Talk of The Villages Florida - Watch out for dealer antics when purchasing a new car around the Villages

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My husband had some similar and interesting car dealer interactions near The Villages. He ultimately bought and had a very positive experience at VW of Brandon.

Florida has had that dealer fee for years. It is part of their custom here. Having lived near Florida several times during my career, I often shopped Florida when buying a used car. While I could not ever get a Florida dealer to waive the dealer fee, I often could get them to lower the price of the vehicle to match or beat competing drive out prices from nearby states. On several occasions I purchased a Florida vehicle. Normally, though, nobody could beat the Atlanta area dealers on price. There a just too many and they are often willing to negotiate to the point others can't.

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Originally Posted by cjrjck (Post 2211371)

Whenever I have made an offer on a car, I have used Edmunds.com and KBB.com to determine the fair value. Neither of these websites applies a dealer fee to the value. I don't care what individual line items the dealer lists on the pricing sheet, but if the out-door-price is in line with Edmunds and KBB, I will buy the car. If not, I won't. Most dealers want you to argue with them about individual line items. Don't do it. Just ask them for the out-the-door price.

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Originally Posted by dhdallas (Post 2210729)

I was at one time a new car salesman. Here is the way to buy a car. Go online and get the invoice price. Tell the dealer you will pay the invoice price only and they either agree or go to another dealer. Dealers can even sell under invoice and make money because there is a "hold back" of $xxx that the car manufacturer pays to the dealer after every sale. Our hold back was $750. Never ever give the salesman any cash as a good faith offering so he can show his manager that you are a serious buyer. They will try and hold your money hostage as they keep pressuring you to buy at their price.

HOW do you FIND the dealer invoice price????????

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Originally Posted by cjrjck (Post 2211371)

The dealer fee is common. It provides income to the dealer on which they do not pay any sales commission. It is a junk fee. In the mortgage business, they must show a cost incurred by them in order to add fees to the buyer.

I've never dealt with dealerships for selling or buying a used car. Auto Trader has been my go to, and I've had fantastic deals. No BS fees.

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Originally Posted by Rinkerbert (Post 2211336)

I tried buying locally at all three Cadillac dealers the worst with sullivan asking 30 K over MSRP. I ended up driving to North Carolina to get the exact vehicle that was on the sullivan car lot at MSRP.

I am very curious about how to get around paying sales tax to both states when you purchase in another state? Doesn’t Florida charge sales tax when you go to register the vehicle? I don’t know how that all works. Thanks to OP and all other contributors to this thread!! I’m in the market for a new vehicle and suspected it would be challenging to get a fair deal in this area. And in fact, just yesterday my trusted technician/mechanic told me I would need to go to a big city -Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville - in order to not get “taken”!

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Originally Posted by DebeeDoo (Post 2211432)

You take proof of sales tax paid in another state to the DMV when you register in FL. You pay any difference to FL if the other state's tax is less.

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Originally Posted by Flyer (Post 2211347)

Last two vehicles, Honda and Toyota, went outside the bubble. Sanford and even down to Del Ray Beach. Saved combined over $8000 on what local dealers stated was there final price. Pays to shop around.

That goes for 99.9% of everything else in and near The Villages, food, golf carts, restaurants, appliances, medical care, and anything in-between.

And most retailers will admit that because they see to many wealthy people in this area that pay the first price offered to them.

Shop for used cars at CarMax in Ocala. Good people. On Route 200 about a half mile west of I-75. You can check their website before driving up there.

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Originally Posted by DebeeDoo (Post 2211432)

In MOST states, an "out of state" buyer doesn't need to pay the Sales Tax in the state he buys in. The caveat being, he has to "take delivery out of state". In Massachusetts for example (which was an early adopter of Sales Tax), we could sell a car to someone from NH and not charge Sales Tax, provided we got an "affidavit of out of state delivery".

Sales Tax on an automobile purchase in most states, is paid upon Registration, not purchase. Any new car dealership you opt to do business with, will surely know how to deal with the situation.

