-tata-steels-scunthorpe-plant/). The £1 was, as far as I can tell, somewhat symbolic.   [The whole thing](http://www.businessinsider.com/tata-steel-sells-uk-business-to-greybull-capital-2016-4?r=UK&amp;IR=T) sort of reads to me like Tata wanted it off their books and the UK government wanted it to be [revitalized](https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/719478349886791680), but again, not really my wheelhouse. But the notes are always called at par, no? So you have a fixed yield which depends on the coupon and price you bought it at. I still don't see how the company doing better than expected changes the yield on your investment. I've done a rights offering once. Basically you had to pay money to exercise the right to buy. The offer was far below market rate, so the company was making money, and overall by exercising you ended up in a bit of a better position, even though your original position was diluted.  I'm not really sure what you're asking though. The money does come from the people exercising the right. This is not right. Inferring the employee stock pool’s takeaway is not as easy as just taking a fraction of the purchase price. As an example, that wouldn’t account for any preferred returns of other ownership classes, among other things.   All considered though, it’s reasonable to assume that the employee stock pool will get some premium. Best of luck. That's true the system does effectively give HFT a right of first refusal to everything it sees. If HFT is willing to take all comers at your price for longer than you are willing to wait then you are indeed out of luck.  OK it's cheating :) In this case, trust the real estate agent; negotiating experience is one of the things you selected them for. Especially if they're suggesting a lower number than you expected, since they get paid on commission and so may be biased the other way.  Part of their job is to look for hints about how motivated this seller is and what price they might accept, as opposed to what price they hope to get.  And remember that the default assumption is that the two parties will meet in the middle somewhere, which means it's customary to offer 10% less to signal that you could probably be talked into it if they drop the price about 5%. This is like bridge-hand bidding: it's a semi-formalized system of hints about levels of interest, except with fewer conventions and less rationality. As far as the seller paying the closing costs: that's really part of the same negotiation, and doing it that way makes the discussion more complicated for the seller since they need to figure out how much more to charge you to cover this cost. If they offer, great, factor that into what you are willing to pay... but I wouldn't assume it or ask for it. Edit: Yes, unless you have engaged a Buyer's Agent (which I recommend for first-time buyers and maybe all huyers), their fiduciary duty is to the seller. But part of that duty is to make the sale happen. If the price goes too high and you walk away, neither the agent nor the seller make money. A bad agent can be as bad as a bad car salesman, sure. But if you don't like and mostly trust your agent, you are working with the wrong agent. That doesn't mean you give them every bit of information the seller might want, but it does mean you probably want to listen to their input and understand their rationalle before deciding what your own strategy will be. I certainly do not agree and you are making some sweeping statements without backing them up. What I am saying is that a company cannot make a promise of credit to an employee without having something to back that up. If you don't have that then you cannot offer pensions or other futures that you cannot ensure are going to be properly funded. No one forces a company to offer pensions in this day and age (there are exceptions of course) so they do not need to offer it at all.   Things like pensions are often used as incentives that can be provided in lieu of cash payments to the employee. If we are going to make cash like exchanges of value then that value should be just as guaranteed as it is when the company promises to pay back a loan.   In short you should not be able to hire employees on a financial promise you cannot keep in good faith. If for some reason you cannot keep that promise, just like with standard credit it should hurt you.   Or you know, as a company don't make BS promises and just pay people what they are worth. I didn't mean to imply that bankruptcy is a magical process. I was using that to clarify my use of conservative vs. aggressive. To be fair, I guess it can vary depending on your perspective. If you're taking the perspective of the debt-laden company, then yes, erring on the side of a higher value could be defined as aggressive. If you're taking the perspective of someone looking to acquire business, I would say erring on the side of a higher value is conservative.   if the debt is trading at, say, $0.20 on the dollar, then yes, I can agree that the market value of the debt is likely more representative of the book value. I guess I wasn't thinking of that type of extreme example. A more common scenario I'd encounter would be a) the debt trading at maybe $0.95 on the dollar and b) taking the perspective of someone looking to invest in the equity, which is why I'd say that it's more conservative to use the higher value, which is the book value.  So I'm persuaded that using market value of the debt can make sense in some cases, but I would still argue that the book value might make more sense in other cases. "No, but it is certainly a possibility. the efficient market hypothesis would say that this means that the market perceives the present value of all future earning as negative. These earnings might take the form of a writedown of assets at some point. (Companies carry a goodwill asset that is generally imaginary.  They book that asset when they buy companies for more than they are worth.) It would be as if PRUN was a stock tracking my life.  If I bought my house in 2006 for $1 million cash. I might have a book value of $1 million.  