[Aces4]

Originally Posted by BrianL99

Perhaps because CarMax is constantly being sued for misleading customers, not providing Titles for the vehicles they sell and generally have the worst reputation of any major automobile seller in the USA?

They are great to sell a car to ... they'll buy any piece of crap and pay all the money.

Just like the standard car dealerships, right?

[raananh]

Originally Posted by Aces4

I'd rather have a purchasing situation like Tesla buyers have available.

Amazon is selling Hyundai cars online for in last 2-3 months. Fixed price.

[jump4]

Try the Costco car buying service! Skip the hassle.

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by jump4

Try the Costco car buying service! Skip the hassle.

I tried it. See Post No. 57. In my case, the Costco buying service was completely worthless. Just a gimmick by the dealer to get you into the dealership.

[Babubhat]

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

In this article, I’ll take a close look at a few popular types of car-buying services and help you decide whether or not a car-buying service is right for you.

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by retiredguy123

I tried it. See Post No. 57. In my case, the Costco buying service was completely worthless. Just a gimmick by the dealer to get you into the dealership.

4 years ago the Sams service worked very well.

[BrianL99]

Originally Posted by Babubhat

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

In this article, I’ll take a close look at a few popular types of car-buying services and help you decide whether or not a car-buying service is right for you.

Almost every recommendation, is "powered by TrueCar".

Using True Car to get a good price on an automobile, is like calling your local fox, to get a recommendation on which fox you should hire to protect your hen house.

[tophcfa]

Originally Posted by Babubhat

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

In this article, I’ll take a close look at a few popular types of car-buying services and help you decide whether or not a car-buying service is right for you.

Perhaps I am overly cynical, but when making a large purchase like a new car I want to be sure that the process, including negotiations, that are taking place on my behalf are focused exclusively on my best interests. I don’t trust that the motivations of any car buying service puts my best interests as their primary motivation. For that reason, I will always try to control the process as much as I can and do the negotiations myself.

[CoachKandSportsguy]

Originally Posted by tophcfa

Perhaps I am overly cynical, but when making a large purchase like a new car I want to be sure that the process, including negotiations, that are taking place on my behalf are focused exclusively on my best interests. I don’t trust that the motivations of any car buying service puts my best interests as their primary motivation. For that reason, I will always try to control the process as much as I can and do the negotiations myself.

fact check: TRUE

any service advertising / selling / buying on your behalf, always will have a profit motive behind it, to pay for expenses, time, labor, technology, advertising, whatever.

Its your budget and your money, if you are happy with the cost of the purchase, great. .

Just don't be that smug trivago check out customer in the orange/red jacket who always thinks he has the lowest cost, you really never know. .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_QG6lYjI0

[BrianL99]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

fact check: TRUE

any service advertising / selling / buying on your behalf, always will have a profit motive behind it, to pay for expenses, time, labor, technology, advertising, whatever.

Attached is a reasonable synopsis of how "Auto Buying Services" work.

You need to read between the lines. While the "Buying Clubs" will all tell you they have an "arrangement" with specific dealers. That's not exactly true and the arrangements are no where near as specific as the clubs will lead you to believe.

The "arrangement" the dealers make, always have the caveat "subject to availability". This gives the Dealer the ability to vary from any supposed fixed price "guaranty" they promote, based on their interpretation of the availability of a particular model.

[CoachKandSportsguy]

Originally Posted by BrianL99

Attached is a reasonable synopsis of how "Auto Buying Services" work.

You need to read between the lines. While the "Buying Clubs" will all tell you they have an "arrangement" with specific dealers. That's not exactly true and the arrangements are no where near as specific as the clubs will lead you to believe.

The "arrangement" the dealers make, always have the caveat "subject to availability". This gives the Dealer the ability to vary from any supposed fixed price "guaranty" they promote, based on their interpretation of the availability of a particular model.

This description is how a GPO, Group Purchasing Organization, works.

I have worked with commercial ones which buyers pay a certain discount, and then the GPO collects a percentage based upon the total dollar volume of their member purchases.

And yes, I was involved due to a federal lawsuit against us, as we did not provide accurate information and payment to the GPO for their fees, and i was tasked to validate /document /calculate the correct fees owed. We under reported by $50M in fees which was a sales rep using an old report, and customer addresses not being accurately matched to the GPO customer listing.

matching addresses on several 100,000+ customers between systems is tedious and time consuming, and only the exceptions were done manually. . . spelling and accuracy does become an issue.

[retiredguy123]

When I used the Costco buying service, which is free, I was convinced that the Toyota dealer that Costco referred me to was only a participant in the Costco service because they wanted to use it to get potential customers to visit the dealership. In my opinion, this was a fraud by both Costco and the dealer.

[VApeople]

Originally Posted by tophcfa

I will always try to control the process as much as I can and do the negotiations myself.

Yeah, I am the same way.

We compute our Out-The-Door price we decide to pay. If the dealer does not accept that price, we leave.

At least that is how we did it in Fairfax County, Virginia, when we wanted to buy a new Honda Accord. We would compute the OTD price we wanted to pay. If a dealer did not accept that price, we would leave. Then we would increase our offer by $100 and go to another nearby dealer. Eventually we would find a dealer who would accept our offer.

Well, things have changed. Last week, we wanted to buy a new Toyota RAV4 at Phillips in Leesburg. They had very few cars in stock. We made an OTD offer, but they did not accept it, so we increased our offer by $800 and they accepted it. We left our 2003 Acura as a trade-in and drove the new car home.

We are very happy. The new car is almost exactly like our wonderful 2019 Toyota, which we enjoy driving every day.