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Comments
get any benifits.
I'd love the road side assistance.
Joseph
in Vermont
There is a carsdirect.com over in smart shopper.
Is there any reason not to consolidate these two.
Thanks
Thanks,
L8_Apex
Sedans Host
information. Carsdirect has probably moved past
its giveaway period, it may have just burned through its initial cash too quickly. Carbargains
has been around for several years (before the
internet they worked over the telephone) and
has a very good name. I was considering using
them but the carsdirect price was really excellent at the end of August (below true dealer cost). What does "CD changer" mean in your post?
That $250 goes toward the car purchase with carsdirect, but carbargains charges you $165 for
their service--not applied to the purchase. Of course this is a more realistic policy--but it dates to the pre-internet world.
thanks, Jon
Of course, since this vehicle is coming from out-of-state, inspection and registration are my responsibility, which it no biggie for me.
Since California and the Northeast have
special emissions requirements bringing a new
car in from a regular emissions state can be a huge headache and expense.
Dealers are supposed to be aware of this problem
and not sell regular emission cars that will be
registered in low emissions states. But many dealers figure its not really their problem once
they get the cashiers check. So hold onto your
check until you are sure you can register the car
in California.
For me, the only extra charge over the quoted CarsDirect price was a $45 documentation fee charged by the dealership. Delivery by flatbed is included in the price. After all is said and done, about a $4100 savings over the best deal I could find locally.
http://carpoint.msn.com/vip/Lexus/LX_470
click on pricing, scroll down Vehicle Pricing Report to Standard Equipment, Engines and Emissions
Pete
still have to pay the taxes based on 40388, agreed price between CD and dealership.
Other than waiting for the check. it was a pleasant experience using the CD service.
I told them I could not send them $55,000.
Just did not trust a new company with my money.
They gave in and the additional paperwork was done on their side.
2024 Audi Q8 e-tron - 2024 Corvette - 2024 BMW X5 - 2023 Tesla Model Y
Both are pretty heavily trafficked.
Dan
in buying a car through carsdirect. It involved
a somewhat complicated interstate transaction.
Check out what happened by doing a search..
type "carsdirect" without the quotes..and you'll
get two forums. This one..and another that is
all in capital letters. My posts go back a solid
month and a half. Maybe two, so scroll back and
get ready to read. Everything I've written is
truthfull.
I suggest it to anyone about to buy a car over the internet and across state lines. It's entertaining reading at worst. Please excuse my horrendous spelling.
Hope it helps you in one way or another.
Joseph
in Vermont
<<A HREF="http://members.home.net/furlough">http://members.home.net/furlough>
you work for carsdirect in some capacity.
How about a disclaimer?
cars are tremendously complex and subject
to all kinds of defects that dealers don't
seem to notice. Of course its unreasonable
to expect a consumer to part with cash in
advance. When dealers start taking credit
cards then maybe your point will have some
value....
Trust me? Didn't think so
I probably could have done the deal at my local dealer saving $800 off MRSP so my net savings was only $800. Not enough savings to risk $54000 floating around in the mail.
True Dell is a backer but this is a separate corporation making no money, typical internet startup.
By the way you do sound like you work for Carsdirect. Just to let you know the car is great and the transaction was smooth.
I was just trying to protect myself if something went wrong. I asked Carsdirect and they agreed to my request. This made it a no lose deal in my mind. Deliver the car and I deliver the certified check. This is the way I have been buying cars for the last 40 years. I had seen the past posts were mix ups occurred concerning money movement. Wouldn't that make people nervous?
I guess I am from Missouri.
By the way let me repeat Carsdirect delivered on their promises promptly.
late September (I'll post the entire saga later).
Does anyone know the name and email address of the
CarsDirect CEO?
On 9/11 I found the pick-up truck I wanted on CarsDirect web page. An automatic 4x2 Nissan Frontier Crew Cab in Solar Yellow with the Power, Sports, and Utility packages plus bed liner, bed extender, and floor mats. But I had a couple of questions: Can I use my own financing? How do I take delivery? etc. Sent an email to CarsDirect Advisor. No response. Sent emails on 9/12, 9/12, and 9/13. Receive response on 9/17.
Order truck on 9/17. Price has gone up $400 since I sent my 9/11 email! Mention price increase in comments section of order form. Advisor Jason contacts me on 9/19 (?) says CarsDirect will honor lower price, should have truck in a couple of weeks.
9/27 called Jason to check status. Left voice mail. 9/29 Jason returns my call says CarsDirect has looked all over the country and couldn't find what I wanted and CarsDirect will have to get it from the factory. Said it would take four to six weeks. I said OK.
