Hello Hackrs!
bill of sale screenshot included
straight to the point, we decided to buy my wife’s 2018 Nissan Rogue. Our bank asked for the bill of sale which the dealer sent to my wife, she didn’t go over it and just told me she got charged over 2k in taxes which is not true. We then went through the document and found that the dealer included a Clerical fee of $600, a Document transmittal fee of $199 and a DMV fee of $230 (my wife paid for the registration herself!)
Are this legitimate fees? Can I try to fight some of these charges?
please advise and thanks in advance.
She signed that she agreed to pay them… makes them awfully hard to fight.
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she didn’t sign it, unless it was when we first got the lease. This guys sent her this document through a text message…
She should bring it up with the DMV if there is a double pay. She must have paid it after selling the car and she didn’t need to do it?
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so they sent us the registration renewal through mail with a POA since it was about to expire, my wife received the bill of sale yesterday and decided to go today to renew the registration in person. this is very frustrating
Dealer Fees are typical for any vehicle transaction. Unless Nissan allows you to buy it directly from them without going through a dealer, your best bet would be to shop around with other Nissan dealers and see who would offer the lowest document fees.
As for registration, the vehicle’s title gets transferred from the lease lender (NMAC?) to your wife with the bank as the lien holder. Registration fees could mean title transfer, etc. You could ask for a breakdown on it.
Fees suck, but these are not totally crazy fees. Just a dealer doing what they can to make a buck.
There are more than just registration fees for the state. If the title is being transferred from one party to another, as in this case, there are additional fees the state charges. There is probably also an electronic processing fee in there too by the state. Also, depending on your state the registration could belong to the bank and a new registration has to be issued if there is a new owner reported. Should have waited until after the deal was done to renew registration.
As for the clerical fee and document fee, good luck fighting that. I have never seen a dealer just take them off since it could open them up to litigation if someone thinks there was discrimination as to why one person got them waived and another didn’t. With that said, I have seen dealers discount cars by the cost of the fees. But if you are buying out a lease, there is nothing to negotiate. Your best bet is to see if your bank can buy it directly from Nissan but IIRC, Nissan is not allowing third party buyouts.
There shouldn’t be, but nmac leaves things very open-ended in their contract regarding what a dealer can charge during a buyout. It definitely pays to shop
Yeah but whose reg was it? In NJ your leased vehicle was registered to NMAC via one of its trusts.
You’ll need a new reg in your name.
Elephant in the room: why would you buy this car?
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Nissan Rogue [closes tab]
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Because of the buyout price that compared to the current market seems very low.
And my wife didn’t like the new lease prices she was getting
If they had to send you a POA, means it was renewal under the lease.
When you purchase the vehicle, you have to re-register the vehicle under your name.
You can go on to NJ DMV website & figure out how much it will cost to register the new vehicle.
I think you’re going into this thinking you got ripped off which is skewing your interpretation of the charges.
Buy a brand new car, not this ticking timebomb.
Don’t be fooled by purchase price, that’s not the cost of ownership.
TCO (total cost of ownership) is the sum of:
Depreciation
Taxes
Insurance
Scheduled maintenance
Repairs (unscheduled)
Replacement of consumables like tires, brakes etc
Gas/fuel
Etc.
Once you start digging into the numbers you’re probably not saving much money buying a used Rogue that’s going out of warranty.
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