What is Employee Pricing?

Volvo

Article QuickTakes:

• Who gets employee pricing?
• What are the caveats?
• What kind of discounts are we talking about?

Automakers generally offer special discounted pricing to their present and some past employees. While every employee pricing program is different, they tend to align on the basics. We’ll walk through the common characteristics of these programs, some caveats, and a few examples.

Who Gets Employee Pricing?

Typically, employees, retirees, and their immediate family can take advantage of these discounts. Manufacturers may put additional restrictions on their programs, such as requiring that current and former employees put in a certain amount of time at the company before being eligible.

Automakers generally have separate discount purchase plans for employees of suppliers, friends and (extended) family, and employees of the automaker or its dealers. Employee pricing is occasionally available to unaffiliated consumers as part of a limited-time sales promotion. Discounted prices often apply to both purchased and leased vehicles.

Those wishing to use employee pricing have to provide some sort of proof of eligibility with the dealership to unlock the discount. This can be a company ID for employees, a special code, or a voucher or certificate. If you’re not the employee, you may have to ask them to arrange the proof.

What are the Caveats?

Any good discount is accompanied by fine print. Each manufacturer has its own set of rules about who can use the discount, which models they can get, and how many vehicles the discount can be applied to per year.

The dealer can opt out of providing the car at the employee price, especially in cases of vehicles that are in high demand and/or have low production numbers. The automaker itself can also exclude specific models from the program, such as newly launched vehicles.

Also note that these rules can change whenever and for any reason. For instance, when supply-chain issues restricted availability, Nissan dropped the number of annual vehicle discounts an employee can claim for themselves, friends, and family from 12 to four.

Special pricing can’t always be paired with other discounts from the dealer or manufacturer. For better or worse, these are often no-haggle prices, and it pays to cross-shop any discount with others that may be available, such as those through a warehouse club or membership group.

What Kind of Discounts are We Talking About?

The majority of automakers offering employee pricing don’t publicize the programs. For the most part, just seeing the employee price or the rules governing it requires a special code or corporate login. Below are the programs that provide some details with example pricing where available as well as a list of companies that have employee purchase programs but don’t share information about them. This list is not exhaustive and programs may be modified or discontinued at any time: