Car dealers bad? Try an MC dealer!

We've talked about car dealers and their fees. It's bad, but nowhere near motorcycle dealer bad!

I've been thinking about a maxi scooter, something in the 150-250cc range. Craigslist hasn't had anything good. So I looked at cycletrader.com.

A dealer of euro bikes has a never-titled 2012 Piaggio Fly 150 for sale. The listed price is $1295 "plus fees". Seems like a bargain, so I went there to ask what the fees were.

$400 "set up fee"
$369 "doc fee"
$495 "freight"

Add that up. It's $1264. Math tells me that's 97.5% over the listed selling price.

And that's not figuring in the ~$106 sales tax, which effectively makes the taxes and fees MORE than the cost of the bike itself!

I told the guy I'd think about it. What I wanted to say was "kiss my hairy white butt."

More proof to me that Las Vegas is an ultra slimy market for car dealers and now it seems motorcycle dealers.

If it's like the car dealers, it's a "sand island" mentality since it is 300 miles in any direction to get to any other buying market.

The hell is a setup fee?

When I bought a used Fatboy from a dealer they charged me $150 for a used bike inspection fee and made me wait an hour while they did it. Got home found it had the wrong oil in it, both tires more than 15psi low, clutch not adjusted right, and my favorite before even leaving the dealer the gas cap almost fell off because they didn't tighten it. Not sure what they did for that hour but it wasn't an inspection.

It doesn't happen to be connected to Hennessey Honda of Woodstock, does it? Because i heard the suck.

Tell them to waive the "setup fee" because Piaggio ships all their bikes assembled and ready to go. The local dealer tried to berkeley me with that fee when I bought my new 'Guzzi a couple years ago.

It's not even a bad value. It's the deceptiveness that put me off.

Fact is, if the bike was advertised at $2599+tax, it represents a decent value. A current model of this bike has an MSRP of $2899. How much less is a 5 year old, but brand new bike worth?

That's just more than I want to spend on a scooter. But the point is, the dealer could have saved both of us some time & effort by just advertising it at the actual selling price.

This crap, and the "evil" Walmart, are driven entirely by a society that expects to pay bottom dollar for everything. In other words, us.

New cars have a shipping fee. New bikes do need a bit of assembly when they come out of the crate, but the doc fee is dealer bullE36 M3.

I'll repeat it, as was explained to me by a 'Guzzi dealership owner.

"Piaggio bikes arrive complete, no assembly is needed"

Duke wrote: This crap, and the "evil" Walmart, are driven entirely by a society that expects to pay bottom dollar for everything. In other words, *us*.

Yeah, that's a definite driver in the Walmart effect, but WTF does that have to do with false advertising?

No assembly on that bike but honestly the margins are so thin on the ground for that thing that trying to make 400-500$ on it does not sound like the end of the world to me. They have to pay for showroom space and well a good bit more then that as well to get someone in the door.

OTD pricing on a bike is not something I am used to seeing on the net anyway.

That is exactly the reason I rode 500 miles out of my way to buy my motorcycle from a dealer that plays straight.

Local place had a zero miles '14 KTM 1190 Adv listed at 12,999. I asked for an out the door price and with "fees" it came to $16k (exactly what you would expect to pay for a new '16 model). The same pattern repeated over and over again... nice price and large "document", "delivery", "assembly", "setup" fees everywhere. I wonder, then, if I could have one delivered to my house and assemble it myself? Not likely. Shady berkeleys all around.

So, I bought my '16 S1000XR from MAX BMW in Troy, NY over the phone / email and paid exactly the price of the bike minus haggling/trade value plus tax, tag and they threw in a T-shirt, key chain and 3 cups of coffee :)

There are good dealers out there but not many. Most of them are salesmen, not enthusiast operators. Find the latter and you usually get a better experience but not always a great price. The good ones tend to advertise something close to what they expect to get and skip the profit padding routine. Instead of advertising the scooter at $1200 and tea bagging you on the back of the sale they might just ask $2500 and sell it for $2.2k.

yupididit wrote: The hell is a setup fee?

In KTM land it means connecting it to the big orange computer and registering the warranty to start. Things not included are making sure there are fluids of some kind in the engine and/or whether anyone noticed the chain was all rusty before rolling it out for purchase.

Sky_Render wrote:

Duke wrote: This crap, and the "evil" Walmart, are driven entirely by a society that expects to pay bottom dollar for everything. In other words, *us*.

Yeah, that's a definite driver in the Walmart effect, but WTF does that have to do with false advertising?

That's not false advertising. Disingenuous advertising, maybe. They will sell you the scoot for $1299 + fees, as advertised. The low purchase "price" is eyecatching, as intended, but it is not the total transaction cost. Do I like it? No. Do I think it makes the dealer lying scum? Also no.

The scoot costs what it costs. It's either worth it, or not. What does it matter which particular line item(s) contain the dealer's profit?

As someone who used to work doing set up/ assembly i know that some dealers pay crazy money for offsight storage and 3rd party assembly. They should factor it directly into the price though.

$300 off MSRP for something they have been unable to sell for five years? So, essentially no discount even though it has proven to be unsalable for half a decade. Unless the scooter of five years ago was vastly superior to the new model and set to appreciate... No, I don't see that as a good value.

If they NEED to get that for the bike to keep their doors open, I'd say just wait for the liquidation auction.

Things have probably changed, but back when I worked in a motorcycle shop my job was assembling new bikes. It would take me anywhere from 1 hour for a small one to 4 hours for one of the big cruisers.

There is one bonus, at least in some states, to paying for 50% of your purchase costs in "fees". In Nevada, for one, "fees" are not "products" and therefore save the buyer on sales tax.

In effect, the quote I got would save me about $100 in sales tax vs just paying $2599 for the bike.

Some snarky dealer is going to take this to an extreme and offer a $60,000 vehicle for $1,000 (plus $59,000 in "fees").

I would expect it to be sufficiently setup after lingering in the shop for five years..

How many miles were on this beast? Probably been out for a few test rides.

OHSCrifle wrote: How many miles were on this beast?

Eleven. Must have been short test rides!

I need a box of a particular spark plug boot. None in town, so I check Amazon. $8.50 for a box of 25.

What does this have to do with fees? Freight, $158.00.

Duke wrote: The scoot costs what it costs. It's either worth it, or not. What does it matter which particular line item(s) contain the dealer's profit?

The difference is that the line item containing the profit wasn't in the ad, so it's a ploy to get you to spend time physically coming into the shop so they can lay the hard sell on you, or simply gain the sales benefit of "you're here, the scooter's here, now sign here..."

I feel it's not unreasonable to think that "fees" will exist, but will not be similar in scale to the advertised price all on their own. It seems to me to be clearly an intentional misrepresentation of the proposed transaction based on the recognition that some people from whom they might be able to finagle a sale would simply not come in if they actually knew the total price.

It seems like the sort of behavior which will never result in legal action because it's not strictly inaccurate, but which is clearly wrong. It's going to cost people time because they have been intentionally misled. If it costs me two hours of my weekend to physically go to your dealership in order to make the "it's worth it or it's not" call which I'd have known up front from an earnest ad, you have taken something of value from me.