I’m interested to see if anyone has purchased a Triumph from any dealer in Texas and what the various fees truly are. After receiving a quote from a few dealers I noticed a few “gimmicks” that the dealer uses to beef up their profit. I have used a system to purchase automobiles in the past and it follows as basically having car dealers bid competitively against each other. It consists of faxing the fleet/sales manager at 15-20 dealers across the Texas/Louisiana area and requesting a bid from each of them. Usually I receive approximately 10 bids back and once all the bids are in I then contact the highest dealer asking if he/she could beat the lowest bid. I go through this cycle usually just one more time. I have purchased cars for up to $2500 below INVOICE. The best part about is I never walk into the dealership till the deal is complete, this system outdoes any of the free online bidding sights because they are usually paid for by the dealer. Ok, now back to the main question. I am attempting to determine what the “holdback” and various legitimate fees that Triumph dealers receive from the manufacture. For Honda, Yamaha, etc. this information can be found at www.cyclebuy.com, but they don't have anything for Triumph. I wish they did but since they don't I have to do it alone. What I'm speaking about is for example Honda pays each of their dealers 3% of the base MSRP of the car. On top of this Honda also has other means to give the dealer more money in the way of “X” dollars for each car, but this is different for every dealer. If I knew what the “holdback” was of the Triumph motorcycles I would be able to determine around what the true cost the dealer pays for each motorcycle. I am willing to pay for freight because this is a legitimate fee that the dealer pays and it should be exactly the same cost for every dealer across the entire United States. Still I had one dealer try to raise their profit by $100 just by quoting me $500 for freight when the actual cost is somewhere between $400 and $450. In Texas dealers are taxed by the State a Dealer Inventory Tax, I refuse to pay this tax because it’s a tax by the State to the dealer, its not sales tax (i.e. from the State to the purchaser), but one dealer tried to pass his tax onto me. Also he attempted to charge me approximately $300 for assembly/set up, what a joke. It’s the dealer’s responsibility to put the motorcycle together, so they pay a guy $10 an hour to assemble a motorcycle but charge me $300 for it. Now comes the title, inspection, license fee one quote was $150 when the true cost (as determined by the fees that the State of Texas charges which is publicly posted) is approximately $50 to $60 for all inspections, registration, and licensing. The best one was the $50 documentation fee, he was going to charge me $50 to fill out the paperwork that he gets paid to fill out. In the end the grand total of “gimmicks” is $550 of fake fees that the dealer wanted to use to increase the profit. The age old answer for this is well he has to make a profit to stay in business. Think of it this way, he receives probably something around 3% of hold back, so for a $8300 motorcycle that comes to $250 plus the difference of $250 between MSRP and Invoice, so that’s $500 right there plus $550 in “gimmicks” making a grand total $1050 of pure profit, which in the end is 13% of the selling price. If anyone has any suggestions I am open for them, I firmly agree that the dealer should make a fair profit but I refuse to to be lied and cheated to. Also if anyone is in the process of purchasing a new automobile I would suggest either doing it alone by using http://www.fightingchance.com/ or pay paying someone else to do it for you at http://www.checkbook.org/auto/carbarg.cfm.