mkaresh

I created a site that enables quick, thorough price comparisons. A new feature I recently added instantly converts all prices to monthly payments.

Page for the TL:

www.truedelta.com/models/tl.php

Riu

nice.

Nicki

you created that? wow! nice work

Hawhyen51

Yea, True Delta is a site for anyone who plans on purchasing/leasing a vehicle. Michael has done a superb job gathering and putting together valuable pieces of info for the consumer.

neuronbob

Awesome site! So when are you going to do your Superbowl ad to present it to the world?

mkaresh

Thanks for the compliments.

I'm hoping to avoid the Superbowl ad route. I want to be able to provide all the information free of charge to people who participate in the reliability study, and that means keeping costs down.

Long term I hope many magazines and automotive websites will use my site as a resource, and spread word that way. I've had a few express interest already; once I have some reliability data things could snowball.

So far I'm collecting data on only the 2005 TL. I'm about halfway to the minimum for the 2004, and one car short for the 2006.

vandido626

great work!

sushi96720

very informative!

zeezz

very cool site, best of luck to you and i'll be sure to join the panel / use the site in the future.

kamal

get this when I try to open the link

mkaresh

I'd love to know what caused that error. The links are working fine for me, and it seems for many other people. But I'd like them to work all the time.

chill_dog

I bookmarked True Delta some time ago after checking out a link Michael put in one of his posts...great site.

mkaresh

Thanks.

If you haven't visited in a while, it's looking much better. People kept telling me that my "design" was, well, ugly. So I hired a professional. Not much experience--guy didn't even have his own home page at the time--but I liked his approach and took a chance on him. Very satisfied with the results.

slapmesilly

mkaresh

Nice, I hope this works out for you in the long run.

I signed up as a 2006 vehicle for you but haven't received an email confirmation. Maybe I haven't waited long enough.

Also, I went through the TL pricing and on step 5 your site indicates a charge for hands free link, I think it was $130(?) and a charge for Navi. You are obviously charged for the Navi, but isn't the voice activation standard?

kamal

dunno what caused it... all I did was click that link

chill_dog

I noticed the difference when I checked out the TL page you just finished. Your guy did a great job . Now, I didn't see anything wrong with the previous version, but I could see how people didn't find it aesthetically pleasing...people like a little bit of glitz; something that just puts the data out there is ok, but something that has the data with flashing lights is better. Personally, as long as I can get the data, I don't care if it's in a pretty package...of course, now you have both ...look out CR!

Oh yeah, seems you need some 04's...think I'll go sign up (meant to before, but didn't get around to it).

mkaresh

I you don't receive a confirmation email pretty quickly it probably means your email has a spam filter that doesn't like my host's IP. I have this problem with at least 5% of all addresses, and some people say it's probably higher than that, I just don't receive a bounce notice.

I'm going to switch to a new host soon. Hopefully this will clear that problem up, because it's been driving me nuts.

mkaresh

Oh the feature values on Step 5: these are standard values I assign to the features, not the prices charged by a specific manufacturer.

My system works by having you select features rather than options. This way no one has to know what feature are included with other features or what is in each option package. I provide the standard values as a rough guide to the additional cost of each feature.

The advantage of this system is more obvious with something other than a Honda, since Hondas have few factory options.

slapmesilly

Ok, that explains it, thanks. It does seem to be a much better way for a consumer to look at it and compare.

chill_dog

Got my confirmation e-mail...had to rescue it from my Junk E-mail Box as usual, Bill Gates strikes again!

The interesting thing about having the cost of options it that it shows how consumers get gyped with option packages...you want one or two things (~$1k) but have to get a $3k option package to get them...kind of like cable TV...it'd be nice to only pay for the channels I want...

mkaresh

Have you tried pricing just one car? Do one with many option packages. When you price one car, the program actually reviews the automatically selected packages and states the percentage of their value you actually requested.

In the future I hope to provide the resulting data to the manufacturers. For reasons of manufacturing efficiency they need to have packages. But often the packages just don't make sense. Better data on which features people actually want to buy together might help.

Lister00169

That site is better than most professional automotive sites (e.g. edmunds).

Excellent job

mkaresh

Thanks for the compliment, I appreciate it.

It has always baffled me (and a number of others in the industry) that so many people use Edmunds to price a car. Unless you read the details in the pop-up window carefully (do many people do this?) it's very easy to order things together that cannot be ordered together, or to not order a prerequisite for the features you did order. Edmunds does nothing automatically for you, and it will price a configuration that you cannot actually order.

It wasn't so long ago that Edmunds had systematic errors in their pricing. It used to be that if, say, a CD changer was $200 on the LX trim and $300 on the SE trim, that Edmunds showed the same price for both trims.

Sites like autosite and carprices.com are much better than Edmunds.

The strength of my site is that you only need to know what features you want. It automatically selects packages and trim lines. The disadvantage is that you might get packages that include too much stuff you don't want to pay for, and thus have to go back and deselect some features to drop them. I provide the information necessary to do this, but it could be easier.

mkaresh

New feature: I'm now tracking low-cost financing. You can get 2.9 for 36 months on the TL right now, for example. To find out how much you save this way, price a TL against itself, then select 3% for one and market rate (6% with ideal credit) for the other.

ding069

wow very nice