That moment when you think your wait is over and you are ready to buy a fancy new car, your excitement remains at its peak! But sadly, it drops when it comes to signing the papers. Why can’t car buying be as simple as they show in their commercials; where the actor test drives his car alone around breathtaking locations with no other vehicle in view? He returns with a smile which says he has found his soul mate in car form, signs a document, takes charge of the keys without any hitch, and the dealership staff wave a happy goodbye to him with big smiles on everyone’s faces. Is that real? Can it be that easy? The distance between the desire to acquisition passes through the bumps of engrossing research, flickering decision making and endless negotiations with the salesperson as well as understanding the Terms and Conditions and various sales intended “value add-ons”.
With digitization, there has been a shift in customer behavior – from time spent with dealership vs. time spent online to research on buying a vehicle. Online help enables customers (like yourself) to go to a dealer with a clear mindset of what you want and at what true price value. We should send out a huge thanks to the increasing auto-tech services which are introducing tools for smarter buying practices and helping you not to be tricked, or at least made to feel that way by the sales staff.
And if you feel online research is all about comparing the price & features in prominent websites, then you will be thrilled to know there is more to explore. Car price & feature comparison is the first thing to do in your research; followed by negotiation & financing groundwork. Knowing the true market price, but having no negotiation skills will still hinder you in getting that right price. And after negotiation, the battle is still half won if you don’t opt for the best financing.
Check my 3 site suggestions and bonus tips from these three areas to get the best bargain with lesser haggle and hassle:
1. Kelley Blue Book –
The objective of visiting this site is to research on the price of your candidate cars. This will give you a comprehensive understanding on how much is the price of the car. For reference you can also check other similar sites like truecar.com, cars.com, autotrader.com, edmunds.com, and invoice-pricing.com, for a comparison of different market rates. Finding out the cars invoice pricing that the dealer paid lets you get the lowest price on the car.
After your research on the pricing is done, it’s time for you to leverage the dealer’s internet department of sales in order to pull their best quotes. Make sure to settle with the final choice in terms of your make, model, features and amenities so that you don’t get confused in the process.
2. Fastbuy.com –
If more than anything, you dread negotiations, fastbuy.com negotiates for you with dealers (more than 10) to target a better price than you already researched. Another negotiator is carjojo.com, which charges a fee of $199 for their service.
3. Autogravity.com –
For financing options online – Autogravity shares with you up to four financing options before you head to the dealer. Access their car catalogue and dealers’ database and financing options can be available in a day or sometimes in few minutes. They also have a loan payment calculator which is another useful tool created by the auto-tech services.
Some other calculators worth some meaningful considerations are:
Car Buying and Insurance
Car buying proposes another decision making challenge – Auto Insurance. If you are not sure whether you are ready to add another expense right away read InsuredMine’s blog “why Insure?” It explains in a simple way why Insurance makes sense.
Lastly, when you interact with the staff at the dealership and want to be the one with the last laugh, I can share some tips that will help you defeat the dealer in his final attempts of cross-selling; I’ll save those tips for next time. Watch out for my next blog on “How to avoid dealers’ tricks when buying a new car?” at //www.insuredmine.com/blog/.
If you also enjoy the perks that the insurtech services bring in then don’t miss checking out our analytics integrated insurance management services at insuredmine.com, which enables you to manage all your insurances in one place. It’s free.
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