Before you laugh that you'd never use this to buy a car, it may be worth taking the time to find your make/model and add it to your "Garage" on amazon. Amazon will then try to confirm or not if the cabin air filter you are about to buy is a correct fit for your car. Amazon tries to do the same thing with camera gear.
At least, that's the theory. In practice you still need to do 100% of the due diligence or you'll end up with spark plug wires that are for the non-California version of the engine of your girlfriend's 2004 Outback, and then you have to build an awkward bracket over the motor because you're too stubborn to return them...
I did this awhile ago with my old car and found it tried to tell me whether a bunch of random non-car electronics parts I was buying were compatible with my car. Which was a bit cluttering.
It is an interesting feature and sometimes useful, but like you I found that when I even was buying car parts it wasn't always on the ball about whether or not the part I was looking at was compatible. I believe I remember errors in both the false positive and false negative directions, so I stopped trusting it's screening capabilities really at all and mostly have ignored it since.
It's motorcycle part match is an even larger adventure.
I bought exhaust bolts this way, and of course they didn't fit. The spacers on the bolts were longer than the OEM bolts, so fumes would go into the cabin. Lesson learned..
It would be nice if they fixed this problem. I saw a ton of parts that incorrectly said they'd fit my vehicle. Windshield wipers are an easy example. You'll see varying length wiper blades they say will fit.
Edit: It seems like they could favor search results matching specific vehicles to combat this. For example, a part should be viewed as less relevant for claiming compatibility with more vehicles. This would be problematic for universal stuff like tires, wiper blades, and other accessories, but I'm sure they could differentiate between the legit universal stuff and the seller's who claim their part fits every vehicle in existence.
I'm sure this is harder than I'm making it out to be, I can't imagine all the edge cases they have to deal with. But some effort would really help, and I'd be more likely to buy this stuff online if it wasn't so damn difficult to verify that the part is compatible.
I should of been more specific. I just did a quick check to confirm, and I see three wiper blade sizes (24", 16", and 14") on the first page of results. My car doesn't have a model/trim with a rear wiper blade.
I run into this same problem on eBay. I search for my make and model, and tons of junk aftermarket parts show up that won't fit without thousands of dollars of fabrication. Sure that $150 turbo will fit my car, after I fabricate 50 parts. I now have to put "-fits" in my search query, but I'm sure that omits tons of legitimate results. But eBay makes a grip of money from all the listings of crap generic parts, so they have no incentive to stop it.
eBay is just horrible at cleaning up their own website. Go to games and consoles, select PS4, then select "consoles" subcategory - I would say 80% of items there are not consoles, they are accessories, games, pads, everything that should be in their own category. Same with any other product - which makes eBay incredibly frustrating to use and just a bad experience in general. Not to mention the amount of clearly counterfeit, fake, pirated games that are on sale - you'd think it would be easy to spot and remove, but ebay doesn't seem to care.
> I bought exhaust bolts this way, and of course they didn't fit. The spacers on the bolts were longer than the OEM bolts, so fumes would go into the cabin. Lesson learned..
If one orders a spare that doesn't fit in the existing vehicle, it may prompt purchasing a vehicle instead. Who knows?
I don't think amazon will start selling car now or in the near future. The subtitle below "amazon vehicles" logo says "see specs, read reviews and ask owners". It looks like it's just a forum kind of thing at this moment. And we know there're huge amount of legal issues people needs to deal with when sell cars as well as financing, leasing etc. If amazon gonna launch this, it's going to be a huge product, huge enough to be another billion dollar company.
Disclaimer: I work for a company selling cars online. These are my personal opinions, not my employers.
First let's assume that Amazon can't sell new cars due to restrictive franchise laws in every state.
You are easily off by an order of magnitude on the billion dollar business statement. Carmax is the largest used car dealer in the nation, with a market cap of over 11 billion. As of 2015 they captured about 1.7% of used car sales. (They sold 582,282 vehicles to consumers and over 33.8 million used vehicles were sold, I'm on my phone so I can source this later if you'd like)
Second Amazon is an beast and anyone in a market that Amazon is considering should pay careful attention. That said I think that vehicle sales is such a different market in many ways that Amazon will either take a long time to figure out the whole process and provide a consistent quality product or they will acquire a company currently in the used vehicle market. The two leaders in the online space had a huge leg up due to ancestry or acquisition. I doubt Amazon would be stubborn enough to learn the business the hard way.
