Anyone here used Truecar?

[kyrax12]

Planning to search for a new car off that website.

Kind of hesitant to provide real life information to it though.

 

[postmortemIA]

their prices aren't the best you can get.

edmunds.com has nice forum called "Values & Prices Paid" that can give you pretty good insight on what's the best you can get on popular vehicles.

 

[kyrax12]

So I have to enter personal information to get a certificate.

Is it advisable that I do that? I am kind of hesitant.

 

[Greenman]

I tried it, totally sucked. They sell your personal info to every dealer within 50 miles. The certificate they give you is a meaningless piece of paper, the only value it has is to get you in the door so the salesman can grind away at you for the up sell. Every dealer that contacted me said they had "exactly" the vehicle I wanted on the lot, not a single one did. All of them tried to move me into a much more expensive vehicle that they had in inventory.
It was a complete waste of time and a very frustrating experience.

 

[kyrax12]

I tried it, totally sucked. They sell your personal info to every dealer within 50 miles. The certificate they give you is a meaningless piece of paper, the only value it has is to get you in the door so the salesman can grind away at you for the up sell. Every dealer that contacted me said they had "exactly" the vehicle I wanted on the lot, not a single one did. All of them tried to move me into a much more expensive vehicle that they had in inventory.
It was a complete waste of time and a very frustrating experience.

Ah I see.

What website do you recommend?

 

[Maximus96]

just do it the old fashion way thru email, pit dealers against another until you find the lowest price that the others won't match....

 

[kyrax12]

just do it the old fashion way thru email, pit dealers against another until you find the lowest price that the others won't match....

I was heavily considering email, though with my past experience with emails.. They sometimes don't get answered.

 

[CLite]

I used it and it worked very well. They give your information to three dealerships, I got a quote on a car that was below invoice (not MSRP, but invoice). I told the other dealers that I purchased a car and they stopped contacting me.

YMMV if you have terrible dealerships around you, but maybe truecar is vetting them? I suppose if you are completely paranoid you could get a burner phone for absolutely dirt cheap and some throw-away email address.

If you are some negotiating guru you probably could beat the deal but it was completely hassle free from my perspective.

 

[Uppsala9496]

used Costco once. Was a nice experience.

 

[overst33r]

I was heavily considering email, though with my past experience with emails.. They sometimes don't get answered.

I used this guide http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1001920/ to get a car for my sister this weekend. Started emailing 5 dealers (all were responsive) Thursday and drove off with a new car on Sunday. Got it for well below the Truecar price.

 

[waggy]

I tried it, totally sucked. They sell your personal info to every dealer within 50 miles. The certificate they give you is a meaningless piece of paper, the only value it has is to get you in the door so the salesman can grind away at you for the up sell. Every dealer that contacted me said they had "exactly" the vehicle I wanted on the lot, not a single one did. All of them tried to move me into a much more expensive vehicle that they had in inventory.
It was a complete waste of time and a very frustrating experience.

same.

I will add that when I went to the dealership they refused to honor the price
(16,999). they had the vehicle at $18,something online. They were trying to tell me the car was $21k.

 

[Scarpozzi]

All those car referral companies are out to make money. True car and the car buying programs (NRA has the same one many others use)... They actually will connect you with volume dealers that will give you decent prices. In my market, they come in a thousand or more under what the local dealers are willing to do. I just window shop on new vehicles more often than not.

If you do any of them, feel free to give out your mailing address, but use a trash Email address and setup a google voice number for the phone calls....you'll get called at least 10-20 times per dealership on the list and get tagged by their auto-spammers.

I purchased a new car a few years back
**For those that told you they had the vehicle on the lot and didn't...I know how to fix that. I talked to 2 dealerships that told me they had the inventory I wanted...when I tried to confirm, they kept telling me they lost the inventory (was on other lots in their network). Finally, I called a third dealership and they had similar issues, but upgraded the order to get me the closest thing they could, but didn't charge me for the extra features. I was dealing with dealerships 100-200 miles away. I had them confirm EXACTLY what they had and fax me a copy of the invoice with their sales price, including tax. I then put a binder on it using my AMEX and drove there with a check for the exact amount of the sale. If you do this, you're working all over the phone and don't have to worry about their squirrelly crap when you get there. You can threaten to walk with the check if you have any problems and retract the sale via AMEX...they'll work with you because they know how sketch dealerships are.

