It’s a frustrating time to be a car buyer right now. Markups are all over the place. Not knowing who is marking up what, or being told one price over the phone or email and then being hit with a markup when you get to the dealer, can be frustrating. Luckily, someone out there has all of our backs. That person created a website that tracks markups all over the country and lists them in one place.
The website is called Markups.org. Friend of the site Zerin Dube on Twitter, though we don’t know who made it. Whoever created it, though, put their reasoning in a small post called Why make website tracking markups? on the forum of the site:
My hope is to have a single source for open public posting of markups dealers and retailers are adding to their goods. maybe this will keep them a little more honest and competitive? Ha!
The site is simple but brilliant. You can search markups by state, brand, vehicle year, and even the dealer’s name if you have the information.
Clicking on one of the listings gives you a little more detail, with things like possible pics of the vehicle, the dealer’s name and the vehicle’s make and trim.
The best part of all of this (aside from the existence of the site itself): Anyone can create an account and upload any markups you come across.
A community-backed site for keeping track of how greedy dealerships are? This has the potential to be pretty big, especially with the market right now. If enough people get behind this it could work in the buyer’s favor. While some dealerships aren’t fazed by bad publicity, a collection of their greed in one place could hurt their business. And if everyone has markups and is hurting for business, those markups just might come off. Looks like I’ll be a little busy adding listings to this thing over the next few days.