Author Topic: has anyone used TrueCar.com?  (Read 2929 times)

dividendman

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has anyone used TrueCar.com?
« on: November 30, 2014, 02:33:09 PM »
I'm using the used car section as I want to sell my gas guzzler and get something more economical. I also don't drive more than a few thousand miles a year.

Anyway, has anyone used TrueCar.com? What was your experience?

I hate negotiating and this is supposed to be hassle-free.

mozar

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Re: has anyone used TrueCar.com?
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2014, 09:07:56 PM »
Yes! What I did was look find out what car I was going to buy (my partner actually), and looked up the price at true car. Then we went to the dealership and asked for the internet/online sales dept. We sat down with him, he showed us the true car price (same we had researched), and we (my partner) bought it. We got 2k off list price.

m8547

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Re: has anyone used TrueCar.com?
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2014, 09:35:28 PM »
I kind of used the True Car trade in service. My bank offers it, so I uploaded some photos and details about the condition of my car and got an offer about a day later. Unfortunately the best offer was an hour and a half drive each way, which would have been a hassle. A local dealer was interested in the car, and I got them to match the Truecar price, which was about 4% more than I had negotiated from them, which was 4% over their initial offer. I might have gotten more selling it privately, but the car had some body damage that was going to cost several thousand to fix. It didn't seem like there were a lot of people interested in paying almost $10k for a damaged car (it could have easily sold for that without the damage). I had one or two leads from private buyers just under $9000, but they were a pain to deal with. The smart dealers lowballed me, offering around $5-6k. I got just over $8k for it, and I think that was a good deal for me.

Another one is Autotrader.com. They have a trade-in service that gives you an instant (or almost instant) cash offer. If you want to take the offer, just take it to the participating dealer and they will pay you as long as the car is not significantly different from the condition you put in Autotrader. It's backed by Autotrader themselves, so the dealer has nothing to lose. This service uses recent auction prices, and although Autotrader owns KBB, the price will be a little different from the KBB price.

Finally, there's Carmax. They can sometimes offer a good price for a car because they inspect them and sell them at auction. They are one of the biggest sellers of used cars at auction, so they can get good prices and buyers know what they are buying.

alpharomeo

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Re: has anyone used TrueCar.com?
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2014, 11:06:45 PM »
Yes, had a great experience.  I put in on true car for a new toyota camry and had the 4 dealerships in town all call/email me their proposals.  I then began playing them off each other while sitting on my couch. This all happened very quickly and I had it negotiated from home in less than an hour.  Once I decided what dealer I wanted to go with, I went down there and there were no issues or BS sales stuff. 

dividendman

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Re: has anyone used TrueCar.com?
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2014, 06:17:34 PM »
Thanks a lot! It looks like a decent service. If I do end up doing it I'll update here on how it went.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!