Anonymous wrote:We know what car we want (popular model). We have access to several car buying services. Not sure if it’s better to email several dealers ourselves or use a car buying service.
Anyone have experiences with:
1) Costco
2) Consumer Reports/TruCar
3) Navy Federal Credit Union
4) USAA
I think they're all powered by TrueCar (badge engineering) so you'll see the same price. You can do better going outside of TrueCar. Run a quite via TrueCar, but don't show it to the dealer just yet. Remember, dealers get a $300 kickback from TrueCar upon selling a car so if you've already shown them the truecar-price you'll almost always pay $300 more than you could have negotiated without it.
Car negotiations are fun, here's a simple approach. 1) Get best prices via internet from multiple dealers, 2) go to dealer with the lowest price and offer $2k less than they offered 3) if they a) say no and don't want to sit down with that means you're price is too low, go to next dealer b) if they sit down with you that means you're close. 4) spend some time at the negotiation table, do not budge, if they sit with you for 1-2 hours that means they can probably do the price you offered. 5) after 1-2 hours, say you have to go and you'll be back tomorrow, start walking (literally) and they'll most likely match your price.
best of luck