A car buying consultant named Tom McParland shows how car dealers sneak in bogus and questionable fees to pad the price. He compared invoices for the same car from two different California car dealers. One dealer charged $10,000 more for the same car.'
From Jalopnik:
Let’s have a look at this quote line by line. The MSRP on the car is $74,765. The dealer is offering a discount of $5,780 and there is a $1,500 rebate from Chevrolet, bringing the total discount $7,280. That seems pretty good for a brand new Corvette.
Then we have a dealer fee of $449, a California tire fee of $8.75 and a documentation fee of $80. All of which are within a reasonable range for additional fees in order to process the paperwork for the loan and registration.
It all goes downhill from there. There is a random non-taxable fee of $131, a “VSA fee” of a whopping $3,500 (I have no idea what this is or why it costs this much), a “Perma Plate” for $995 (license plates are already included in the DMV fees), a GAP insurance policy of $995 and a “maintenance” fee of $2,495 (You don’t really need a maintenance plan on a Corvette.) The grand total for all this comes to an extra $8,116 tacked on!
(I entered the VIN number on the invoice, and this is the car.)
