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Amazon Vehicles

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211–220 of 258 posts

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#212

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've been had surprising good luck ordering automotive parts from Amazon. I stripped some caliper bolts on an 90's truck. I needed a heli-coil(odd size one), and a new bolt. When ordering the program suggested new caliper bushings. Everything fit perfectly. I thought, if they can keep accuracy of orders spot on, and prices cheap; they will put a huge dent in the automotive parts market. That said, I've noticed when A…

Amazon likes to put local businesses out of business, doesn't it? It's like Internet's WalMart

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#213

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 don't understand this trend of spending 1k for a mattress. Bought this 200$ one and it's the best bed I ever slept in: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005A4OP8Y/ref=oh_aui_sear...

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#214

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 don't think amazon will start selling car now or in the near future. The subtitle below "amazon vehicles" logo says "see specs, read reviews and ask owners". It looks like it's just a forum kind of thing at this moment. And we know there're huge amount of legal issues people needs to deal with when sell cars as well as financing, leasing etc. If amazon gonna launch this, it's going to be a huge product, huge enough…

Disclaimer: I work for a company selling cars online. These are my personal opinions, not my employers.

First let's assume that Amazon can't sell new cars due to restrictive franchise laws in every state.

You are easily off by an order of magnitude on the billion dollar business statement. Carmax is the largest used car dealer in the nation, with a market cap of over 11 billion. As of 2015 they captured about 1.7% of used car sales. (They sold 582,282 vehicles to consumers and over 33.8 million used vehicles were sold, I'm on my phone so I can source this later if you'd like)

Second Amazon is an beast and anyone in a market that Amazon is considering should pay careful attention. That said I think that vehicle sales is such a different market in many ways that Amazon will either take a long time to figure out the whole process and provide a consistent quality product or they will acquire a company currently in the used vehicle market. The two leaders in the online space had a huge leg up due to ancestry or acquisition. I doubt Amazon would be stubborn enough to learn the business the hard way.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#215

What's really interesting about this business model is not the fact that you can buy a car online, it's the price transparency that you create with this: Car dealers often have 10-20 % margin on a car sale, and they make most of their money by providing services to you after you bought the car, so they are usually able to give you some big discounts. Also, as they usually receive a bonus by the car maker for selling…

What makes you think it is using JATO instead of one of the other configuration products like Chrome or KBB?

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#216

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…

I tried to buy a car via email. I picked out four different cars (a Kia Optima, a Honda Fit, a Toyota Prius, and a Subaru Outback) and emailed all the dealerships for those cars within a three hour drive. None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them. I eventually went to t…

> To this day, I'm still getting emails and phone calls from some of the dealers I initially contacted and there seems to be no way to make it stop

that's why i always use an different email/google voice for dealing with these sleaz- ahem, persistent salesmen

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#217

Has anyone used Costco to buy a new vehicle? Their program isn't direct or anything, but you're supposed to get better prices than working with a dealership directly. I've been curious how much below invoice they are. The closest one is 4 hours away from me, so I'm not a member (and can't see prices).

tried to get a quote from Costco but it wasn't really that great.. abou the same quote i got from simply emailing a dealership

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#218

Has anyone used Costco to buy a new vehicle? Their program isn't direct or anything, but you're supposed to get better prices than working with a dealership directly. I've been curious how much below invoice they are. The closest one is 4 hours away from me, so I'm not a member (and can't see prices).

tried to get a quote from Costco but it wasn't really that great.. abou the same quote i got from simply emailing a dealership

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#220

Has anyone used Costco to buy a new vehicle? Their program isn't direct or anything, but you're supposed to get better prices than working with a dealership directly. I've been curious how much below invoice they are. The closest one is 4 hours away from me, so I'm not a member (and can't see prices).

We weren't overly impressed. Costco price was ~$2k above what we ended up negotiating separately.

Did you bring your own financing, did you let the dealer find you the best deal? A lot of dealers bump the APR on your loan and get the majority of that higher APR back from the lender as a finders fee.
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