11–20 of 28 posts
Is there anything close to CarWoo for the used car market? I recently purchased a three year old car, and when researching how car dealerships work, it seems like the pricing for used cars is substantially different than new cars, making used cars much harder to make sense of. With new cars, you're dealing numbers that aren't impossible to come buy -- MSRP, dealer invoice, holdback, buyer incentives, and dealer incen…
Is there anything close to CarWoo for the used car market? I recently purchased a three year old car, and when researching how car dealerships work, it seems like the pricing for used cars is substantially different than new cars, making used cars much harder to make sense of. With new cars, you're dealing numbers that aren't impossible to come buy -- MSRP, dealer invoice, holdback, buyer incentives, and dealer incen…
Looks like the "I prefer to be contacted through email" selection is broken...
Or
NYC area car dealers are extremely pushy and brazenly ignore said request...
;)
The data that would have been valuable in showing the value of carwoo is how its price compares to what non carwoo buyers who negotiate on their own pay, or even the no-haggle fleet pricing which is available via AAA, Costco and others.
Not trying to be negative but this data compares MSRP to carwoo price, but no one buys at MSRP anyway. The data that would have been valuable in showing the value of carwoo is how its price compares to what non carwoo buyers who negotiate on their own pay, or even the no-haggle fleet pricing which is available via AAA, Costco and others.
How is it different from eBay Motors? Most of the cars have free carfax, they have cheaper pricing to get the car history and I am covered by eBay buyer protection [1]. eBay Motors: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Honda-Accord-EX-2008-honda-accord-ex... Carwoo: http://carwoo.com/new-car-prices/T85363842-2014-mazda-mx-5-m... [1]: http://pages.ebay.com/motors/buy/purchase-protection/index.h...
Founder/CEO here. This data is from hundreds of thousands of offers made by dealers on CarWoo! This is likely one of the purest sources of new car pricing anywhere. Would love to answer any questions.
Can you tell me what sort of larger car/suv has the best ride comfort-to-mpg bang for the buck under 35k that can also fit a 200lb Newfoundland? If only car sites alllowed for this sort of discovery process!
Fitting a 200lb dog is a matter of perspective too. What do you mean by fitting? I have a 100lb dog right now and he fits into my crv just fine, but he fits into our Odyssey a lot better. He can lie completely spread out, doesn't have to curl up, etc.
Sites that have tried to do things like this in the past have been very cumbersome and ultimately unuseful.
You need to decide if you dog can fit into a compact SUV or if you need a medium sized SUV/crossover. There is a big difference in size/mpg/and cost between those two categories of vehicle.
If you want a compact SUV look at ford edge/subaru forester or outback/mazda CX-5/toyota rav4/honda CRV or subaru tribecca on the compact, but larger size. The CRV will have your best real world mpgs there, but gives up a lot in power.
If you get into larger crossover/SUVs you should look at the honda Pilot/toyota highlander-4runner/subaru tribeca/mazda cx-9/ford explorer or flex (if you don't care about off road at all).
The problem is they all have their good and bad things and some of the stylings are way off. Also, reported mpgs and real life mpgs are sometimes very different. The best thing to do is to troll user forums for these vehicles and learn as much as you can. Good luck!
It is important to remember that a middleman service operates either on a flat fee or a commission. This is money the dealer cannot use to negotiate down with you. I do not know CarWoo's sales structure, but TrueCar makes 300-400[1][2] per sale. So if this is data based on CarWoo deals it will not reflect the best deals, because the cars all had to include this price. Now, that said most people are not prepared or comfortable buying a car or negotiating. Given that you get some degree of anonymity and can haggle back and forth online is nice and you are paying for the convenience. Many people will likely save more money than if they tried to do it on their own.
This is an application of the wisdom of crowds to determine a market price. It is a good indication of what the market is willing to pay, but not the best deal you can get. Savings as a representation of MSRP are misleading; think about how many things you buy off the shelf and the price is usually much less than MSRP for any number of per-store pricing or sales, coupons, etc. Car buying is no different.
In the case of the model I am looking for, the CarWoo price is close to the two offers I got on CarWoo, but the offers I got directly or through my bank are much lower( Best Direct quote I received was through my Bank's no haggle direct car buying service, which is about 7% lower than the CarWoo average).
Mean averages on their own are not very helpful in evaluating offers, perhaps if we saw a distribution or standard deviation? Prices over time (later in the model year should higher prices be used in the average, are they still relevant or should they at least be weighted?) would also be good for the car buyer.
I also have a hard time believing CarWoo would publish this information if it were not in the best interest of their customers (the dealers, car buyers are the product). Therefore, I would be lead to believe that this data only serves to keep buyers from trying to negotiate lower rates based on the average. Then again, maybe a tech startup has not yet considered this and just thought it would be cool to share data and be transparent.
It's a cool service and it's probably a good fit for many people. You could also just create a new email address and use a google voice number for privacy reasons. At any rate, I would advise you to do your research and try every tactic and service you can to optimize your wallet spent and time spend.
[1] http://www.dealerelite.net/profiles/blogs/true-car-and-zag-c... [2] http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/12/truecar-versus-hond...