10/29 called Jason to see what was up. No answer, so I left a voice mail. I called back several times and still no reply. Then, on 11/4, I learned the trick of getting a hold of someone at CarsDirect. Ignore the "Press 1 if you know your party's extension". You'll just get sent to voice mail hell. Stay on the line until an operator picks up. Then ask the operator to go get whoever you are looking for (they all must work in one big room).
So Jason tells me that he was just going to call me to let me know my truck should be in a few days. He gives me his personal pager number.
11/8 haven’t heard from Jason. I call back to see what's up. He doesn't answer my voice mail to either his phone or "personal" pager. I used my 11/4 trick. Jason tells me my truck is "out of port" and on its way to be prepped. I should get it on 11/11 or 11/12 and I can either pick it up at Turner Nissan or have it delivered.
I don't hear anything on 11/11 and leave a couple of voice mails. I drive by Turner Nissan and see a Solar Yellow truck in the back.
11/12, after leaving several voice messages, I do the 11/4 trick again and get a hold of Jason. He tells me the dealership made a mistake (how’d the dealership all of a sudden become involved?). The truck they ordered didn't have the Sports and Utility packages and was missing bed extender and the bed liner (he didn't mention the floor mats, but one can only assume). He now says he and his manager are scouring the United States to find me what I want (see third paragraph about having to order from factory).
How mad am I? I'm sure you can guess.
Does anyone out there have the email address of the CarsDirect CEO?
On 9/11 I found the pick-up truck I wanted on CarsDirect web page. An automatic 4x2 Nissan Frontier Crew Cab in Solar Yellow with the Power, Sports, and Utility packages plus bed liner, bed extender, and floor mats. But I had a couple of questions: Can I use my own financing? How do I take delivery? etc. Sent an email to CarsDirect Advisor. No response. Sent emails on 9/12, 9/12, and 9/13. Receive response on 9/17.
Order truck on 9/17. Price has gone up $400 since I sent my 9/11 email! Mention price increase in comments section of order form. Advisor Jason contacts me on 9/19 (?) says CarsDirect will honor lower price, should have truck in a couple of weeks.
9/27 called Jason to check status. Left voice mail. 9/29 Jason returns my call says CarsDirect has looked all over the country and couldn't find what I wanted and CarsDirect will have to get it from the factory. Said it would take four to six weeks. I said OK.
10/29 called Jason to see what was up. No answer, so I left a voice mail. I called back several times and still no reply. Then, on 11/4, I learned the trick of getting a hold of someone at CarsDirect. Ignore the "Press 1 if you know your party's extension". You'll just get sent to voice mail hell. Stay on the line until an operator picks up. Then ask the operator to go get whoever you are looking for (they all must work in one big room).
So Jason tells me that he was just going to call me to let me know my truck should be in a few days. He gives me his personal pager number.
11/8 haven’t heard from Jason. I call back to see what's up. He doesn't answer my voice mail to either his phone or "personal" pager. I used my 11/4 trick. Jason tells me my truck is "out of port" and on its way to be prepped. I should get it on 11/11 or 11/12 and I can either pick it up at Turner Nissan or have it delivered.
I don't hear anything on 11/11 and leave a couple of voice mails. I drive by Turner Nissan and see a Solar Yellow truck in the back.
11/12, after leaving several voice messages, I do the 11/4 trick again and get a hold of Jason. He tells me the dealership made a mistake (how’d the dealership all of a sudden become involved?). The truck they ordered didn't have the Sports and Utility packages and was missing bed extender and the bed liner (he didn't mention the floor mats, but one can only assume). He now says he and his manager are scouring the United States to find me what I want (see third paragraph about having to order from factory).
How mad am I? I'm sure you can guess.
Does anyone out there have the email address of the CarsDirect CEO?
Shopping on the Net: To Kick the Tires, You Click the Mouse
By ANDREW H. FIXMER
rmed with consumer information from the Internet, Duane Walton walked into car dealerships in the Orlando, Fla., area expecting to negotiate a great deal on a minivan.
Instead, Walton, of nearby Apopka, says he encountered a rerun of other car-buying experiences over the years: He said he was pressured, stonewalled and made to feel powerless throughout the process.
"I felt like every dealer in town was jerking me around," said Walton, a manager at a computer repair and data entry company. So he went back to the Internet, but not simply for information. He was ready to buy his car on line.
"The first place I went to not only had a lower price, but on a better version of the car," he said. Walton declined to say how much he saved in all on his Toyota Sienna, but said the monthly payments ended up being "$75 less than what I could get in town."
