

New Car Pricing Data From Offers On CarWoo - tommy_mcclung
https://carwoo.com/new-car-prices

======
ssharp
Is there anything close to CarWoo for the used car market?

I recently purchased a three year old car, and when researching how car
dealerships work, it seems like the pricing for used cars is substantially
different than new cars, making used cars much harder to make sense of.

With new cars, you're dealing numbers that aren't impossible to come buy --
MSRP, dealer invoice, holdback, buyer incentives, and dealer incentives. With
very few assumptions, it seems like you can figure out approximately how much
money a dealer stands to make off your purchase (not including upsells or
finance incentives) and you can figure out their bottom line, which improves
your bargaining power.

With used cars, from what I've gathered, dealers are buying these things from
off-lease auctions and then use some sort of networked system that changes
used-car pricing in real-time. But the pricing is still all over the place
from dealer to dealer and the amount of money paid by the dealer at auction is
completely unknown.

When I negotiated my car, I did a simple search of the +/\- 1 year, make and
model in a 100 mile radius of real ASKING prices (not pricing guides like
Edmunds or Blue Book, who, by the way, the dealer was VERY quick to start
quoting because they're quoting prices in the dealer's favor). The spread was
nearly $10,000 and even isolating mileage to a smaller range produced a spread
of several thousand dollars.

I wanted to test out negotiating techniques when I actually went in to buy, so
the first day, I negotiated through several rounds, finally landing on my
bottom-line price and it was soundly rejected without the "sales manager" even
bothering to meet me. During negotiations, I presented no data to back up my
price, but was claiming to have done the research.

I went in the next day and I brought in actual print outs from other dealers,
took a lower-end price, marked it up a bit, told them that it was a reasonable
price and from my estimates they'd still be making reasonable money off of it.
If that deal wasn't accepted, I had alternative dealers to work with and would
also consider other brands (this tactic, I thought, was good because the brand
wants to rope in younger buyers to try and turn them into lifelong customers).
They accepted it without any substantial pushback and it was less than the
price they had refused to accept the previous day.

~~~
ohazi
It's a difficult problem to solve:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons)

~~~
ssharp
Thanks for the link. I think with the substantial increased popularity of
leased vehicles since the article, the idea that used cars are mostly bad cars
isn't as on-point as it may have been. Most "newer" used cars, which most
financial people tell you are the best deals, are cars that have come off of
original leases, not vehicles that were fully purchased and traded back in.

Cars are also higher quality and many dealers offer certified pre-owned
warranties that would cover most issues for some time.

But overall, the idea of information asymmetries in the used car market is
dead on. There is some data like Black Book pricing, but since the costs are
derived from auction prices, which I have to assume are done in the open, even
with restricted access, I'm still surprised there isn't some better cost data
published like with new cars.

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tommy_mcclung
Founder/CEO here. This data is from hundreds of thousands of offers made by
dealers on CarWoo! This is likely one of the purest sources of new car pricing
anywhere. Would love to answer any questions.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Can you tell me what sort of larger car/suv has the best ride comfort-to-mpg
bang for the buck under 35k that can also fit a 200lb Newfoundland?

If only car sites alllowed for this sort of discovery process!

~~~
erik_landerholm
I had a 170lb St. Bernard at one point and she sort fit into a subaru outback.
This was a while ago.

Fitting a 200lb dog is a matter of perspective too. What do you mean by
fitting? I have a 100lb dog right now and he fits into my crv just fine, but
he fits into our Odyssey a lot better. He can lie completely spread out,
doesn't have to curl up, etc.

Sites that have tried to do things like this in the past have been very
cumbersome and ultimately unuseful.

You need to decide if you dog can fit into a compact SUV or if you need a
medium sized SUV/crossover. There is a big difference in size/mpg/and cost
between those two categories of vehicle.

If you want a compact SUV look at ford edge/subaru forester or outback/mazda
CX-5/toyota rav4/honda CRV or subaru tribecca on the compact, but larger size.
The CRV will have your best real world mpgs there, but gives up a lot in
power.

If you get into larger crossover/SUVs you should look at the honda
Pilot/toyota highlander-4runner/subaru tribeca/mazda cx-9/ford explorer or
flex (if you don't care about off road at all).

The problem is they all have their good and bad things and some of the
stylings are way off. Also, reported mpgs and real life mpgs are sometimes
very different. The best thing to do is to troll user forums for these
vehicles and learn as much as you can. Good luck!

~~~
Tobu
Here are user-collected mpg reports:
[https://www.fuelly.com/](https://www.fuelly.com/)

------
egsec
I recently used Car Woo as part of my car buying process. I wouldn't rely upon
these numbers or those from TrueCar, Edmunds, etc. I have been using my bank's
car buying service, TrueCar, and direct emailing of dealers. New Car pricing
is highly variable on the dealer, dealer's stock, sales, per-dealer deals
from, hold back, quota-bonuses, per salesman specific bonuses etc.