However, PRUN might trade at $500k because the market knows that my asset isn't really worth $1 million and at some point my earnings will take a hit to reflect that. It might also mean that future ""real"" earnings ""ie actual profit and loss on sales"" are going to be negative. This would mean bankruptcy is more likely." "In the words of David Einhorn, Flash Boys was ""based on a true story."" The way Lewis tells the story is extremely misleading, and you seem to have been suckered in.   HFT has reduced spreads to a small fraction of what they were 20 years ago, they are awesome for average people, who are retail traders. Lewis uses ""ordinary investors"" to mean guys like Einhorn, who do suffer from HFT because they make it hard to buy large blocks of stock without moving the price. But it is not a God-given right to buy stock without moving the price against yourself, and guys like Einhorn now understand how to trade given the current market structure." "In my experience when a salesperson says a particular deal is only good if you purchase right now, 100% of the time it is not true. Of course I can't guarantee that is universally the case, but if you leave and come back 5 minutes later, or tomorrow, or next week, it's extremely likely that they'll still take your money for the original price. (In fact, sometimes after you leave you get a call with even a lower price than the ""excellent offer""...) Most of the time when you are presented with high pressure sales accompanied by a ""this price is only good right now"" pitch, it ends up being because they don't want you to go search the competition and read reviews. In this case you have already done that and deemed the item to be worthwhile. Perhaps a better tactic for the salesperson would have been to try to convince you that others are interested in the item and if you wait it might be sold to someone else at that excellent price. Sales is an art, and it requires the salesperson to size you up and try to figure out your vulnerability and exploit it. This particular salesperson obviously misjudged you and/or you don't have an easily exploitable vulnerability. I wouldn't let the shortcomings of the salesperson get in the way of your purchase. If you are worried about the scenario of someone else snatching up the item, consider offering a deposit to hold the item for a certain amount of time while you ""reflect"" and/or ""arrange for the funds""." Thanks for replying. I think we are talking at cross purposes, though. In your original example you were talking terms of a promise to pay at a future time. In that example the asset might be destroyed but the promise to pay would still be binding (under typical laws of obligations) and so a court could enforce the obligaton to pay - unless perhaps the promise was itself nullified eg by being contingent on the asset (the apples) being harvested (ie not being destroyed). So, my question was really whether such a contingent promise really amounts to creating new money (as is suggested by the original example). I don't see a promise of this nature can be akin to creating money - it is a new bargain entered into by two (or more) parties It's monopoly money.  Everybody treats it like that.  Of course it doesn't work.    It would be vastly different if you had you budget **plus**    (a) freedom of choice for the supplier, internal or external,    (b) your group could spend any budget surplus on whatever they wanted (well, for the office).    But that will never happen because company policy. "It's definitely annoying, but it's not necessarily false advertising. There is no rule or law that says they have to fix a pricing error at all, let alone within a certain period of time. Unfortunately they have no obligation to do business with you unless they take (and keep) your money. If they canceled the order and returned your money you have no binding agreement with them.  On top of that, in the US... 'misleading advertising' usually refers to ""Any advertising or promotion that misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities or geographic origin of goods, services or commercial activities"" (Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1125(a)). The main criteria that they evaluate before taking legal action is whether or not someone has suffered harm or loss due to the reliance on the bad information. But you're in Europe. The EU ideas behind misleading advertising tend to focus a lot more on comparing one product to someone else's and making subjective claims or false promises. Pricing does come up, but still, you need to have an ability to prove that you suffered harm or a loss from the business' actions.  Even if you were able to prove that, to force the business to change its price catalog, you would need to go through legal proceedings, demonstrate the harm that you've sustained, and then have a judge decide in your favor and order the supplier to comply. My guess is that it's just not worth it for you, but you haven't specified if this is just an annoying shoe-shopping experience or if you are regularly experiencing bait-and-switch tactics from a supplier that is a crucial part of a business operation.  If it's the former, just like a physical shop reserves the right to kick you out if you're not behaving, (but usually doesn't because they'd like to keep you as a customer), an online shop can update its prices whenever they like. They can change their prices too, and cancel orders.  If it's the latter, then start putting together some documentation on how many times this has happened and how it has damaged your business. But before you get on the warpath I would recommend you look for another place to buy whatever you have in mind, or else try a pound of sugar in your approach to this supplier... My own business experience has shown that can go a lot way in figuring out a mutually beneficial resolution. If you want to see a bit more...  Here is the EU Justice Commission's website on false advertising, Here is a PDF leaflet from the UK Office of Fair Trading that spells out what is explicitly not allowed from a business by way of advertising & business practices." Maybe one of my issues is that I have a 5 year model with a terminal value. The repayment of debt principal is outside this time frame so I don't assume any repayment.   If you're valuing a company share price though you don't model all debt repayments.