Ali Benli sat across from a buyer in the finance office of the David McDavid Honda store in Frisco, Texas. He asked the question. "What monthly payment works for you?" That line is not a negotiation tool. It is the first move of a system the FTC calls payment packing.

It sounds like the finance person is trying to fit the deal to your life. What it does is hand them control of every number behind the one you just gave them.

The FTC voted 5-0 to file an administrative complaint against Asbury Automotive, the parent company behind three David McDavid dealerships in Texas. The complaint names Benli by title: general manager. He asked buyers that question. What followed was not a negotiation.

The stores got buyers to agree to a monthly number higher than the real cost of the car. Then they packed the gap with add-on products the buyer never chose. A survey of those buyers found that as many as 75 percent were charged for products they did not ask for and did not know they had bought.

The signing process made it hard to catch. Buyers signed on screens that showed only the line where their name went. Not the full document. Not the list of charges.

Payment packing is not a character problem. It is a system flaw.

The problem is not that dealers are greedy. The problem is that the monthly payment question hands the dealer control of four levers at once.

When you give a dealer a target monthly number, they can move the car price up. They can push the trade-in value down. They can stretch the loan from 60 months to 84, or even 96. They can add products, gap insurance, paint coats, service plans, at $15 or $20 a month each. Your monthly number stays the same. Everything behind it shifts.

The monthly payment becomes a fixed frame around a moving picture. The buyer watches one number. The dealer moves four.

The average payment on a new car loan hit a record $772 late in 2025. At that level, a $30 add-on barely shows up on the monthly bill. A buyer paying $350 a month would catch it. A buyer paying $772 would not.

More than one in five buyers now pay over $1,000 a month. Every dollar above the real cost of the car is room to pack.

Nearly one in four new car loans now stretches to 84 months. A longer term hides the total cost in smaller monthly slices. The higher the payment and the longer the term, the more room the structure creates. The mechanism does not depend on any one dealer being dishonest. It depends on a structure that rewards the question and punishes the answer.

Karl Brauer spent years as an auto industry analyst and executive at Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader. He puts the fix in one line. Demand the out-the-door price. Refuse to discuss monthly payments until that number is locked in writing.

Once that is clear, three moves follow from it.

When the finance office asks what monthly number works for you, do not answer. Say you want the full out-the-door price first, every dollar figure on its own line. This forces the dealer to show all four levers at once instead of hiding them behind a single number. It requires you to sit in silence while someone across the desk waits for a number you are not going to give.

Get the price of the car in writing before you mention your trade-in. Then get the trade-in value in writing as a second, separate line. When these two numbers are joined into one talk, the dealer can raise one while dropping the other. Split them and each one has to stand on its own.

Walk in with a rate from your bank or credit union. If the dealer beats it, you win. If they do not, you already have your number. The financing lever is no longer theirs to move.

One buyer who ran this full sequence came out $4,800 ahead. The vehicle price dropped $2,400 below the first offer. The trade-in came up $1,200 over the first number. Outside financing saved another $1,200 in interest over the life of the loan.

Running this sequence on your next purchase does something the monthly payment question never did.

You see the real price of the car, split from the financing math. You see the trade-in as its own deal, not a cushion for the seller. You see every add-on as a line item you can strike. You see the total cost of the loan in dollars, not in monthly slices.

At the end of the deal, before you sign, ask three things.

→ What is the total out-the-door price, with every fee and product on its own line?

→ Which of these line items did I ask for, and which were added by the store?

→ What does this loan cost in total dollars, not monthly payments, over its full term?

That is the difference between a deal that sounds right and a deal that proves itself on paper.

Creators lock in holiday calendars 90 days out. Structure commissions, recruit creators, and optimize your creator affiliate strategy before the rush with Levanta's 90-Day Holiday Sprint. Get the Free Guide.

Benli's finance office has not changed. The question has not changed. What you know about that question has. Payment packing works when the buyer gives up control of the sequence. It stops working the moment the buyer takes it back.