 

[Chess]

My suggestion is to find the car you want....... with all the options.....

Then look around at different dealerships and wheel and deal......


I actually did this and got the same car I wanted with a 0% APR for about 200 bucks above invoice...... Most places wont touch that kind of deal... hard to find and get stealerships to sell you a car at invoice...

 

[mnewsham]

We bought a new car about a month or so ago. We shopped around online first to get a general feeling of what was available in our price range, then what sort of vehicle we felt would work best for our needs, MPGs, etc, etc. After that we spent a day and went around to a few dealers. At the 3rd dealer we found a 2013 (last years model) Honda Fit sport. With ~60 miles on it. Brand new car. MSRP around $19k. He offered $17.3k, we spent the next while discussing things, eventually managed to get him down to $15.4k which was around $17.5k after taxes, title fees, etc. Invoice is $17,494, so overall a good deal I thought.

Just had to shop around and know what was available. I found the process to be fairly easy and found a pretty solid deal without much real effort.

 

[dank69]

Used Truecar only to see the prices. I did not sign up or get the certificate. Pitted 2 dealers against each other and ended up $1000 below Truecar "great" price which was already $2000 below invoice, plus all the accessories I wanted thrown in for free, plus 84 month financing through the dealership's own employee credit union since they couldn't match my credit union rate with their conventional financing.

 

[CLite]

If you do any of them, feel free to give out your mailing address, but use a trash Email address and setup a google voice number for the phone calls....you'll get called at least 10-20 times per dealership on the list and get tagged by their auto-spammers.

I just want to point out I got literally zero spam, dealerships called me to follow-up after I submitted the form but once I informed them I made my decision the calls stopped. I don't think I got any more emails or maybe I just unsubscribed, this happened a year ago and I forget. However, maybe there are trashy dealerships out there that would spam.

 

[JEDI]

I used this guide http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1001920/ to get a car for my sister this weekend. Started emailing 5 dealers (all were responsive) Thursday and drove off with a new car on Sunday. Got it for well below the Truecar price.

so trucar is for new cars?

How about used cars?
(because I prefer someone else pay the depreciation )

 

[Greenman]

Ah I see.

What website do you recommend?

None that I know of. Car buying is still an archaic and unpleasant experience. You have to deal with salesmen who's only goal is to get you out the door with a new car today. Hopefully a new car that has more gadgets than a cartoon space ship. I gave up, there was so much bullshit involved that it simply wasn't worth the effort.

 

[lupi]

Used it. Had dealers I never contacted other than requesting info from the site call and did so for months even though I never called or responded. Ended up buying from a dealer with a discount though work but used the truecar site to get an idea of value on the offer. My price was on the far left in the area where it said something like not likely to replicate and another local dealer wouldn't beat the deal (but did offer "service coupons, lol) so figured it was about as bottom dollar as I could get.

 

[xeemzor]

I was able to get my new car for about 20% of the Truecar price so it's really not the best gauge of how much a car should cost. You still shop around to get the best deal. My favorite strategy was to get a completed, unsigned, bill of sale from a dealership and use that as leverage in another dealership.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Don't need to give any personal information to use the site. Just search what you're looking for to get pricing information then go to a dealership and negotiate using pricing information that you've gotten from Truecar, Edmunds, etc.

I went into a dealership and showed them the Truecar and Edmunds pricing and asked them to to beat it. They did.

 

[overst33r]

so trucar is for new cars?

How about used cars?
(because I orefer someone else pay the depreciation )

No such thing for used cars because very rarely are they apples to apples. There isn't really a practical way to auction dealers against each other.

 

[SearchMaster]

I used it a few years ago (before their reputation started dropping). It wasn't a bad experience per se; of course they give your information to the dealers and they will call you, but once I told them I had bought another car they left me alone.

As has been said, their prices are beatable but all in all it's not a bad starting point for negotiations.

 

[Gillbot]

Would not recommend. I ended up getting a better price on my own.

 

[Tommy2000GT]

a good rule of thumb is too knock off a couple of thousand off the True Car and Edmunds price.