The Importance of Understanding Destination Fees when Buying a Car

When buying a car, it's essential to understand that destination fees are added on top of the purchase price. The dealer may try to convince you that this fee is necessary, but what they're not telling you is that it varies from state to state. In New York, for example, doc fees are capped, which means that dealers can't charge as much as they would in other states. However, in other states, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts, the rules are different, and the dealer may still try to add a destination fee to the bill.

One of the most common ways that dealerships try to make money from these fees is by charging an "out the door price" without including the fee upfront. This can be misleading, as it makes the sticker price seem lower than it actually is. For example, if the dealer tells you that they're selling the car for $24,000 with a $100 fee, but when you go to sign the papers, they add an additional $25,000 fee, which brings the total cost to $49,000. This means that the dealer has essentially added $25,000 to the purchase price without your knowledge or consent.

To avoid this type of deception, it's essential to be transparent and do your research. If you're considering buying a car from a dealership, make sure to ask for the window sticker, which will show you the destination fee that is specific to the vehicle. This way, you can compare prices across different dealerships and see what fees are being added on. Additionally, if you live in a state with caps on doc fees, be aware of these rules and don't let the dealer try to sneak one past you.

Another strategy for avoiding destination fees is to negotiate before even walking into the dealership. If you know that the sticker price includes all fees, you can ask for a better deal upfront. However, if the dealer tries to add these fees later on, be prepared to walk away from the sale. Remember, transparency is key when it comes to understanding destination fees and making an informed decision about your purchase.

Some dealerships may try to justify their fees by saying that they need to pay them to the manufacturer or other third parties. However, this is often just a ruse to get you to agree to a higher price. If a dealer tells you that adding the fee is necessary because of some obscure regulation, don't believe it. Instead, ask for clarification and try to understand what's really going on.

Finally, if you're not satisfied with the fees or the way the dealership operates, there are alternatives. Many dealerships have bad reputations, so if you find one that's trying to pull a fast one on you, don't hesitate to take your business elsewhere. In some cases, it may be worth bringing a check to the dealer and saying, "I'd like to pay for this car in full today." This can sometimes prompt the dealer to reveal hidden fees or adjust their price accordingly.

Overall, understanding destination fees is crucial when buying a car. By doing your research, asking questions, and being transparent, you can avoid getting taken advantage of by dealerships that try to add these fees on top of the purchase price. Remember, it's always better to be informed and prepared before making a big purchase like this.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey welcome back I'm Keith Barry I'm Kelly funer I'm Joe vac and we're going to talk cars today about the mini countrymen it's the first uh of many sort of new look of vehicles they're a little less a little less anglophile a little less Austin Powers z a little less steampunk a little more streamlined still a bit quirky uh so we just recently bought for our test program a 2025 mini Countryman S all four uh it's all-wheel drive like all the countryman's out there uh there's an electric version there's a John Cooper Works version that has more power but we bought the one as we always do uh the one that most people are going to buy and that's the S comes with a 241 horsepower 2 L turbocharged 4-cylinder engine a 7-speed dual clutch transmission which we will have a lot to talk about uh and uh the starting price about $38,900 but we added on some of the the common features um Power front seats um surround sound system uh Auto dimming rearview mirror parking assistance adaptive cruise control some of the advanced driving assistance features wireless charging navigation that brought it up along with the destination fee to $ 43,6 N5 so not cheap for a small SUV Mini's biggest car ever but still pretty small um I love that it's quirky we need quirkiness in the world but as soon as you get in we're going to start inside the car I think yeah uh because there's there's this big well Kelly why don't you tell us a little about the the what it looks like in there sure it gets weird real fast exactly and and lack of angles as you said is kind of a theme throughout there's very round edges on everything starting with the center screen so the display screen is actually a circle totally round like the old Mini like the spedometer Retro is yep so it's a 9.4 in diameter round uh display you need PI right yeah yeah back to math class um and then there's also a headup display uh but there is no driver display so instrument cluster instrument panel in front of the driver doesn't exist so just that head-up display and it's a unique head-up display similar actually to Mazda where they have a little clear transparent plexiglass popup and that is you know embedded in the dashboard uh lower than the windshield right so it's not projecting onto the windshield itself so that in a way acts as the driver display yeah I found that I needed it a lot because otherwise you'd have to constantly be looking over at that Center screen right right so without that you know you would just have the the center screen similar to what Tesla has in their model uh 3 and model y so just that one screen so at least it has that whereas Tesla doesn't so that's a bonus there yeah that feels almost like it was plucked out and put there almost as like an aftermarket thing where it feels yeah a little cheap in a way just how they implemented that screen like the engineers were driving it and like oh crap my eyes are always off we need something yeah up put something there that in there right and it does actually feel like an afterthought in a way because it like I said it's in some of the mazas and some older type of vehicles where that used to be the design rather than projecting it on the windshield so it really does almost feel like an after thought hurry up what can we do to fix this yeah yep yeah as far as the you know we're going there's a lot to talk about with this car cuz it's a car that I think I'm not going to give anything away by saying that we we really wanted to like this car oh yeah cuz it it looks cool it doesn't look as goofy it's interesting and we always liked how minis drove we loved the last countrymen it was one of those cars that was like never in the lot someone always took it home um it's you know it's it's an interesting eyes it feels really roomy inside but it's just there seem to be like a lot of things a little wrong with it and that includes to that includes driving it yeah yeah so it's just doesn't have the mini DNA that we know and we love you know we like small quick steering you know really sharp handling you know and um yeah that just doesn't really that's not the case here where you know the steering a lot of this stuff is kind of just okay I wouldn't say certain things things in terms of um ride and handling are necessarily like that bad they're not great but you know a lot of the stuff is just feels like it's just getting by and it doesn't have that true you know what mini was about you know or the ones we remember early 2000s minis I love those left to drive you know from the Cooper S that you know they were just really fun and engaging and I don't find that in uh in this yeah I mean so as as we all know BMW owns Mini this is is made in leig Germany it's based on the BMW X2 which uh we have some feelings about uh and it has it it kind of drives a little more like a better X2 yeah yeah so yeah the best way uh to describe it is if youve heard our feedback of the X2 take that and just be slightly more refined but altogether that's not really saying much cuz we're not overly impressed by the X2 either um yeah you get a little better visibility that's a plus I like that um little more cargo area but um but yeah in the end the overall Driving Experience is more is just slightly better than than the X2 and then that's not a mini and even further away from that mini DNA so when you get in this thing or you look at it you know it looks bigger but you you say well it's a mini I'm sure it'll be fun and um it doesn't doesn't necessarily deliver on that front yeah that go- cartin is kind of miss I noticed something that that that a bunch of us complain about was that dual clutch Transmission in that sort of taking off from a stop or and stop and go traffic uh it just sort of it it it lurches and you you go forward and then all of a sudden it feels like you're being kind of you go real hard off the line and then it kind of holds you back and I had passengers say can you drive a little more I'm trying it's not me it's the car yeah uh why why is that yeah so dual clutches especially du clutches of the pass in general um they're they're a little rough off of the line where it's it's taking to the timing of engaging the clutch off of the line and then along with that it's you know you have to have the with the turbocharge engine you know smoother engines with higher horsepower seem to pair better with dual clutches and when you start getting into small displacement turbos they're much better nowadays but especially in the past with small displacement turbos and you're having that um where the power comes on maybe a little too a rupt or it's a nonlinear power band that you'll notice some of that surging off the line so you have a delay in the transmission from the clutch you know engaging or the timing not maybe being as you know well tuned Then followed up by an engine that may not have that smooth or linear of a power delivery so it's a challenge there to get that down just like in the X2 there's issues there I would say it's slightly better in this situation in the mini but um but still overall not great especially when you look at how some of them perform today and how you know those issues I mean they still exist but they're not as prevalent and and I'll just add that there's an issue with the the engine idle the Auto Stop start system too where it doesn't latch or doesn't default to whatever you set it to so if you want it off yeah it turns back on every single time you restart the car and that also we noticed there was some additional delay to just add to that initial launch yeah going and that's that's some of these start stop systems are are are much better tuned this totally exactly this one you notice and you want to turn it off and then you turn it off once and you got to do it every time yeah you add that to the delay so now you have a start stop that's too soon to shut off and too late to start up exactly and now you throw a whole another you're just starting to addz P stuff on it's like hiccups and sneezes every time you start try to get the car off the which is not you know the mini now there is a setting in this car it's called go-kart yes there is there well sorry it's not a setting it's an experience so many loves their I mean this is and sometimes it's cool sometimes it's cool but but they love to to to kind of make ways to customize the vehicle and so like one thing you can do is you can make the tail lights flash as a uh as a Union Jack or as different symbols and things you can't make any obscene ones if someone's tailgating you but I'm I'm waiting for that um the but this experiences menu is is is on a little switch in the dashboard and there's like what like eight of them yeah SE seven or eight I can't remember how many yeah but there but there there's too many so it's like some cars will have like a sport mode or an eco mode or some cars will let you switch what the dashboard looks like because everything's screens now but this does both and it doesn't really tell you I found it it's cool it exists but yeah it doesn't give you much of any information as to what it's doing I think the only one that was pretty clear what it was doing was one where it started turning on the massaging seats and I was messing around with it and I switched to turn it off because I was like I don't like this and I wanted to get out of it and I went to a different experience and they didn't turn off and then I was panicking how do I turn these things off but yeah like you said there some of them are Drive modes like a sport mode and you know an Eco or a comfort mode and they Chang some of those driving Dynamics whether it's the steering or the throttle or anything like that and some seemingly didn't do any of those things and were more just interior themes for you know Aesthetics and some just kind of changed the interior the screen colors and the layout of things and so it was quite a confusing mix of not knowing exactly what it's doing and what you're going to get as you kind of cycle through all these different experiences yeah it I I can just picture someone getting in and saying oh I like the speedometer looking like that and not realizing that they've changed the the point the throttle response why is my car so loud all of a sudden uh which is which is interesting like even in the the go-kart mode I believe there's two tachometers come up and so and it's really it's also really busy screen and um yeah I found myself in Balance mode which I didn't know what it was but it starts massaging me like Kelly said and then I don't like being massaged and now I got to figure out how to shut it off while I'm driving and you know I eventually figured out you can just force it off by pushing the lumbar and that's that was my remedy I'm sure there's another way to do it but I couldn't didn't have the time to figure it out which there's a lot to learn right yeah if you're not going to sit with the owner's manual which we know nobody does uh we do but uh that's our job uh but if you're not going to sit with the owners if you're just going to get in the car and and you're driving it can be like really alarming when all of a sudden what what what is it doing um also maybe not alarming but just something we like to know a little bit more about and this is this is this is kind of your thing there are cameras inside the vehicle yes there are multiple cameras inside the vehicle so first there's an infrared camera behind the steering wheel kind of where the driver display it should be um again it's like a little pill-shaped uh camera back there and that one is used for um their what they call Traffic Jam assist mode which is Lane centering and adaptive cruise control but only at low speeds so when you're going in a traffic jam kind of below 40ish milph and following a car then this camera comes on and allows you to do handsfree driving so you can take your hands off the wheel you go into um assisted plus mode and it lets you take your hands off and then that's when that camera is active there's another camera up on the headliner uh near the rearview mirror and that one is looking looks like a camera camera it's total yeah clear as day that's a lens of a camera there and it's actually looking at the entirety of the inside of the cabin so what it claims to be doing is looking for occupants right says you know to know if occupants are in certain seating positions Etc that you can also take selfies and and send you know clips of videos work like a dasham if there's a crash and stuff like that yeah exactly but it's not really clear what it's for other than for fun but I looked in the owner's manual to read more about it and it said there was a way to turn it off and so I followed the steps and went into the the apps menu and looked for camera so that I could go into the settings we didn't have that in our settings at all so in the owner's manual how to turn it off seemingly you can't turn it off in our car so I don't know if that's an issue with the software if they forgot to put it in there or what so I ended up just putting a big piece of tape over top of it because I couldn't turn it off and uh yeah so that's that was a little disconcerting for sure so again we haven't fully tested this car this is just our our initial thoughts but but this is definitely going to look into that maybe talk to some folks from privacy team that's the next step exactly just to have them take a look at because you know it isn't it is common for cars to have driver monitoring cameras and it can be a very good thing if that information never leaves the car and is handle properly but the but the you know infrared camera versus uh high oh that's Keith driving that car is very a little bit different right exactly especially if you have young children or or other occupants in there that don't know there's a camera you yeah you want you want to be able to turn that thing off absolutely absolutely the other thing I found is the software in general and and and you know sort of reading our log so far everyone had some like kind of weird experience like when you turn the when I noticed when I turned the car on it said it couldn't find its tires and I'm thinking well that's that makes me very nervous yeah that seems like a problem yeah and then on the speed limit it's it's supposed to tell you what the speed limit is and sometimes it would just say limit right right I had that happen too and it wasn't very clear you know why it was saying that I noticed even when I drove it actually this morning on the way here I was on the freeway and it picked up the speed limit sign the posted one as I passed it and then it it almost like timed out so I didn't get off the freeway I was just driving regularly and then it kind of went back to limit it's like it should kind of know I'm still on the same road I don't know why it kept doing that it was kind of confusing little our test Loop out here um and then it went away which is just really strange and the other thing you know we had some issues with like Apple carplay Android auto things just skipping yeah every time you switch modes which I think it's an issue they know or I don't know if it's supposed to happen or not you change modes and your audio drops out just for a second usually it brings on a chime to tell you you just jumped into this yeah yeah one of those I believe yeah schaer back there just s yeah yeah yeah so younger audiences yeah I don't know yeah I don't know if it's supposed to do that just weird glitchy things that are maybe not like I don't the biggest annoyance but it's there you know I would say there was one big annoyance for me and that was in the FM radio station list both in the listing all stations and even when you got to favorites they were listed in alphabetical order by like you know w w this W that W exactly so regardless of whatever the actual frequency was I went and I checked I wrote a few down of what the order was and it was like you know this one was 1059 followed by 90.1 followed by 104 you know they were in alphabetic order and they didn't have the frequency listed with it so it was literally just an alphabet list of random radio stations so that's like uh it's like in Europe where they have like the digital audio broadcasting and they all have like funny names of the stations and stuff that would work I have no idea never come yeah someone's yeah it just feels like there's just some things that just didn't get quite need some refinement yeah yeah I mean there there are a lot of things about this this vehicle we we like um the visibility is great um the seats yeah yeah so you can fold the second row down in three sections so you can still retain um two adults back there two passengers back there and maybe fit some skis or some snowboards also the the front seat I do like the driving position I think most did as well as found the seat to be pretty comfortable you know there's plenty of adjustment everything seems well spaced the difficult controls are easy to reach which is a good thing or a bad thing but and um yeah overall I will say also about the transmission even though it is it has the lows speeed drivability ISS issues with you know the timings and delays it's it's pretty well it it's pretty well tuned at speed yeah and the shifts are crisp once you're up and going everything is smooth and it's actually a pretty nice experience there so not to beat up on the transmission too much but during when you have low- speed drivability issues where you're spending a lot of that time that's something you really need to take into consideration yeah and some of the things that I liked is you know the the cabin wasn't necessarily the quietest cabin in the world but it wasn't overly loud either I think it was just kind of what we were expecting it to be um and then the storage I actually thought there was some handy little storage nooks and crannies right there was a good spot really to put your phone on the wireless charger uh tucked away there there was some you know covered storage bins I think someone said it was a trash can technically but I I I don't think I'd use it as a trash can um and and you know some like tucked under little areas where that you can slide the armrest to have access to kind of some more open storage tuo so so that wasn't that was a positive I would say as well yeah absolutely and and and the fit and finish in the interior was interesting interesting yeah there were these interesting fabrics and mesh and and they combined a bunch of different materials so it didn't look boring it didn't looked cheap but it didn't look yeah it looked plush but I would say when you actually touch it it was a little bit scratchy including on the seats there was even a where the logo is on the back of the seat kind of was actually kind of scratching my back and snagging my shirt a little so it looked nice but again a little bit of scratchiness on the fabric yeah uh I mean all in all it's a it's a it's a bit of a mixed bag it's it's a car that that I don't think we're going to be kind of everyone's going to be fighting each other at the end of the day to get to the parking lot to drive it home the way they were with the old one but you know if you're taking a road trip you're one or two people you know it's something you know we're going to put it through our full tests and find out exactly how it performs we're going to spend a lot more time with it maybe there'll be a software update that fixes some of these weird things right um and and and and we'll see what happens so uh you know I I know everyone kind of said that we we it's a car that we kind of wanted to right yeah yeah we really wanted to love I think everyone really wanted those quirkiness to kind of you know be an added value but I think it was just quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness yeah so you know we'll see how it goes we'll spend some more time in it live with it a little more maybe put some skis in it over the winter and see if see if they actually fit yeah uh so to learn more about the mini countrymen you can read our uh our first drive uh at cr.org and if you sub subscribe easy for me to say to our newsletter we'll let you know as soon as the full review is out and all the numbers and the overall overall score and the road test and everything else so on to questions which you have gone to cr.org talking cars and submitted questions to us and we're going to answer them and if if you haven't what are you waiting for go to cr.org Talking Cars all one word to submit questions so our first question is from Karen who says I'm a longtime member of consumer reports and I would like to know if this is true I heard a long time ago that having a white vehicle is best for safety since others can see you is this true or is this an urban legend I love debunking urban legends yeah so we actually looked into this a little bit and we're finding some some information and and I think a research paper actually that mentioned that white um actually is statistically safer um for the color of of safe crashes right yeah so this is research from 2007 from monach University in Melbourne Australia and uh so a lot of differences I they don't have a lot of snow in in in Melbourne um but at the same time they said that the the results of their analysis looking at crash data uh identified a clear statistically significant relationship between vehicle color and crash risk compared to White Vehicles a number of colors were associated with a higher crash risk no color was statistically safer than white although a number of other colors didn't have uh different wer worse exactly and and um the association they was strongest during daylight hours um so yeah apparently in Australia in 2007 at least driving a white car is safer right and and the interesting part is you said this was during the day right so I just wanted to add you know at nighttime the car color doesn't really matter so much what matters are headlights so you want to make sure you're getting a car that has really good headlights both so that you can see visibility looking out on the road but also so that other vehicles can see you and one of the things that we actually look for and test here at uh the test track is if vehicles have automatic headlights and automatic high beams as well and what we like to look for is whether those essentially are default on right so if you turn them off maybe it's a mono stable control that kind of you know snaps back to being default on auto um so we look for that as well because it really is important to have good headlights so that you can see and others can see you as well I love coming by an airport like where the rental C terminal is at night and seeing everyone drive out and their headlights are off and they forget right yeah it's it's easy to forget especially if you're under you know all those overhead lights and you turn them off once and that's why we like to have them automatically turn back on so that if you forget no problem uh so I think the the answer is Karen if you want to buy a car that's like a fun color go out and buy a car that's a fun color I think uh you know it's it it's it's not a huge difference but yeah you might be a little bit safer who know according to this one stud so uh that was an interesting one to look up exactly uh Nick from Tampa Florida has a question I know you've discussed exorbitant destination charges on the show I noticed an $800 pre-delivery service charge when searching uh nearby dealers inventory but no destination charge another dealer has an $1,100 delivery processing and handling fee but no pre- delivery service charge the first dealers website says the pre- delivery predelivery service charge represents cost and profit to the dealer for they're just putting it out there uh it's the dealer profit fee I love it they're they're saying just say this is yeah for items such as inspecting cleaning and adjusting vehicles and preparing documents related to the sale nothing about transporting the car from the assembly plant to the dealer which is what a destination charge is but I see no destination charge this merely a new name for an old charge have you seen this before um so Nick I want to point out this is Nick from Tampa Florida um so I Florida is makes this unique uh so there are different charges here that you're seeing so a dealer has to uh on the window sticker of a car show a destination charge that is from the manufacturer it's the transportation cost of getting the you know getting the car shipped it's non-negotiable it's basically it should be baked into the price of the car but you know it allows them to say it's you know $ 39999 instead of $440,000 um so they so that is that is that is separate what you were talking about Nick are are sometimes they're called doc fees sometimes they're called they're called all kinds of different things and some states uh have rules about uh how much can be charged to Consumers how much dealers can charge some states don't guess which state doesn't and our friends over at Edge which is another great podcast in in in place it actually looked at it and they found that Florida has some of the highest documentation fees so these are fees that are just like like you said some of it it's just some of them are just dealer profit fees some of them pay for the cost of doing business but some of this are the ways that dealers make money the low volue on the price of a car or maybe they won't and then they'll throw on a $1800 pre- delivery service charge um so that's why I mean I know we've all bought cars I know we've all bought cars for CR this is like why we asked for the out the door price right yeah yeah I think yeah ultimately it comes down to what is the final price what am I going to be paying you know and they can hide added costs wherever they want but that won't matter if you still just aren't you know comfortable with the overall price and usually I always just am pretty when I go to buy a vehicle for testing I'm pretty straightforward with just I want to look at a breakdown of like get a purchase order and a window sticker put it side by side look at a few things I noce Vin etching is always in there and I noticed that's one thing you can just go and immediately say I don't think I want I'm not paying for that they go okay fair enough every time nine times out I've actually I've never had push back so that's one thing recommend you know look at the stuff it's okay to question it but ultimately really just not letting those charges get in the way and looking at the overall price and honestly if some if they're hiding charges like that that's a dealership I probably wouldn't entertain buying a car from so I wouldn't feel comfortable with you know that type of shadiness if you don't really know you know exactly what those charges are for and they're not willing to you know spell it out for you yeah I mean they're going to make their money somewhere so it could be the car I don't mind if they sell me a car for $500 and charge me a $25,000 you know $25,000 fee or they sell me a car for for for $24,000 with $100 worth of fees in the end it's what you're paying for the car that matters and the dealer's going to make money somewhere but this is this just feels shady I think it also though it does depend it it's it shows that it's different state to state like New York caps doc fees so you don't have those but you might have you know we when we bought cars in New York we found it's different than buying cars in Connecticut different than buying cars in Massachusetts yeah um the other thing that I've heard often is well we can't change that fee because then we'll be uh we we can't change the fee because we have to change the same fee to everyone otherwise we'll be accused of discriminating against consumers and fine then take it off the something else on the price of the vehicle you know negotiate that somewhere else right yeah transparency is is helpful and in looking and comparing the window sticker to you know all of the documents that they send you um you know make sure you're not just getting the document from the dealer that says this is how much you're you're being charged if you want to actually know the specific destination fee again look at the window sticker that's not State specific that's all vehicles sold in the US it will be on the window sticker of what the destination fee is specifically so you can look there for that and unfortunately if you live next door to the factory versus you live in the other side of the country it's going to be the same exactly it's going to be the same destination fee but again it's one of those situations where if a dealer if you you know this is why we start the negotiation before you even walk to the dealer so Nick you're you're doing the right thing so the next thing you're supposed to do is email that dealer and say you know show me the window sticker and you know I'm not paying you know what's the out the door price and then compare that with another dealer and do the exact same thing and if they try and throw one of these fees on at the end walk out um yeah dealerships there's there's plenty to go to if you're not satisfied or think that you know these hidden fees or fees that are getting thrown on at the end if you don't like how they're they're operating find another dealer yeah I had that happen actually with a dealer locally for uh brand I'm not going to mention um but we got there and they said oh there's actually a you know so the way that we we do it is once we've negotiated it we get a check printed so they can't take more money from me so I you know get in the office and I had the check and they said well there's actually an extra thousand fee that we oh I'm so sorry my sales guy didn't tell you about it so I said well I have a check for this much goodbye and I wasn't even to my car when they came running after me and saying just this once we just this once yeah um so and that was you know we're doing it anonymously so it wasn't yeah you need to bring a check for $1,000 best to every car you buy say take it a lesson learn I wonder if that would work I wonder if that would work anyhow uh yeah be careful out there and again it is it's state to state it's different uh but yeah they call different fees different things yeah and another thing to look for is when they're trying to you know say your monthly fee will be this many dollars right rather than talking about the total price over you know the the final price of the car um that's a way that some of those fees can kind of get mixed in and hidden in a way so make sure you're actually looking at the total price of the car and then break that down by you know the monthly payments rather than saying if you're willing to pay this much per month that's kind of how they get that yeah in there of course if you you know because you're you're watching talking cars and you subscribe to Consumer Reports you know that you already go in there with your financing all set up so you know how much your monthly payment is going to be we have a bunch of information about car buying about destination fees about dock fees about the tricky things that that dealers try to do to make a little more money off of you uh they're all over at cr.org which is also where you go cr.org talkcar is to submit your questions about buying a car about the color of the car about how a transmission works and uh we'll answer them if you send them to us thanks so much for joining us we'll talk cars again soon\n"