If you want to – or have to – buy a new car or truck tight now, this is probably the worst time. Ever. Not only are buyers having to pay full price, many dealers are adding huge markups to their inventory – to the tune of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on top of MSRP (manufacture’s suggested retail price) – and they’re getting away with it. Supply chain woes have resulted in a severe shortage of new vehicles on virtually every dealer lot. At first glance, that might look like a bad thing for dealers but it’s really bad for buyers. More buyers than cars means it’s a seller’s market and you can just forget about getting a good deal. The best you’re likely to do will be somewhere in the vicinity of MSRP. Some auto manufacturers (notably Ford) have pushed back on greedy dealerships, but there’s little anyone can do to restrain unscrupulous dealers and their markups. The more popular or desirable the vehicle, the greater the unreasonable (and sometimes outragrous) price increase.
So what’s an auto buyer to do? The internet has stood up a new hero for the masses: markups.org, a website that crowdsources dealer prices from all over the country and puts it all online for the world to see. Markups.org appears to be a non-profit public service (like TNB) that you can use to find dealers who don’t engage in price gouging.