I bought a new headlight for my car that Amazon said would fit. It did not. Maybe it was a problem with a 3rd party that is selling through Amazon, but it was Amazon that told me it would fit and they lost my trust on car parts.
Somewhat surprising the manufacturers were still selling two different engines in 2004.
My pet peeve with Amazon is a similar "nice but not quite good enough feature" : their selling of fasteners. Nuts, bolts, etc fall into a clear if quite complex N-space of sizes and features. This can be represented nicely in a web site, for example : http://www.mcmaster.com/ however even though Amazon acquired a nuts-n-bolts retailer some years ago, their site is a horrible mess for this kind of item. I'm not sure if this is because there are no humans curating the catalog, or because Bezos doesn't do his own maker projects and vehicle maintenance...
To add to the problem with fasteners or really anything that has sizes listed with fractions, the search is completely oblivious to the `/` character, so trying to find a 1/2-20 bolt will get you every bolt with a 1 2 or 20 somewhere in the description, without taking it's position/context into account at all. I usually end up using google to search amazon in those situations, which kinda sucks since you give up the ability to filter by prime or one day items.
Likewise, try to find some "ECC RAM" for your server on amazon.fr. They don't make the distinction between "ECC" and "non-ECC" in search, hence returning basically every kind of RAM. Because, for some weird reason, French retailers like to specify that their RAM is not ECC in the title of the item. (Surprisingly enough, this doesn't seem to be an issue on amazon.com.)
I had a 2008 Lancer and the owners manual constantly had to make distinctions between "California" and "non-California" versions for various procedures/features.
(I'm not even in North America, that's just global manufacturing for you)
It is, but California's emissions standards have been adopted by other states, and a lot of companies just make one model that is compliant in all 50 states. I'm not sure what the cost difference is these days, but I wonder if it's worth having to maintain two separate lines of inventory. It presents a problem to people who buy a new car, then move to California. If there aren't enough miles on the odometer, California will refuse to register the car because it doesn't meet their emissions standards.
It seems to work somewhat well. I bought a set of brake rotors that were 100% great, but a replacement wiper motor that ended up being for the wrong model. I wonder to what degree third party sellers are required to verify fit information.
> Before you laugh that you'd never use this to buy a car, it may be worth taking the time to find your make/model and add it to your "Garage" on amazon. Amazon will then try to confirm or not if the cabin air filter you are about to buy is a correct fit for your car. Amazon tries to do the same thing with camera gear.
If that's the case, why didn't Amazon include older model cars? I know the Chevy Volt has models starting from 2012 or 2011, yet only 2016 and 2017 models are shown
UPDATE: I was wrong. The different models do show up if you search for it, but for some reason I did not see it while browsing.
I just wish that Amazon could start selling cars directly.
I just did a search for full-size vans with all-wheel drive (I have idealistic and irrational dreams of being an all-terrain courier), and it had results for model years as far back as 2001.
If I search google for "new tires 2011 Kawasaki ninja 1000" Google is somehow unable to produce a shopping result. There is an ad for Yokohama. Do they even make motorcycle tires?
If this is the competition Amazon is going to make a lot of money on this Garage thing.
Well I laughed upon adding a Tesla Model S and the "parts and accessories for your vehicle" showing tons of things that weren't even relevant like oil, oil filters, and exhaust systems.
Well actually, "Gas Town" was mentioned in the latest movie. It and oil refining in general are also a significant part of the Mad Max video game.
http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Gas_Town
I've been had surprising good luck ordering automotive parts from Amazon.
I stripped some caliper bolts on an 90's truck. I needed a heli-coil(odd size one), and a new bolt. When ordering the program suggested new caliper bushings. Everything fit perfectly.
I thought, if they can keep accuracy of orders spot on, and prices cheap; they will put a huge dent in the automotive parts market.
That said, I've noticed when Amazon goes into a new market, they nail price, and accuracy of order.
They then seem to raise prices slowly. I notice those price increases, and will shop elsewhere, but as of now--I will buy all my auto parts from Amazon.
Whomever programmed that automotive garage did a really good job.
Subaru franchise dealers who do online parts sales always ask customers to enter their VIN to confirm fitment. Sometimes manufacturers (not just Subaru but all of them) even change part numbers within a model year so you always have to check.
Seriously though, if I were in the market for buying a car I would love to use Amazon. I wonder what the restrictions are for them to register as a dealership in each state...
