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The Best Strategy To Buy A Car Online - My ExperienceMar 28 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line I am a happy customer, and you can be too.
The following describes my experience buying car online and the technique that should allow you to get the best price (be it online or offline). Happy Customer In September of 1999 I decided that I have to buy a new car. After visiting several dealerships and finding out how rude and uncooperative they were, I read an article about 2 online car-buying services. I am not talking about “referral” sites like Microsoft's CarPoint or Autobuytel. I mean sites where you can really buy a car like you would buy a book on Amazon.com. These were CarOrder.com and CarsDirect.com. Both gave me good prices for the car of my choice (2000 Mitsubishi Galant ES - http://www.epinions.com/auto-review-48DC-55AA47E-37F8D991-bd1). In fact, I ordered 1999 model, but they didn't have them so I got 2000 model - improved and with more options for the same price (which included the rebate for 1999 model)! And the price was below Dealer's Invoice Price (the price dealers pay for the car), so I went to 2 dealerships after that and test drove a car (unfortunately you cannot do this online!) and than, after showing them the printout of the price I can get online tried to make them beat this price. They couldn't even match it, so I went home and “proceeded to checkout”. I got my car in less than 2 weeks. They could deliver it to my home (free!), but I decided to pick it up, so they gave me a limo to get there (again, it was free). The entire experience was great! You can choose options and see the price immediately change to reflect it. You can also get approved for lease or loan online - on the same site. As you can see, I am the happy customer. Unfortunately, CarOrder.com does not exist anymore, but CarsDirect is still around (it recently acquired GreenLight), and there are new players. The Technique This is what I did and will do the next time I’m shopping for a new car. 1. Decide what car and options you want. Manufacturers’ web sites and CarPoint.com, Intellichoice.com, Crashtest.com, CarAndDriver.com and others allow you to evaluate the car’s performance, safety and reliability. “Consumer Reports” magazine is a good source of reliability data (but occasionally I find their handling evaluations misleading – they called Galant, that won the midsize car compario by “Car and Driver”, “unimpressive”). Manufacturers’ web sites sometimes let you choose the trim level and the colors and see how it will look. For example, Audi’s web site allows you to choose one of three “atmospheres” and then among several colors of interior. 2. Go to CarsDirect and other web sites and see the price for the configuration you chose. Print out the complete invoice with all options and fees (destination charge, sales tax, registration, etc.) You will be able to use it to negotiate the price with a dealer. 3. Look at newspapers and visit several dealers. Don’t tell them you have the pricing from the web site, test drive the car first. Try to test drive the car you selected – same options and colors. During test drive, it is best to ask the dealer to be quiet and see all aspects of car’s handling. 4. If you like the car, start to negotiate. If the price is too high, show them the printout from the web and ask if they can beat the price. In my case, two dealerships couldn’t. 5. If they can’t beat the web price, go ahead and buy the car online. This way, there is no need to haggle much and you know that you are getting the best price.  |
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