When Total Price is NOT Total Price

...when the phrase is used by a car dealer!

I was at a car dealer today looking at cars -- not an experience I recommend to anyone, and in fact, as a general rule I don't do it, but since I hadn't in years I thought I would "test my assumptions" to see if they still held true.

Price lies? Check.

Value-based pricing? Check. (Q: "What's the price of this car?" ---> A: "It depends. How much money to do you have?")

Pushy salesmen? Check.

All of the vehicles which had "price stickers" (and not all did) had a section on the label in big bold black letters like this:

TOTAL PRICE*: $15,345.23

Notice that little asterisk?
You can probably guess what it means.
If you looked elsewhere on the label it has a section where it explains what the asterisk means.
It means that the "total price" shown is not the total price, because it does not include this-long-list-of-extra-stuff-whose-amounts-they-did-not-care-to-specify.

I'm reminded of the movie Princess Bride, where the annoying know-it-all bad guy keeps saying the phrase, "Inconceivable!", despite the fact that, due to his having made that remark in reaction to an idea just conceived and expressed in his presence, it means that the thing in question that he is saying is inconceivable, is, quite clearly, and shown with direct recent evidence, *conceivable*. I've given a rather detailed and pedantic explanation of why what he said is ridiculous, but what I really loved is what the Hero says to him after hearing it said too many times, and the Hero becoming annoyed (or amused) at it. He says:

"There you go using that word again. I don't think it means what you think it means."

That was my reaction today at the car dealer. "Total Price" indeed!

I don't think it means what they think it means...