Auto industry analysts say Walton typifies a trend in car buying: Consumers begin the process by going to the Internet for information, then head for a local dealer ready to make an informed choice, only to return to the Net to make their purchase -- sometimes for hundreds or thousands of dollars less than a dealer's best offer. J. D. Power & Associates, the big market-research company, estimates that in the first quarter of next year, 55 percent of new-car buyers will be using the Internet before making a deal, up from 15 percent in 1998.
Buying a car on the Internet usually does not cut out the dealer -- just many of the consumer's frustrations and a lot of the dealer's profit margin. Most auto Web sites work on a referral system; shoppers answer questions about the type of cars they are looking for and provide contact information. Leaving a telephone number is a must.
That information is passed to the closest dealership that belongs to the Web site's referral network. Some sites charge membership fees to dealers; others do not. And the dealers agree to terms that also vary widely, with some, but not all, required to stick to the prices they quote on line.
Many dealers sign up with several Web services. As a result, if you request bids on the same car from different Web sites, you are likely to receive at least identical bids from a single dealer.
Many Web services say they make the bulk of their income -- about 70 percent -- from referrals to local dealers, with the other 30 percent or so generated by selling advertising on their sites. Chris Denove, director of consumer operations at J. D. Power, says there is no industry standard.
"Some sites make most of their money from dealer fees," Denove said. "Others do well by getting revenue from advertising on their Web site and/or the sale of after-market products to car buyers. Some, like Priceline, charge consumers."
Typically, within 48 hours of requesting a bid, a buyer will get a call from a member dealership quoting a price. Many dealers have a separate office for Internet requests or assign them to their fleet-sales office, and respond with a bid within hours. Of 10 recent requests for bids in the New York metropolitan area, 7 were answered the same day.
For many shoppers, buying through the Web offers convenience and a way to avoid high-pressure sales tactics. And they also "often save more money than those going to dealerships," Denove said. He added that Web services can expedite the whole car-buying process. If you start off knowing which car you want to buy, you can seal the deal, sign the papers and, depending on availability, have a new car in the garage in less than a week. It is necessary to show up at the dealership only at the very end of the transaction, for the hour or less that it takes to sign the papers and drive away.
When it came time to buy her two teen-agers cars of their own, Meryl Stern, a Los Angeles social worker, returned to the dealership where she had purchased her last car. But she says she found no room for negotiating. "There just seemed like there were too many middlemen in the process to get the price I wanted," she said.
Ms. Stern took her shopping online. In less than a week, her children were driving Hondas -- one a Prelude, the other an Accord. "All we had to do was go to the dealership to sign the papers and we were out of there in half an hour," she said.
Some Web sites are trying to eliminate the need for even that wrap-up visit to the dealer -- CarsDirect.com will arrange delivery of a car to your home or office. CarsDirect also promises to stand by the price it quotes online. Like the referral car sites, it offers online showrooms and research services and has relationships with local dealers. But CarsDirect.com searches out the dealership that most closely matches the price it has quoted. What's more, it says it sticks to that price even if it has to fork over cash, in the form of a rebate to the dealership, to deliver the car as promised.
"If a car exists and is available, we will stick to our price," said Lou Weiss, vice president of marketing for CarsDirect. "We have extensive research telling us what the market rate is, and we price our vehicles at the lowest end of that spectrum."
CarsDirect's chief executive, Scott Painter, says the company set its prices so that 90 percent of consumers paid more for the same car. Moreover, the site can process the loan application and arrange delivery of the car to the buyer.
Marc McConnel of Santa Fe, N.M., leased a Ford Explorer this way through CarsDirect. Because he leases cars for his business and had chosen Explorers in the past, he did not need to test-drive the latest model.
"It actually took longer to return the old car than it did to buy the new one," McConnel said.
All the Web services try to engage browsers in dialogue with each other and with the site. This keeps people on the site longer so they can be exposed to more advertising, but the interactive nature of the information can also be helpful. For example, Autoweb.com encourages customers to write their own reviews of cars they have owned or test-driven. The messages range from complaints about the cup holders (a common theme in amateur reviews) to raves about handling and performance.
Autoweb.com positions itself as a place not just for car buyers but also for enthusiasts in general. There are chat areas and message boards where visitors can talk with one another, with an expert or even with a mechanic. Contests offer prizes for everything from the worst commuting horror stories to the most helpful reviews.
CarPoint.com and Autobytel.com both have personalized "garages" where visitors can compare the features of any cars they are interested in -- the practical Camry you know you should buy, for example, versus the Porsche you dream of. The idea is to stack up all the features of all the cars you're interested in, weigh the pros and cons and then pick the winner.
