The public never usually hears about it, that's why. There are entire companies that specialize in tearing down products and selling reports to customers.
It's not the total price that's a shocker rather they needed to pay $55,000 over the list price. That's way above average even if it's chump change for a major car company.
They didn't even need to, they just didn't feel like waiting in line, or locating a non-Founder's unit to purchase. They must have enough cash allocated for buying cars that they just don't care. And of course there's nothing wrong with that.
"Just didn't feel like"? Presumably they believe there is tremendous time-value attached to the information they want.
If they were in that much of a hurry they wouldn't have waited until March to buy the thing.
This is a company with a $54B market cap and a 2015 pre-tax net income of $10B out of $150B in revenue. Yeah, I think they can spare an extra $55,000 now and again.
Exactly. In fact, $200,000 is a rounding error for a company with $150B in revenue.
Can spare sure, but this looks more like how a middle manager can quietly hand 50k to a friend.