vitaliy

Hi,

I am curious... How do you order a car on the net? Let's say I want to build my car and order it online. Is it possible to bargain and reduce its price or do you have to pay a full MSRP?

If you had any experience with buying cars online, do you mind telling your story, please? Thank you.

kenbob

Yes, I bought my last 2 cars on the net. You fill out a form (in my case I went to msn autos) and all the dealers get polled to email you back with a price quote.

In all cases so far, the quote has been equal to the dealer invoice price. I'm an S-plan member for Mazda however so I was able to negotiate down to the S-plan price.

The net is used to get price quotes via email. When you like a price quote you then go to the dealer and buy the car for that price. Saves a lot of trips all over town imho.

vitaliy

So basically, the give you the official price and no more negotiation is taking place right?

MrMethane

Not exactly, you can't really order off the internet anymore. You used to be able to use sites like cars.com to actually purchase a car and then go pick it up at a local dealer. Because of this dealerships became aware they were losing sales to internet customers and began working directly with the websites. Over the past few years they have all switched to working with dealerships to just give you quotes. It kind of sucks now because most dealerships don't even do that, they just use these sites as a new way to get you to come into the dealership.

That's not to say its useless, you can get low quotes over the internet and then go into that dealer with them. But sometimes gettting a quote is like pulling teeth. I just bought my car a few months ago and I went to a bunch of car websites like edmunds and cars.com. I did the "Get Free Dealer Quotes Instantly" thing, it mostly all I got was spam from the same 4 dealers. I live in Boston as well so I can tell you you'll probably get the same dealers as me.

Mazda Gallerey in Norwood just dicked me around. They sent me an email saying they have tons of RX8's in stock and that I should come in. I said I'm not comming in unless I get a quote. Then they said I could find out the market value by looking the car up on Edmunds. After about 11 emails back and forth they still woudln't give me an actual quote. They were very evasive, in every email they tried to get me to come into the dealership. I didn't bother with them.

I did however get a very generous quote from Wellesley Mazda and I went in there expecting to have to fight with them to get the same quote in person, but they gave me an even lower one once I got there. I then sent this quote back to Mazda Gallery and asked if they can beat it. I got another generic email back saying they have lots of RX8's and that I should come in, still not giving me a quote. I'm sure they would have teamed up on me had I come in and tried to over sell the car.

I ended up buying mine from Wellesley Mazday and I was happy with my price. But I'm sure I could have gotten the same price if I hadn't gottent he internet quote. I bought and 04 at the end of January when the were having a bad month for sales so they were anxious to make a deal. Still though your are better off having other quotes and lots of research before even walking into the dealership.

So use the internet to get quotes and bounce them off the dealers, but don't expect too much. You probably won't get many quotes, most dealers got wise to the new technology and now use it as another form of advertising to get you in the dealership so they can work you and trick you into paying more than you should. I wish I could have just bought mine off the internet like you could 5 years ago, but it seems thats no longer possible.