In addition to selling cars, most sites offer -- or soon will offer -- referrals for financing and insurance, often through agreements with big companies like NationsBank or State Farm. But CarsDirect.com offers its own financing, through a venture with Bank One called CD One Financial, in which CarsDirect.com has a controlling interest.
That may not prove a big advantage. Several online car buyers interviewed recently said they would not want to arrange financing or buy insurance over the Net.
"I wouldn't give financial information online, and I would never use my home phone number," Ms. Stern said. She used her business line for all her inquiries and answered financial questions only when dealing directly with a dealership.
For John Zyzik, a computer programmer from Darien, Ill., who bought a Honda CRV from CarsDirect.com, it was a split decision. "I would have no trouble using the Internet to get a loan," he said. "However, I wouldn't buy insurance that way. I need a personal touch there."
Besides, since most car buyers are already insured, they may not be interested in finding a new agent or studying another complicated policy.
another thing i noticed was that you CAN'T find a lot of 4x2 SE's out there, so your problem may be that production of yellow SE's, especially with those options is just ramping up. trust me, i've gone to ALL the local dealers and they all have xe's, future, turner, serra, folsom and shingle springs. of course there is no excuse for not returning calls, but to get the one you want, you may have to stick with CD. if you choose to buy from a dealer, i would recommend shingle springs because they have ZERO DEALER MARKUP! a far cry from the $1995-4995 i've seen here in sac. anyway, i hope my truck comes in on thursday, it's been PROMISED. good luck...also check the crew cab board, as i've posted memos there too.
the only minor thing was that the alarm remotes hadn't been programmed yet. but to my joy, i went to the last nissan dealer i dealt with, pulled up in my new truck with CARSDIRECT plates on it, and had THEM program my remotes. TAKE THAT! well, i can't say enough for how this has gone. i am extremely pleased with the process and am happy that i got my truck THE WAY I WANTED IT, and not any other way, as some dealers would like me to have done. i would recommend this to anyone. good luck.
The Friday before I had found the email address of the CarsDirect CEO. Sent him a copy of the saga I posted here.
Tuesday rolls around and I hadn’t heard from CarsDirect. In the morning I left messages to call me on Advisor’s voice mail and pager voice mail. No response. Left a second set of messages the afternoon.
Got home from work about 5:00. Had a voice mail message from Advisor timed at 4:30 saying he had my truck and to give him a call. Immediately called and left messages on his voice mail and pager voice mail. About 5:30 I received a call from an assistant to the CEO. He asked what was happening and what would make me happy. I ran through the saga and told him getting the truck (soon) would make me real happy. He said he’d call me back in five minutes. He called me back on a conference call with Advisor. Promised an AM Saturday delivery of the truck
Saturday a flatbed delivered my truck. The driver, James, spent more than two hours with me going over the truck and showing me how things operated. I was very pleased with this end of the transaction.
Let me recap on what CarsDirect.com did very well and where they dropped the ball. Their website and delivery are excellent. Their price was $1,000 less than any dealer or broker would give me. Their communications in-between needs improvement. They need to follow-up with their customers during the ordering process and they respond to every telephone message and email within 24 hours. They told me they are working on it. Once they nail that down, car dealerships as we know them now will no longer exist.
Would I buy from CarsDirect.com again? I would never buy another car any other way!
The Friday before I had found the email address of the CarsDirect CEO. Sent him a copy of the saga I posted here.
Tuesday rolls around and I hadn’t heard from CarsDirect. In the morning I left messages to call me on Advisor’s voice mail and pager voice mail. No response. Left a second set of messages the afternoon.
Got home from work about 5:00. Had a voice mail message from Advisor timed at 4:30 saying he had my truck and to give him a call. Immediately called and left messages on his voice mail and pager voice mail. About 5:30 I received a call from an assistant to the CEO. He asked what was happening and what would make me happy. I ran through the saga and told him getting the truck (soon) would make me real happy. He said he’d call me back in five minutes. He called me back on a conference call with Advisor. Promised an AM Saturday delivery of the truck
Saturday a flatbed delivered my truck. The driver, James, spent more than two hours with me going over the truck and showing me how things operated. I was very pleased with this end of the transaction.
Let me recap on what CarsDirect.com did very well and where they dropped the ball. Their website and delivery are excellent. Their price was $1,000 less than any dealer or broker would give me. Their communications in-between needs improvement. They need to follow-up with their customers during the ordering process and they respond to every telephone message and email within 24 hours. They told me they are working on it. Once they nail that down, car dealerships as we know them now will no longer exist.
Would I buy from CarsDirect.com again? I would never buy another car any other way!
Car_man
Smart Shoppers / FWI Host