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Amazon Vehicles

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Re: Amazon Vehicles

#61

Post by rudedogg »

simonsarris wrote: post #4

Before you laugh that you'd never use this to buy a car, it may be worth taking the time to find your make/model and add it to your "Garage" on amazon. Amazon will then try to confirm or not if the cabin air filter you are about to buy is a correct fit for your car. Amazon tries to do the same thing with camera gear. At least, that's the theory. In practice you still need to do 100% of the due diligence or you'll end…

I bought exhaust bolts this way, and of course they didn't fit. The spacers on the bolts were longer than the OEM bolts, so fumes would go into the cabin. Lesson learned..

It would be nice if they fixed this problem. I saw a ton of parts that incorrectly said they'd fit my vehicle. Windshield wipers are an easy example. You'll see varying length wiper blades they say will fit.

Edit: It seems like they could favor search results matching specific vehicles to combat this. For example, a part should be viewed as less relevant for claiming compatibility with more vehicles. This would be problematic for universal stuff like tires, wiper blades, and other accessories, but I'm sure they could differentiate between the legit universal stuff and the seller's who claim their part fits every vehicle in existence.

I'm sure this is harder than I'm making it out to be, I can't imagine all the edge cases they have to deal with. But some effort would really help, and I'd be more likely to buy this stuff online if it wasn't so damn difficult to verify that the part is compatible.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#62

Post by vvanders »

overcast wrote: post #43
hardwaresofton wrote: post #27

Yes please. Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.

Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done. As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it…

This is the only way to do new car shopping. Get the price + windows sticker in writing over email. Send it out to all the dealers in the nearby area and tell them they have your business if you can beat the deal.

Repeat 2-3x, pick the lowest price dealer and be willing to walk out the door if anything funny comes up.

Also quite a few dealerships are directly or indirectly part of a franchise so they won't compete with each other. In that case you usually need to expand your radius to ~100mi. Here in PNW there's great Subaru competition but when we looked at Mazda they didn't haggle at all until we went to dealers in a different state.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#64

Post by skykooler »

paulrosenzweig wrote: post #7

I wonder if once Tesla fights back all the local monopoly regulation around dealerships, this will naturally transition to an online car dealership. They'll have to figure out test drives though.

I note that Tesla is one of the brands listed on Amazon.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#65

Post by vvanders »

Analemma_ wrote: post #50
hardwaresofton wrote: post #27

Yes please. Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.

The thing is, we almost had this already with Saturn. There were dealerships, but all the cars had fixed prices- no haggling- so it was almost direct-to-consumer, with a bit of added tax for the useless middleman. It was great! But it built up too much resentment at the rest of GM so it had to be killed. It sucks that we're just now starting to get the future we already had, but better late than never.

Yup, thankfully Tesla is carrying on that torch. Went from Saturn -> Tesla and the new purchase experience was very similar(aside from ordering the Tesla on a website).

I think Saturn showed that the model most consumers want is going to have to come from a non-incumbent who doesn't have the baggage of existing dealers.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#66

Post by overcast »

vvanders wrote: post #62
overcast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done. As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it…

This is the only way to do new car shopping. Get the price + windows sticker in writing over email. Send it out to all the dealers in the nearby area and tell them they have your business if you can beat the deal. Repeat 2-3x, pick the lowest price dealer and be willing to walk out the door if anything funny comes up. Also quite a few dealerships are directly or indirectly part of a franchise so they won't compete wi…

Yes, when it comes to a lot of luxury European cars, cities typically only have a single dealership, and there isn't much wiggle room. Ended up with one back home 240 miles away. Picked it up my way home for Thanksgiving right off the thruway. Pulled into parents with the new ride :)

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#67

Post by bluedino »

I don't really get what this is - if I want to find parts for my car, I can just type something like '2012 Honda Accord Wipers'

I already have my car in my 'garage', they've had that functionality for years.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#68

Post by andykellr »

overcast wrote: post #43
hardwaresofton wrote: post #27

Yes please. Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.

Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done. As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it…

I did the same thing when we bought my wife's 328 wagon 2 years ago. I emailed about 5 dealerships with a PDF of the options + msrp and they all got back to me in a day or two. I sent a followup email to the others to see if they wanted to beat the best price I received and they all said they couldn't.

I also ordered mine because we wanted a specific set of options like adaptive cruise control, upgraded sound system, but no navigation and a very specific color combination that we couldn't find anywhere.

Our other car is a Tesla and while I prefer ordering online and checking out with a credit card, emailing multiple dealers was pretty painless.

EDIT: If you're curious why we didn't want navigation, this video explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/hCDt02UXzkQ Not to mention it's really expensive, hard to input destinations, I generally know where I'm going, and phones work great.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#69

Post by bluedino »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #27

Yes please. Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.

You need the dealership to handle the trade-in of your used vehicle. Selling to a private buyer can be (but isn't always) a pain.
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