acuraguynj

Has anyone bought their car via carsdirect.com or autobytel.com or any one of those other online services?

Could be a possibility for a little cost savings, but if the car is hot, I guess it will be sticker price everywhere.

I did here that when some of these online car stores opened, they would take losses just to promote the website. But now during this time, those good days for consumers are over. Please advise your comments!

Guest

I don't think so. The price I got from the dealer is much better than what online order places like greenlight.com offered...Plus, where do you take your car if there is a problem? Dealers always give you a hard time if you didn't buy the car from them. I know they shouldn't but they do, too much hassle. Autobytel just sends your request to a dealer anyway. Just pick a price several hundred above invoice and they should agree if you make your intentions clear. Invoice even if they are REALLY desperate.

Water Rabbit

Total waste of time.

Most of these services don't do anything for you besides refer you to a dealer that they have an arrangement with. Most will not give you a quote via email.

The one service(out of three services that I tried) that did arrange for a dealer to quote me a price via email, referred me to a dealer who gave me a price slightly below sticker for a car which he didn't actually have on the lot to sell me.

That was the best service's performance (autobytel was completely useless).NONE of the services that I tried referred me to a dealer who actually had the model and color I was looking for.

The dealers will not want to tell you over the phone that they don't have what you are looking for. It's all designed to get you to a little room where they can go to work on you the way they always have.

These are all services for dealers - not consumers. You end up paying more since the dealers have to pay these services somehow to pump customers at them.

Want to save money? Find out from Consumer reports what the dealer invoice is for your intended vehicle, and do some searches on this website for some of the past posts on this board about stupid dealer tricks.

Next time I think I'll hire someone else to grub it out for me.

Guest

I bought my car from Carsdirect.com. After going to 3 dealers in NJ no one matched the price I got from Carsdirect. It took about 2 days for them to find a car with the color and options that I was looking for. The car was at Acura of Princeton and all I had to do was pick it up there.
The dealer spent over two hours giving me the grand tour of my new TL. My experience with Carsdirect was very good and Acura of Princeton was excellent!!
One dealer I would never buy a car or parts from is Brunswick Acura (IMO).

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