CarsDirect

Full review
We just completed our first purchase through carsdirect.

I'm not going to say it was 100% wonderful, but it was a great way to buy a new car. If you want to avoid the dealership game, than this website is for you. It was a very easy transaction, and the people at the dealership knew our out the door price wasn't going to change. Yes, they did try to sell us an extended warranty, but after I declined, that was the end of it.

Let me start off with the "guaranteed low price". It seems to good to be true, and of course it was. The price we were given on a new Honda Accord EXL was $900 below invoice. We had seven options we wanted on the car and from research found that they would add roughly $1800 to the price of the car. So I took my carsdirect price with my options and went to the local dealerships to see if they could match it. No one could even come close.

At that point we decided to go with carsdirect. After filling out all the information and adding our seven options into the comment line, we submitted our request for a car. Within a day, we were contacted about the car we wanted. They had found it in the exact color we wanted and were going to get us a quote on the options. A few hours later we got the price. Each option was quoted individually, so we were able to compare. The total was around $1920, or about $120 more than we knew what the actual cost with installation was. Even so, $120 was worth losing considering the great price. We decide to complete the purchase.

A $250, non-refundable deposit was needed to continue. The fact that it was non-refundable threw up red flags. This is when I got our specialist to give us the out the door price for the car. He did this, and something didn't match. The price was about $600 higher than it should have been with tax, tag and title. I asked him about this and he said it was documentation fees for our state.

This is where they should just be more honest and say, this is where the dealer makes its profit. Don't hide it, just come out and admit the dealer has to make some money and this is the fee that pays it. I have no problem with a dealer getting its share of the transaction, but don't be sneaky about it.

Anyway, at this point, I tell him I have to discuss the price with my wife and I'll call him back. Surprisingly, he didn't try to keep me on the phone and let me actually hang up. I quickly checked the NEW "guaranteed low price" with the offers I got from the local dealerships and it was still a better offer. Maybe I could have started negotiating with my local dealerships at this point, I don't know. It was till a considerable difference and I didn't want to play the game. I just decided the price for the car was still very good. So after discussing it with my wife, we decide to purchase the car.

This brought me to my second concern. After carsdirect got my credit card information, my local dealership, was suddenly 100 miles away! It didn't really concern me because I was willing to drive at least that far to purchase a car, but that information should be posted somewhere up front. Just a simple disclaimer saying the dealership may be up to 150 miles from your zip code. There was some good in the fact that it was 100 miles from my home. The sales tax is one percent lower there than in my hometown.

We were than scheduled to pick up the car on a Saturday, but due to the fact that the dealership didn't have one of the options in stock, it was rescheduled to a Tuesday night.

Everything at the dealership went great. The car was ready to go when we got there and had four extra options on the car that we didn't request. We found out that the car had come from another dealership and those options had already been installed. So we got them for free! A $285 value. The guy from the dealership went over the car with us and really took his time to make sure we understood everything. We were than sent of to the finance guy to complete the transaction.

This is where they tried to sell us the extended warranty. Since it was near closing time and I wasn't going to budge, the guy quickly decided he wasn't going to pursue the sale. After reading over the documents, signing in the appropriate places, and handing them the check, we had our new Accord.

Since we paid cash for the vehicle, we didn't have to deal with carsdirect's financing options, so I can't comment on that. Our bank check was made out to the "out the door" price we got from carsdirect and that was the final price we paid for the car.

I believe there are both positives and negatives by using carsdirect.

First the positives. We got a very good price on the exact car my wife wanted. From doing all our research and knowing factory holdbacks and dealer incentives, we know the price of the car was 3.6% above cost. Which I believe is a fair profit for anyone doing business. We got a better deal than we would have got in my town and there wasn't any real hassles. We saved money with the dealership being in a town that had a lower sales tax rate than my town, but they charged more to install the options. So it was probably a wash. We picked up four options that we weren't going to pay for when we ordered the car so that was a bonus. Our guy at carsdirect was for the most part straight forward and did his job in finding the exact car we requested.


The negatives are the guaranteed low price has a catch and it's not revealed until carsdirect gets the $250 they make for selling the car. I didn't like the way our carsdirect guy tried to justify the $600 charge, it was just a little to slimy. The "local" dealership can be over 100 miles away.

In conclusion, I think we got a great deal. Could we have gotten the same deal from our local dealership. I don't know? If we could I know it would have taken several hours to get it, and I didn't want to spend the time trying to find out. There were some concerns, but we are happy. I would recommend carsdirect, but with any purchase, make sure you have your guard up.