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CarWoo is shutting down

carwoo.com

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Re: CarWoo is shutting down

#62

Post by IgorPartola »

prostoalex wrote: post #58
IgorPartola wrote: post #53

Not haggling for cars is IMHO definitely anti-consumer. That's the last bastion of defense a buyer has against a giant information void they are facing. Square 6-12 dealerships against each other in a deathmatch for your money and watch the price drop. Until actual sales prices start being disclosed (not the meaningless invoices or the less than useless MSRP), we will never know the true price of a car. It's a one si…

It's not like TrueCar and Costco don't exist.

Well, first, TrueCar doesn't exist: http://www.truecar.com/. Second, what does Costco do for you in terms of getting a better price? In either case I don't believe they deal with pre-owned cars, which is really the best bang for your buck IMHO.

But yes, my main point is that we should not just submit to the will of the car dealers and take their "best price everz" as gospel. Things like CarWoo and TrueCar need to exist, if only to protect those less likely to haggle face to face.

Edit: oh, TrueCar does exist, just looks super spammy.

Re: CarWoo is shutting down

#64

Post by erik_landerholm »

MBCook wrote: post #22
mrfusion wrote: post #2

I was totally going to use them to buy a car next month! Are there any good alternatives? I can't handle anymore haggling and tricks.

If you're a USAA member, I know they have a car buying service to make things easy.

The service is still up and running. It is also run by truecar.

Re: CarWoo is shutting down

#65

Post by tommy_mcclung »

Killah911 wrote: post #33

Would really like to find out why they're shutting down. I ran a virtual car dealership for a while and then started a similar site to carwoo, before carwoo. It was absolutely crazy. Six months into it, both my cofounder and I decided it was best to shut it down (amid concerns that his employer might just end up getting all or a significant chunk of our work). The auto industry is a very weird one. Entrenched in thei…

I'm going to work on writing this up. Lots of reasons and it deserves a detailed post-mortem.

Re: CarWoo is shutting down

#69

Post by prawn »

I assume that their new work with a competing site means that they wouldn't be interested in trying to sell CarWoo? Otherwise it often surprises me that people abandon their efforts without at least trying to sell the codebase/database as a starting point to someone else.

Re: CarWoo is shutting down

#70

Post by ovulator »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #19
uptown wrote: post #10

Am I the only one that doesn't mind the car-buying process? All it takes is the fortitude to sit through a litany of maneuvers trying to convince you to agree on a price - when you've got zero obligation to consent. Sure - it takes time, which is a scare commodity for many - but for the amount of money generally being spent, I've got no problem pushing a salesperson to get the price to where I want it.

I have a fond memory of going with my roommate when he was buying a new car. He had a decent amount to give as a down payment. Armed with the knowledge of how much the dealer pays, he basically walked in, said he'd buy a certain car for a certain amount and not more and handed them his down payment check. The salesman took the offer to his manager. He returned with a counter offer. My roommate didn't budge. After thr…

"Armed with the knowledge of how much the dealer pays"

That is key, most of us don't have that.

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