prices on TrueCar

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I have figured a price for a Subaru on TrueCar.com and its below invoice thats shown by KBB or Edmunds. Obviously there are incentives that consumers are not privy to. The only incentive listed on KBB/Edmunds was 1.49% financing.
 
Last year (March 2014), I considered trading my Challenger for a more practical Malibu. GM has the supplier discount (also a credit union membership discount that I think is the same), and that price was cheaper than the True Car price. Also take into account if you're a credit union member you can get a decent rate, so take the rebates and do your own financing if needed. The deal breaker for me was the dealer wanted a $400 processing fee that I wasn't willing to pay.
 
I just bought a 2014 Ram. Did a lot of research, even utilizing a friend's True Car subscription.

Not even close, my price was almost 25% off list. Those boys are DEALIN'!
 
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
I just bought a 2014 Ram. Did a lot of research, even utilizing a friend's True Car subscription.

Not even close, my price was almost 25% off list. Those boys are DEALIN'!


OK, I am not sure who was "dealin". Who had the low price? TrueCar?
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
I just bought a 2014 Ram. Did a lot of research, even utilizing a friend's True Car subscription.

Not even close, my price was almost 25% off list. Those boys are DEALIN'!


OK, I am not sure who was "dealin". Who had the low price? TrueCar?


Sorry I wasn't more clear. My price that I negotiated was several thousand dollars less. True Car's was about ten percent...
 
I used TrueCar when I bought my Outback. The real value in it was helping me find a dealer willing to negotiate. Several dealers in the DC area gave me a line that the Outback was so rare and they couldn't budge on the price (to be fair it was one of the very first 2015's, but it's still just an Outback). TrueCar directed me to a dealer that would sell $2,000 below what these other dealers were stonewalling me at. I used the TrueCar price at that dealer as a starting point for negotiations and got another $1,000 off. All in all it saved me $3k.
 
It depends on the car and time of year weather true car offers good deals or not. Last fall when i was shopping for a pickup i found that Rams, F150's and tundras were all way overpriced using true car. Rams can be bought at 25% off retail almost all the time. F150's and Tundras were able to be bought at 20% off of retail price. The GM trucks were new for 2014 so the best deals i could find were about 15% off of retail, which was very similar to true car pricing.

I decided to take my 20k and buy my used low mileage Silverado in cash and not have a payment. The only truck i was seriously considering new was a crew cab 4x4 Ram with the Zf 8 speed. that is a bargain pickup.
 
We bought both of our new trucks this year. I used True Car pricing for both as a starting point and went down from there as much as I could. Both of our new vehicle purchase prices were well below True Car pricing. But it did at least establish a base line for negotiations. For those interested, there's a site called CarBuyingTips.com that has a nice spreadsheet that I've used for years in helping calculate costs and offers. I've actually taken the original spreadsheet and modified it to make it more functional for me. It has saved me more time and money than I could have ever imagined. Of course, in the spreadsheet, you work with the numbers you can find regarding MSRP, dealer cost, holdback etc... The only factor that gave me pause using this spreadsheet has been the unknowns as far as factory to dealer incentives, volume discounts and the like. The spreadsheet is laid out nice and is pretty self-explanatory. Give it a try. And, as a disclaimer, I'm not affiliated with CarBuyingTips.com in any way, shape or form.
 
There's a few in-depth articles about truecar you can read up on if you want to know the history, google for it.

To boil it down; they were too "disruptive" and cutthroat and alienated their dealer partners and they came out to be a win-lose deal (win for truecar, lose for dealers).

They had to pivot so now they are less cutthroat and it's more mutually beneficial relationship.

But as a result, despite the original name and intent truecar doesn't give you "true" price information anymore and definitely your referral won't be the "true" lowest even to their knowledge. They have the info, but have to appease their partners and hide it or inflate it.

Use it as a tool, but if you call around or shoot off some emails you can often easily find a lower price than truecar.

If you hate the "process" of buying a car and getting down to just what's my final price without people hounding you, just deal with the internet/fleet sales people instead which takes out a bit of that aggressive sales.
 
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