So I have to ask the community about these ridiculous BS etch fee and high documentation costs these dealers want to swindle lamens out of.
NY says Max is $75 for documentation. What other states are kind to customers. As far as etch. I’ll walk or bring a deal elsewhere unless they drop that fee. Any other input to lower these so called phantom dealer fees etc?
Michigan has a max of $199 total w/ $75 being the cap for employees.
You can ask the dealer to discount the vehicle against the doc fee, but that’s about it.
Get pricing from nearby states with fixed fees and use that in your pricing comparison, focusing on OTD pricing. A bit more complicated with leases, but still doable.
I’ve often found NJ dealers with uncapped doc fees (average 400 these days) still have lower net pricing (sale price + doc fee) than NY dealers. Maybe it’s because NY dealers close to NYC think they have a captive audience, but who knows. Bottom line, a capped doc fee doesn’t guarantee best OTD price.
Etch and other stuff is BS. Like you said, walk if they won’t take it off.
MD is $300, whereas VA has no doc fee cap and tends to charge ~$600ish. No idea about DC though, but there aren’t too many dealerships within the District.
Just negotiate that additional over-charge out of the cost
I am in NJ this time looking for a lease for my folks(access to NY and CT/PA dealers is not an issue, but stay with me for the sake of the question). Rather ask this question in existing thread than start a new one.
In NJ I often get quotes with ~400-500 doc fees (unlike NY with a “regulated” $75 fee), aside from wasting time at DMV, has anyone successfully taken ownership of a leased car and worked out DMV paperwork on their own to avoid paying the dealer for this “service”.
Yes I know I can negotiate the price down to compensate, just wondering if anyone here has gone the route of doing DMV paperwork directly.
Copied from another site.
The document fees simply cover the cost of the time and effort the dealer takes to fill out the paperwork associated with your car purchase.
What’s a doc fee, anyway?
Doc fees cover the cost a dealership incurs to process a vehicle purchase. In other words, they pay for all the paperwork (and personnel) involved with selling you that shiny new ride. Doc fees originated when dealerships separated their Finance and Insurance departments, commonly dubbed F&I, from the rest of the dealership around the 1960s, Seung Min “Mel” Yu told us. Yu is an independent automotive consultant who’s owned Chrysler and Volkswagen dealerships in Wisconsin and Michigan. The dealership’s departments — sales, service and so on — made money off various parts of the transaction. The F&I department, meanwhile, took on the processing side — but had little revenue to pay for itself. "That’s basically where the documentation [fee] was created,
Fees from the Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC), such as for the temporary tag, registration, license plate and title, should be itemized separately from any document fees on a bill of sale
Would take some real negotiation on your part.
Are doc fees negotiable?
Doc fees cover real costs, so it depends on the dealer. “If you have someone that’s irate about [the doc fee] you have to figure out a way to somehow” adjust it, Peterson said. “And there are ways.” Even if a dealer won’t budge on the fee, remember that the out-the-door price typically is negotiable, so a reduction somewhere else could account for a steep doc fee.
"Doc fees cover real costs, so it depends on the dealer. "
Sorry, not believable. Doc fees, like other silly fees are profit centers for dealers. Look, someone’s gotta pay the light bill and those new fancy dealer digs, coffee machines, etc.
If California dealers, which sit on some of the most expensive real estate in the country, can figure out how to be profitable while being limited to $75 doc fees, dealers in other states can manage just fine.
Doc fees are to car dealers what junk fees are to the home mortgage industry’s escrow companies. Let’s just call it what it is.
i have personally seen the front desk/receptionist filling out paperwork and handling tags, nothing wrong with charging for a service (like NY $75) and paying your ppl, but think about how many DMV docs/plates etc a person making ~$15-$20/hr can process in 1 day (or more realistically in between meeting/greeting clients)… the actual dealer cost of processing docs is not even 1/3 of what they try to charge in NJ ($450+)
my question remains, has anyone successfully managed to handle the DMV paperwork on their own (without the dealer pulling some excuse on why it cant be done).
btw, i will gladly pay $75 and NOT have to go to the DMV… but $450+ not so sure…
good info from edmunds:
