Anyone else ever see this...Distributor Installed Options?

Way back in the 80's and 90's my grandfather (family business) owned a Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge and Jeep/Eagle Dealership. My grandfather referred to those dealer / port add-ons as "Upstairs Charges." He used the term, Upstairs Charges because the money received from those crazy over priced add-ons went upstairs to his office and ultimately in his pocket. Not too mention, the only way to make a money on Chrysler products back in the 80's and 90's was to add as many Upstairs Charges to them as possible.

For example, my grandfather contracted me to install tape pinstripes on the Laser / Daytona, LeBaron / K-cars and the Mini-Vans for a flat labor and parts fee of $25.00 per unit. He would mark-up those pinstripes to $199.00 per unit. When the customer would question the charge he would immediately discount the pinstripes down to $100.00 leaving him with a nice fat profit and the customer thinking he or she got a deal. He did the same with tons of other add-ons including undercoating, which to this day, I'm still not exactly sure as to what undercoating is other than a sticky gooey tar. He never gave away the add-ons, he just gave the impression that the customer was getting a massive discount on the add-ons.

When I purchased my 2017 Tacoma I remember dealer installed items / charges very similar to those listed in the original post. Only after I started walking toward the front door, did those "Upstairs Charges" magically disappear.

 

$400 for an exhaust tip and some plastic stickers is pretty damn insulting....but $450 for a $10 bottle of "protector" that I highly doubt was even applied properly or maybe applied at all!

Fucking criminal is what that is.

 

Which dealer?

 

all of them in TX.OK,LA.AR,etc.

 

Well, it seems so but that isn’t accurate for all the dealers in DFW. But yea, a lot of them try to maximize profit with all of those bullshit options.

 

Unfortunately right now they can and do whatever the f they want and someone like me will buy it. But I did the same to them with my trade in... I’m sure they still came out ahead. They always do but at least I got some of that back.