When a Denver-area TikTok user named CJ realized she would soon have to replace her wrecked Toyota, she had one problem beyond choosing the right vehicle: she did not trust herself to negotiate with a car dealership alone.
“Can I borrow someone’s dad or husband to go with me to buy a car in Denver?” she wrote over a video of herself sitting inside a vehicle.
There was a reason she could not simply bring one of her own.
“My dad’s dead. I’m also a single lesbian,” CJ explained, before getting to the concern behind the request. “It’s pretty well known that car dealerships rip women off.”
The post quickly took off, accumulating more than 6,000 comments from strangers willing to help.
A woman asked the internet to help her negotiate with a car dealership fearing she would get ripped off otherwise
Among the most popular responses came from a woman named Lydia, who said she had already discussed the situation with her husband.
“My husband and I talked. We will go with you,” she wrote. “He’s an industrial mechanic and automotive mechanic. I’m an A class top tier b**ch. We got you.”
The comment received more than 174,000 likes, and CJ immediately appeared interested in taking the couple up on their offer.
“What’s your schedule like?” she replied. “I’m waiting for my insurance check to come in the mail. I’m sending over the title tomorrow. I’m looking for a Tacoma or 4Runner. Mostly because Toyota saved my life a month ago.”
That reply itself received more than 53,000 likes.
Others decided expertise was unnecessary if intimidation could accomplish the same job.
“I’m a 6’6” bearded giant,” one man volunteered. “I hate talking to people so I’ll just stand behind you with my arms crossed looking pissed.”
More than 38,000 people approved of the strategy.
Another commenter offered solidarity with considerably less confidence in the outcome. “As a gay man, I’ll go with you,” he wrote. “But we’re both getting ripped off.”
Then came Randy.
One woman offered CJ the services of her father, describing him as almost the exact opposite of the six-foot-six volunteer but apparently far more dangerous to a dealership’s profit margin.
“You can take my dad! His name’s Randy!” she wrote. “He’s tiny, like the little old man from Up, standing at barely 4’9”, and looks like a cutie patootie! But that man has ALWAYS walked out of a dealership with the best deal,” she added.
“They never know what hit them.”
Some viewers questioned whether CJ actually needed a new car or was simply looking for attention
Mariana Plozner/Pexels (not the actual photo)
As the story spread, some people began wondering whether the entire setup had been exaggerated for engagement. CJ responded by explaining why she was suddenly shopping for another vehicle at all.
According to her, the Toyota she had recently lost was a 2026 4Runner she had owned for only three weeks.
“So I’m not being a shady person. I do need a new car,” she said in a follow-up response.
CJ explained that she had been working a wildland fire assignment and made the decision to use her personal vehicle because her employer would compensate her an additional $150 per day.
Then something went badly wrong.
“I hit some washboards and I rolled well over 300 feet down a steep rocky embankment,” she said.
She said she had recently finished her wildland season after “bouncing around a lot” and was waiting for the insurance company’s check to arrive. Once the paperwork and title were handled, she would have to return to a dealership and replace the wrecked SUV.
The accident also explained why she had narrowed the replacement search to another Toyota 4Runner or Tacoma.
As she had already told Lydia, “Toyota saved my life a month ago.”
Researchers have found evidence that dealers treat women differently
Antoni Shkraba/Pexels (not the actual photo)
One of the best-known experiments came in 1995 from economists Ian Ayres and Peter Siegelman, who sent testers into car dealerships using carefully standardized negotiating strategies.
Across more than 300 paired audits, dealers quoted significantly lower prices to white men than to women and Black customers behaving according to the same script. Earlier results from the project found that white women faced markups roughly 40% higher than comparable white male testers.
While those findings were striking, later research challenged the outcome.
A 1996 Journal of Political Economy study using actual transaction data found that average and median dealer markups did not significantly vary by race and gender once other purchase characteristics were considered.
Factors such as the vehicle, local market, trade-ins and dealership financing did a better job explaining discounts. The author noted that the result appeared to conflict with controlled experiments showing discriminatory treatment.
Vladimir Srajber/Pexels (not the actual photo)
In other words, there is evidence that women can receive worse offers, but that does not automatically mean every woman ultimately pays more for the same vehicle.
Financing provides another area where a measurable gender gap has appeared.
A Marketing Science study published in 2023 analyzed transaction-level data from a 20% random sample of U.S. dealerships between 2004 and 2015. It found that women paid a statistically significant 0.6% greater dealer interest-rate markup than men
One experiment found the gender gap disappeared when women showed they knew the market price
Vitaly Gariev/Pexels (not the actual photo)
A large 2013 field experiment involving auto repair shops tested how businesses responded when male and female customers appeared knowledgeable or uninformed about prices.
When callers appeared uninformed, women received higher quotes than men. But once customers stated an expected market price, the gender difference disappeared.
Researchers concluded that shops changed their behavior depending partly on how informed they believed the customer to be. Women were also more likely than men to receive a discount when they explicitly requested one.
Recent surveys suggest the perception continues to affect women even when it cannot be translated directly into a universal price premium.
A 2025 US survey of 1,105 women who had bought or leased a vehicle within the previous five years found that 31% said they had been talked down to or not taken seriously, while 26% believed their gender affected how they were treated.
“I love this comment section.” The TikTok community came together for CJ
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