I live in NJ and purchased a used car from a NY Lexus dealer back in January.

I finally received the refund check for the excess REGISTRATION fees I paid. This is after a slew of emails and phone calls to several people at the dealership and Lexus corporate.

2 line items on the original bill: DOC FEE of $75 (NY state limit of $75), and REGISTRATION fee of $475.

The actual title/reg fees were about $75, so I assumed I would get a refund check for $400.
They sent me a check for $275 along with an itemized list of charges, which includes "SERVICE FEE FROM (xxxx AUTO TAG)" for $125, which is the agency/courier they hired to run the docs to NJ DMV.

My understanding is that the REGISTRATION FEE is supposed to ONLY include the fees that are paid to the DMV for title and registration, and IF they decided or needed to use an agency/courier then that would've been covered in the DOC FEE (again, $75 NY state limit).

I sent an email back to dealership to clarify this, and also emailed NY DMV. Spoke to NY DMV on the phone and they were worthless.

I don't "need" the $125, but I am a person of principle and always concerned about establishments with bad consumer practices. So I just cannot let this go until I get to the bottom of it.

It's just not crystal clear to me whether they have a right to charge me for the agency/courier fee under the REGISTRATION FEE line item.

Any advice?

 

Pretty standard. I had same fees with my Urus. 3rd party reg company not doing it for free. Dealers are not allowed to reg out of state themselves, so use a 3rd party. And my fees were way higher.

 

Ok. But did they charge you the courier/agency fee within the REGISTRATION FEE line item, or was it within some other line item such as DOCUMENTATION FEE?

 

I actually never got a breakdown, sadly. Just seems I didn’t get as much back as I had calculated. So I’ll chalk it up to various courier fees, etc. As much as they should have provided a breakdown, I can’t be bothered following up. To be clear, it wasn’t the dealership charging me these fees, it was the 3rd party registration agent. Not to say the dealer couldn’t be getting a kickback, as the dealer is the go between.