Here’s a pet peeve that apparently a lot of people have: drivers who keep the dealer license plate frame on their cars after they purchase them. (And here I thought I was the only one who had a problem with this.)

Sure, leaving the dealer license plate holder on your car isn’t the biggest problem in the world today, but why do so many drivers do this? Thankfully, the answers to this question appear to have been finally answered. But are they legitimate, or do they just present a whole new set of issues?

As the person who posed this question to the Reddit community recently wrote: “Maybe ~80% of cars I see in the US still have the dealer license plate frame on. Not just cheap commuter cars, but luxury cars, sports cars, modified trucks – i.e., drivers who seem to care about their vehicle. To me, it’s like wearing a pair of pants with the size sticker still on them.”

Why provide the dealer with free advertising?

That’s actually a pretty good analogy. My issue with it is that you either just paid thousands of dollars to the dealer, or are now indebted to the dealer for thousands of dollars, and you willingly are giving them free advertising every time you take your car out for a spin? Why?

I am not alone in this way of thinking either. The top comment on the post reads: “I took mine off and replaced [it] with a plain one cos I ain’t advertising them for free.”

Many more similar comments followed, like, “This! It comes off, along with their emblem on the back, right when it hits my driveway.”

Another person wrote that they knew a guy who had the dealer remove their emblems as a condition of the sale. He wouldn’t take delivery until they were off, and if they refused, he told them he would walk away. “They caved quickly,” they wrote.

Someone else concurred and explained, “I make the dealership take off any emblems. They can deal with the risk of damaging the paint.”

“No one would buy a large screen TV that has the store’s logo on it, don’t know why anyone tolerates it on their vehicle,” was another great answer.

Not everyone is bothered by the dealer license plate frame

The top answer appears to be, “Because it bothers you more than it bothers them.” That got over 300 upvotes.

“Simple as that,” someone else agreed, while another comment read, “What’s the point of the effort?”

Other reasons given for not taking the dealer license plate frame off:

• “I cannot be bothered.”
• “I give zero s—- about what my car looks like.”
• “For me, it’s pure laziness.”
• “It’s a frame, it works? Pragmatism.”
• “It never crosses my mind.”
• “Because I actually like my dealer and hope they do well.”

Perhaps the most reasonable response (at least to me) was when someone commented, “It’s just a car to a lot of people. And that’s fine.” To which another person replied, “And my clothes are just clothes. But I still take the sales tag off.”