Yup. To better illustrate. If dealer A sells a $30,000 car for $24,000 then adds $5,000 in dealer fees (NOT TT&L), or dealer B sells the same car for $29,000 with zero dealer fees - no difference between the two. OTD just muddies the waters.
Right, it muddies the waters, but only if the details are not disclosed. There would be useful clarity in comparing those two stories if what the one buyer got for that $5,000 was known and whether any of those items were a mandatory condition of the sale. Even an overpriced extended warranty in that $5,000 could make for a meaningful difference to some prospective buyers.
A common omission in these stories is the disclosure of a trade (or lack thereof), not often mentioned in these posts. A sweet off-MSRP deal (or at MSRP these days) to one buyer with a trade might not be available to another buyer without one or if the trade value was well negotiated by the buyer. Though more a factor in pre-pandemic times and at some time in the future, a dealer might be willing to make little or no money on the new car sale if he can make his bones in other areas, the trade being chief among them.
The only price that matters is the selling price after dealer discount off MSRP plus any bogus fees they try to add to compensate for the discount which if taxable, you can negotiate. TTL and any rebates do not count and you should never focus on negotiating the OTD price. You focus on the actual selling price of the vehicle, minus any incentives that go on top of the dealer discount as a cherry.
I agree that TT&L are not relevant since these are non-negotiable items. If one did find a way to reduce sales tax by crossing jurisdictions that might be relevant to readers in the same locale, but the details would need to be provided as an addendum.
Rebates are a different matter. When I was shopping in the summer of 2020, folks were reporting $1,500 manufacture rebates while none of the dealers in my region were offering it. The reasons for that could be one of several but suffice it to say rebate programs may not be national or dealer obligatory. As a consequence it would be useful to a prospective buyer to know that a rebate was applied or whether none was available, as another addendum.
On the subject of the "where", it's not very helpful to a prospective buyer to post a sweet deal without saying where they got it along with the other details of the transaction. So far as I can tell, there is no prohibition here about saying which dealership or even salesman did the selling.
In the end, there are two kinds of posts: the ones to establish bragging rights and the kind that are intended to be helpful to prospective buyers. In either case, the devil is in the details.
