Unfortunately there is some truth to what the dealer told you, Subprime lender's are notorious for charging "acquisition fee's" and they can often be very expensive. Some lender's have Aq fee's that are set amounts depending on tier (ie tier 1- $300 fee, Tier 5- $1,000 fee), other lender's have their acquisition fee's set up as a discount percentage of the amount financed based on tier (ie a low scoring tier may be a 20% discount fee).
This is tyipically only encountered in sub-prime financing, although alot of captive lender's do have small aq fee's like Well's fargo may charge $79-$599 depending on tier.
I have personally seen fee's as high as $4000 dollar's.
The way it works is let's say Santander approves someone on a vehicle for $10,000 with a 15% aq fee, they will disburse $8500 to the dealer's bank account when the loan fund's. The customer finances the full $10,000, and will have to repay the full amount even though the lender really only bought the contract for $8500.
As far as "lead fee's" I know Capital One doesn't charge these fee's to dealer's, I am unfamiliar with Prestige though so I can not answer that.
