John Oliver: "the host decided to stick it to the industry by purchasing $14,922,261.76 of medical debt owed by 9,000 people — the biggest collective prize given out by any TV show in history. And yes, he played a clip of Oprah Winfrey giving away cars. “F— you, Oprah,” yelled Oliver."

Nope, you can either reject the prize or deal with the consequences, no middle ground. Which means you have to deal with paying license fees, etc. to take possession of the car before you can turn around and sell the car for whatever value you can get from it in cash. Then you have to pay tax on the manufacturer's suggested retail price, which is usually higher than what you could actually buy the prize for and most certainly higher than what you will be able to resell it for.

I have a friend who won a ton of stuff on the Price is Right, including a car, a jet ski and grand piano, and she said if she had it to do all over again she would have rejected the prizes outright because the hassle and work it required to get rid of the prizes wasn't even worth it after taxes. For instance, they just dropped off the grand piano on the front lawn of her apartment building. Same deal with the jet ski. She was this broke early 20s girl and had to pay guys to move the piano into her STUDIO apartment and then it took up practically all the space in the apartment until she finally got someone to buy it off of her. The jet ski was in her parking space and she had to park on the street until she sold it. In both cases it took a long time to find a buyer.

The fees she had to pay to take possession of the car were such that she had to max out her credit card because she had to pay the registration and I think the sales tax or something like that. Then she just turned around and drove it to CarMax to resell for a percentage of the cost.

I think she won $55k in prizes or something like that and after it was all said and done she netted like 6-8k.

/r/offbeat Thread Parent Link - ew.com