Today's Giveaway Prize
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Frontpage Deal
Free CarWoo Car Buying Service & 50% off Plus Service Plan (expired)
CarWoo is offering a free car buying service for one car. Instead of having to contact various dealerships to haggle over price, CarWoo allows you to shop the dealers anonymously. The savings potential can be fairly significant. If you prefer the traditional way of buying a car, we have a car buying guide. Thanks thelnel52
They also have extra 50% off their Plus Service Plan (search up to 3 cars as well as myriad of other unique features) for $49 To search for a car:
Original Post
CarWoo [carwoo.com] is a car buying service that basically takes all of the steps described here and wraps them up in a neat package.
EDIT: Just to be clear, there is a Free service if you already know what car you want to buy. The $49 is if you want to check 3 different. In a nutshell, you start by entering a particular make and model that you're looking for, along with your contact information. CarWoo! passes along just your first name, and solicits bids from local dealerships. The dealerships can see each others' bids, so they're incentivized to beat each other. Once the bids come in, you can communicate with the dealerships from within CarWoo's system (counter-offer, etc.). I personally tried it a couple weeks ago. I found that the original offers were already better than what I was seeing from TrueCar [truecar.com] in my region. It took a couple days to get an offer, but once I had an offer, another dealer chimed in $1,000 cheaper. If you already know exactly what car you're looking for, the free service should work just fine. If you're looking at more than one model, the "plus" package allows you to choose up to 3 more cars. The cost is normally $99, but if you follow the link above, it's $49.
Wiki Community Board
This can and should be used by you to post updated deal information. Be sure to read this because it may contain answers to your questions!
FAQ:
1. Is there a fee? Not unless you are looking for more than one car. If you already know what you want, you can sign up for the free service. If you want to search for 3 more cars, the price is $49 with this deal. (instead of $99). If you sign up for the free service using the link above and later want to add cars, the $49 price will still be valid. 2. Does it work for used cars? No 3. Do I need to give my personal information? Yes, but the dealers won't see anything but your first name. They just know that "Jeff from Monrovia" is looking for a Camry XLE. 4. How does this compare to TrueCar [truecar.com], Costco, Etc.? The Zag group of options (TrueCar, AMEX, Overstock, USAA, etc.) give you instant prices, but pass your information along to dealerships and don't have a mechanism for negotiation. Costco isn't quite as transparent as the Zag sites. Each dealership that participates will have a "Costco price sheet" that may or may not be the same as the prices they submit to Zag. You have to contact Costco, they put you in touch with a dealer, and then you see the price. Again, no built in mechanism for negotiating. Here, you tell Carwoo what you're looking for, and you have to actually wait for a dealer to come back to you within the program. The advantage is all the other dealers can see what prices you have been offered, so it operates like a reverse auction. Also, you can counter-offer from within Carwoo without actually passing along your phone number, email, etc.
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http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2...-the-deal/
If you're saying that shoppers pay a fee indirectly since the dealers pay to work with CarWoo!, I suppose that is accurate, but it's no different from the $x/lead or $y/sale that a dealership will pay to Edmunds, Truecar/Zag/Yahoo Autos, etc.
Anyway, if you're presently looking for a car, I feel like it couldn't hurt to have one more angle on the deal. If the bids you get are shitty, just go to the dealer and do it better yourself.
Will try car woo also next time along with my usual venues. Unfortunately the cars I buy are usually tough to get discounts on since they're not cookie cutter type cars tons of people buy & the dealers have hundreds of on the lots.
Thanks to all who respond.....
but i guess $49 is cheaper than going, driving to several dealers and wasting several hours doing this.
I tried carwoo / edmunds / usaa and also setup a new email account and contacted about 20+ dealers within 150 miles of me. I did a bit better than anything those services could provide me.
I used Cars.com to find a list of dealers within X miles of my house, visiting their websites and copying their internet sales email addresses. From there I emailed each dealer with my initial opening email. Out of the 20 dealers about 16 responded personally, and from those 16, about 10 actually continued correspondence. The lowest price I received with those services was around $27k, before all taxes/title/fees.
Here is what I was able to negotiate myself.
$31,951.00 (Dealer MSRP)
$29,567.00 (Dealer Invoice)
$24,792.00 (Negotiated Price)
Granted I did do this over the course of two weeks, and it was near the end of the month. It takes some leg work, and timing, but I think you can get better results doing it yourself. You just have to make sure you are not in a hurry, so you are always able to walk away. I also think if I lived in a larger metropolitan area I might have received more responses. And as always, your mileage may vary.