People seem to be missing the point. You can't actually buy cars on amazon (at least not yet) its just a shopping tool where it lists details, reviews, and msrp
This is going to make dealers very nervous. Right now dealerships have all sorts of legal protections ... but as Uber and then self driving cars take over, these antiquated protections are slowly going to disappear.
I wonder if once Tesla fights back all the local monopoly regulation around dealerships, this will naturally transition to an online car dealership. They'll have to figure out test drives though.
Car owners volunteer their cars for test drives and get a kickback if the customer purchases that model? Essentially crowd sourced micro-commissions, that's brilliant.
I dunno have you seen the average person take a car for a test drive? Half the times they don't really want to buy it and just want to play with it. I don't know that I would want tens or hundreds of people in my [figurative] Tesla, possibly beating it up only for a chance at some sort of small kickback.
Then again I didn't think Uber could work and now I take them all the time so who knows!
Maybe? Depends on what the ratio shakes out to be. If I have to let 10 people drive my car then maybe. 20? Probably not worth my time. This will also raise insurance rates as you have to be covered for other drivers on your vehicle.
I think you'd have to give a small kickback just for the test drive, but if the owner goes with them (and presumably does a good job selling them on the car) then the owner gets a bigger commission for a sale.
I would actually prefer this to a dealership since a real owner probably knows that one car he/she drives everyday way better than the lazy sales guy who is trying to sell 10 different models and rarely drives them himself.
Don't laugh! We actually pitched weed delivery as an Amazon service while working there, but we were quickly advised that bezos didn't want to get into marijuana, so we dropped it before going into OP1...
Since they have a fair number of listings, I'm waiting for them to offer something where the buyer gets a substantial discount for buying it directly from the Redfin agent, without using a buyer's agent. Next step would be to sell listings exclusively through Redfin and not through the MLS, though this would be riskier.
I think this was the original business plan of Zillow & Trulia - they wanted people to list without the help of agents. It never really became successful enough so they sold out.
I don't understand how agents can charge 6% in America when they charge 1 or 1.5% in the UK.
It is rare to see a buyers agent earning their 3% in the US. The amount of information and tools available to consumers is nearly in parity with agents. The more hands-on you are with the process, the less value the agents bring. They can still provide value in competitive markets or through complex deals, but your inspector and lawyer are the ones doing the real work.
There are a few places that charge 1% up here in Canada, but they are more the exception than the rule. It's still insane, and given how little effort some realtors put in, it's quite shameful. Even giving someone $3,000 (1% of a $300,000 house) seems like a huge amount of money for the little amount of work they do.
Real estate is a highly regulated industry. Americans prefer assurance and insurance and the high costs associated with them in exchange for 100% peace of mind (or someone to sue if things take an unexpected turn).
As such, real estate agents need to be highly informed and often rigorously certified. This has the dual effects of raising costs to offset their own, and it also shrinks the potential labor pool, which has the expected outcome of higher wages.
RedFin already has lower rates then most real estate agents. We bought and sold a house with them last year and we got a check back from them for part of their fee a week after closing on the buy side.
Not sure how they would pull off new vehicles though. I'm pretty sure existing dealers would take the manufacturers to court if they made amazon a dealer who could sell cars in their exclusivity region. Tesla on the other hand is the manufacturer so they can do it (where legal).
Kind of. They partnered with Nissan to deliver a car to somebody in a huge box; it was never meant as a continual or long term thing just a marketing stunt.
From my understanding, Amazon Vehicles isn't (as yet) about buying cars, but about selling you the parts and accessories for the vehicles that you do own. Here's their 'Garage' page:
Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done.
As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it turned out to be one of the best mattresses I've ever slept in. https://www.saatva.com/ $1000 for the luxury firm Queen, and that included shipping and taking the old one.
This is the only way to do new car shopping. Get the price + windows sticker in writing over email. Send it out to all the dealers in the nearby area and tell them they have your business if you can beat the deal.
Repeat 2-3x, pick the lowest price dealer and be willing to walk out the door if anything funny comes up.
Also quite a few dealerships are directly or indirectly part of a franchise so they won't compete with each other. In that case you usually need to expand your radius to ~100mi. Here in PNW there's great Subaru competition but when we looked at Mazda they didn't haggle at all until we went to dealers in a different state.