FYI. There are (5) states that do not have a sales tax on automobiles. I happen to be a resident of one of them. That can get into a sticky situation, as some states will charge you a Sales Tax when you register a vehicle that has previously been registered in a non-sales tax state . It typically depends on how longer it was registered in the other state.

With automobiles, it's a fairly straight forward process. Airplanes & boats are horse of another color ... that can be a horror show.

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Originally Posted by JRcorvette (Post 2210745)

One of the largest Dealers in the area is the worst at doing this. The big “J”

Agreed! They pulled that crap on us when we purchased a vehicle that we initially leased from them. We were even charged a "dealer fee" of about $700 on the same car we had already paid a "dealer fee" on when we first leased it. They came up with some charge (showing us on paper) to justify some fees and I found the originals at home without a checkmark on those items. I will NEVER buy from them again!

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Originally Posted by huge-pigeons (Post 2210665)

I have been looking at new cars the last couple of weeks and ran into issues from local dealers that I think the Village residents should know about so they can watch out for these expenses when purchasing a new or used car.Every dealer that I dealt with within a 200 mile radius adds on to the MSRP a package of STUFF (they call it a Florida package which includes window tint, wheel locks, etc..) and these packages (not shown on the window sticker) can be up to $6000. For example, I looked at a 2022 used car at a local dealer that had an internet price of $40k, but the price they gave me after a test drive out the door was over $53k, which included $8k of dealer Florida package and certified warranty expenses plus taxes and registration. What got me was the manager tried to justify the $8k charge saying that all the people in the villages have done well and they don't mind paying these charges. I told him that it doesn't matter if somebody is well off or not, nobody wants to be foolish and spend almost 17% of the cars value on items that cost practically nothing. Of course I walked. (See below for an example on different values for these fees).

At the same time, I was dealing with a Nissan dealer in Ocala that also had a 2022 new car for sale for an asking price of $39k. I asked for an out the door price and he gave me 1 that didn't include any Florida package, just dealer fee of <$1000, and taxes and registration. When I got this quote from a text message, I called the salesman and asked him about any extra fees and he had to ask his manager and when he came back, he told me they were going to waive the $5900 package that they normally put on the sale because it was a 2022 and they wanted it sold. I told him I will come in the next day. This is where it gets strange.
The next day, I go to the dealers website to get their address and I looked at the car listing again and the dealer raised the price of the car almost $5k. I told him we were talking about the original price of $39k the day before and he told me that the person who puts together the ad/webpage put in a Platinum Altima price instead. I told him that's funny, Nissan doesn't make a Platinum Altima any more AND the highest price for the deluxe Altima isn't close to the $39k they were advertising the car I was looking at. Then he told me "you got me on that". Then he told me they can sell any car at any price. I have all of this saved in emails and text messages, plus a snapshot of the webpage showing the original price of the car for $39k.

I ended up buying a new 2023 Nissan from Courtesy Nissan in Tampa which only charged me $800 for their package fee (which I thought was reasonable and they were upfront, they didn't try to hide it) and they were also the cheapest within a 200 mile radius.

Buyer beware.

You should report them to the Sheriff and Consumer Affairs. Otherwise, they will continue scamming Villagers and others.
It’s very helpful that you saved all the texts and emails.

Yesterday, I was told by Hyundai in Clermont that they charge everyone $474 for the title and tag transfer fee, even though the actual Florida fee is less than $100. They do this because some customers owe money to the state, and that if they don't, the state will send the customer a refund within about 2 weeks. This didn't sound correct, so I asked the DMV to confirm what the Hyundai guy told me. The DMV lady said that the dealer had lied to me, and that they would never send a refund. Go figure.

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Originally Posted by Stu from NYC (Post 2211115)

This is why we purchased our last Toyota 18 months ago from a dealer 80 miles away.

They feel we are too dumb to consider buying cars elsewhere.

Where do you take it for service?