It is important to remember that a middleman service operates either on a flat
fee or a commission. This is money the dealer cannot use to negotiate down
with you. I do not know CarWoo's sales structure, but TrueCar makes
300-400[1][2] per sale. So if this is data based on CarWoo deals it will not
reflect the best deals, because the cars all had to include this price. Now,
that said most people are not prepared or comfortable buying a car or
negotiating. Given that you get some degree of anonymity and can haggle back
and forth online is nice and you are paying for the convenience. Many people
will likely save more money than if they tried to do it on their own.

This is an application of the wisdom of crowds to determine a market price. It
is a good indication of what the market is willing to pay, but not the best
deal you can get. Savings as a representation of MSRP are misleading; think
about how many things you buy off the shelf and the price is usually much less
than MSRP for any number of per-store pricing or sales, coupons, etc. Car
buying is no different.

In the case of the model I am looking for, the CarWoo price is close to the
two offers I got on CarWoo, but the offers I got directly or through my bank
are much lower( Best Direct quote I received was through my Bank's no haggle
direct car buying service, which is about 7% lower than the CarWoo average).

Mean averages on their own are not very helpful in evaluating offers, perhaps
if we saw a distribution or standard deviation? Prices over time (later in the
model year should higher prices be used in the average, are they still
relevant or should they at least be weighted?) would also be good for the car
buyer.

I also have a hard time believing CarWoo would publish this information if it
were not in the best interest of their customers (the dealers, car buyers are
the product). Therefore, I would be lead to believe that this data only serves
to keep buyers from trying to negotiate lower rates based on the average. Then
again, maybe a tech startup has not yet considered this and just thought it
would be cool to share data and be transparent.

It's a cool service and it's probably a good fit for many people. You could
also just create a new email address and use a google voice number for privacy
reasons. At any rate, I would advise you to do your research and try every
tactic and service you can to optimize your wallet spent and time spend.

[1] [http://www.dealerelite.net/profiles/blogs/true-car-and-
zag-c...](http://www.dealerelite.net/profiles/blogs/true-car-and-zag-cyber-
bandits-or-good-for-the-car-business) [2]
[http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/12/truecar-versus-
hond...](http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/12/truecar-versus-honda-online-
car-buying-challenges-hit-home/)

------
yumraj
Not trying to be negative but this data compares MSRP to carwoo price, but no
one buys at MSRP anyway.

The data that would have been valuable in showing the value of carwoo is how
its price compares to what non carwoo buyers who negotiate on their own pay,
or even the no-haggle fleet pricing which is available via AAA, Costco and
others.

~~~
tommy_mcclung
Great idea.

------
zengr
How is it different from eBay Motors? Most of the cars have free carfax, they
have cheaper pricing to get the car history and I am covered by eBay buyer
protection [1].

eBay Motors: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Honda-Accord-EX-2008-honda-accord-
ex...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Honda-Accord-EX-2008-honda-accord-ex-sedan-
only-32-k-mi-automatic-6-cd-roof-tint-/251359750167)

Carwoo: [http://carwoo.com/new-car-prices/T85363842-2014-mazda-
mx-5-m...](http://carwoo.com/new-car-prices/T85363842-2014-mazda-
mx-5-miata-2-door-convertible-manual-grand-touring)

[1]: [http://pages.ebay.com/motors/buy/purchase-
protection/index.h...](http://pages.ebay.com/motors/buy/purchase-
protection/index.html)

~~~
inyourtenement
CarWoo is for new cars.

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mbubb
Nice - I tried it out and love the idea.

Looks like the "I prefer to be contacted through email" selection is broken...

Or

NYC area car dealers are extremely pushy and brazenly ignore said request...

;)

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ChikkaChiChi
Site layout is clean and effective. The "Most Discounted X" takes into account
the largest retail to selling price differential but displays the percentage
instead of the price.

This caused an immediate disconnect when I looked up the price of the Ford
Explorer. The discount percentage averages out to 10.4% but the Infiniti is
instead shown on the front page at with a 7.1% discount.

Also, I would add a "by Discount %" sort to the table, since that is a sexy
driving factor in how I process the page information.

Hope this helps!

~~~
tommy_mcclung
Sure does. Thanks for the feedback!

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timjahn
Tried Car Woo for the first time a few weeks ago when we were ready to buy a
new car and was quite disappointed. I thought it'd be a revolutionary way to
not deal with scummy dealerships and I ended up getting 1 shitty offer
(total).

That was it. No communication from CarWoo, no tips on how to get more offers.
Just a scummy offer from yet another typical car sales guy.

Having now gone through the new car buying process, I can confidently say that
it is "ripe for disruption" and somebody needs to level the playing field.

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bencpeters
If it says no CarWoo dealers in my area, do I get any benefit out of going
through the CarWoo dealer contact interface? Or am I essentially just going
through the service to give local dealers the ability to call me whenever they
want?

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tommy_mcclung
Also, if anyone is interested we have an API into this data set. AOL Autos
uses it here [http://autos.aol.com/best-deal](http://autos.aol.com/best-deal)

