ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I have been monitoring True Car for a used vehicle and I think it has great potential. It's like an enhanced buying service with more data like a sales price bell curve and days on lot/ price changes for used cars. The PenFed buying service is run by true car. I plan to speak with a dealer I trust to see how they feel about true car but of course expect they will say they can meet or beat.
Here's what I have not figured out about "True Car" - they say these are prices reported by customers, but I think they say this excludes dealer installed/offered options.
So what if one person reports getting a 'great deal', say $24,000, and another reports a 'good deal' of $25,000, but...
What if the one who reported paying $24,000 bought $2000 'worth' of near-useless, or at least questionable value, but high profit margin, dealer installed options (pin stripe, clear coat, rust proof, maybe extended warranty, etc). The dealer is looking at the whole package, and probably made more profit by dropping the price $1,000 if he could tack on $2,000 of extras. Who got the better deal, $26,000 ($24,000 reported) or $25,000 out-the-door? And I don't think we know any of this.
That makes it questionable to me. At any rate, I did check it, and often the delta of 'good' to 'great' was just one or two hundred dollars? I'm trying to avoid a major ripoff, $100 or so isn't exactly a screw job, through of course we'd all like an extra $100 in our pocket.
-ERD50