[random28345]

> it takes a ton of time and requires you to be willing to walk away and waste an evening if they pull any funny business.

Can confirm, agreed on a price, the dealer wanted $3,500 for a pinstripe at the last minute. Had to walk, went to another dealership 40 miles away, got an agreement on the original deal negotiated with the original dealer, new dealer didn't have the car in stock, so the car I wanted to buy in the first place was shipped 40 miles to the new dealer. And I watched the new dealer's salesman peeled off the $3,500 pinstripe with his fingers before I'd take possession of the car.

Then after all the paperwork was signed, and I handed over a check for the full purchase price of the car, the new dealer refused to hand over the keys until I paid a $500 etching fee, and the saleperson re-etched the VIN in the car windows over the top of the VIN already etched in the car windows.

Fuck dealers.

[tritosomal]

  $500 etching fee, and the saleperson 
  re-etched the VIN in the car windows 
  over the top of the VIN already etched 
  in the car windows.

Wait. What?

My god. I don't even understand the necessity of... etching? a VIN? into a window? Why is that even a billable line item? It sounds like a form of vandalism.

Why did they insist on ruining your windows with a numeric marking? Windows can break. They're replacable parts. They carry no assurance of permanence.

Who requires this? Why is it required?

What is accomplished by this practice? Why does it cost the buyer money? Why does it fetch that much money, when it's essentially an unskilled task that occupies minutes of effort?

EDIT: Oh wow. I didn't even know this was a thing. [0] Certainly not anything of a $500 value. Certainly not a requirement.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIN_etching

[acchow]

What city/state was this in?

Is there no place to report such behavior to? The manufacturer?

[vvanders]

Not really.

Fun fact, most dealers for a certain mfgr withing a metro area are usually owned by a single business and re-branded so they can collude on prices.

You find this out when you start shopping across state lines. All of the dealers in one state didn't want to come down on price until they found out I was talking to other dealers in another adjacent state, then they changed really fast.

[random28345]

> What city/state was this in?

New Jersey. But it's fairly universal behavior.

> Is there no place to report such behavior to? The manufacturer?

The manufacturer is at the mercy of the dealers. Do you really think it's in the best interests of auto manufacturers to have their customers bent over a barrel on surprise fees and gouged on maintenance? There have been a number of attempts for auto manufacturers to make things less shitty for customers (Scion, Saturn, etc.) but at the end of the day, these attempts were not in the dealer's interest, and failed.