Yes, when it comes to a lot of luxury European cars, cities typically only have a single dealership, and there isn't much wiggle room. Ended up with one back home 240 miles away. Picked it up my way home for Thanksgiving right off the thruway. Pulled into parents with the new ride :)
Yeah, we were cross shopping Mazda/Ford/Subaru and it was totally obvious that all the Mazda dealerships were owned by a franchise. When we'd mention a quote they'd push us really hard on where we got it from and wouldn't come back with a counter offer or "we can't beat that".
Pretty transparent and only changed once we started emailing dealers across state lines. Either way they lost our business. Subaru on the other had has a pretty diverse set of dealers and we ended up with one well below "inventory"(that's a whole nother bit of misinformation) at a dealership ~15mi away.
That said Tesla still wipes the floor with any dealership experience I've had which is why I'm pretty excited to see the Model 3 hit the market and more people experience it.
Can't you simply have the manufacturer send the car with your desired options to the dealer and you just pay them the MSRP listed for your configuration in the manufacturer's website? Any negotiation that happens is for a price reduction on that or for extra stuff. It's how it's done for new cars in Europe, if the dealer doesn't have stock (though it can require up to a couple months for the new car to get to the factory to the dealer). I did it just this year.
I did the same thing when we bought my wife's 328 wagon 2 years ago. I emailed about 5 dealerships with a PDF of the options + msrp and they all got back to me in a day or two. I sent a followup email to the others to see if they wanted to beat the best price I received and they all said they couldn't.
I also ordered mine because we wanted a specific set of options like adaptive cruise control, upgraded sound system, but no navigation and a very specific color combination that we couldn't find anywhere.
Our other car is a Tesla and while I prefer ordering online and checking out with a credit card, emailing multiple dealers was pretty painless.
EDIT: If you're curious why we didn't want navigation, this video explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/hCDt02UXzkQ Not to mention it's really expensive, hard to input destinations, I generally know where I'm going, and phones work great.
I've actually gone back to using a new Garmin standalone device. The screens are huge, don't have issues with data networks not being available, and free up your phone, for phone stuff.
Hear hear! If you feel you need _any_ phone functions while you're driving, stop, just full on stop, don't pass go, don't collect $200... Just stop, because you're doing something stupid!
Now BMW offers Apple CarPlay, might be a reason to buy the upgraded screen. Anyway it's ridiculously expensive for what it is, but it gives them space to negotiate and/or make a profit.
Funny, I just rented an entry level Hyundai Sonata, which has both Carplay and Android Auto, but also is completely entry level in every other way, such as: cloth seats, no sunroof, no keyless entry (remote has a clicker for doors and trunk), no push button start (insert the key and turn like a decade ago), etc.
I was very pleasantly surprised that with the touch-screen, which supported swipe and seemed generally (though not-quite) as responsive as an iDevice, and CarPlay, most of the ugly edges/sharp corners of a typical auto infotainment system were gone, and it generally seemed very good.
I will say that CarPlay has the potential to be very good, but it's still very basic for now, and needs a lot more work before its as good as standard iOS. It was particularly nice, though, to use Apple Maps while listening to music on Spotify!
CarPlay is not very good. If the car has a good Bluetooth setup I would not pay anything extra for CarPlay:
* the navigation is crippled. You can't even scroll the map. But why could you--you can't even scroll the map on the iPhone.
* it connects only via a cord. Bluetooth connects automatically and wirelessly.
* it is filled with glitches. Sometimes it hangs or pressing buttons does nothing.
* many apps are poorly thought out. For instance the list of stations in Pandora is always in alphabetical order, rather than showing recent stations first, and the only way to change stations is to scroll through this massive list.
I have mostly abandoned CarPlay and use my iPod hooked up by the cord for music, and the phone in a holder for navigation and Bluetooth phone.
Do you have government/fleet auctions in the US? In Australia, government fleet vehicles are auctioned after a couple of years of use and you can pick up cars before they are grabbed by dealers and topped by margins.
Last car I bought was through an online auction. Didn't actually see the car in person until I went to pick it up.
I tried to buy a car via email. I picked out four different cars (a Kia Optima, a Honda Fit, a Toyota Prius, and a Subaru Outback) and emailed all the dealerships for those cars within a three hour drive. None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them.
I eventually went to the Toyota dealership because although they wouldn't negotiate via email, they didn't phone me either. When I told that to the salesman, he said that he could get in trouble for that because he was supposed to call.
Like every other car buying experience I've had, buying the Toyota sucked. They want to know what payment I want and all I want them to tell me is the out-the-door price. We would go back and forth and eventually they would bring some paperwork with an offer and they had accidentally changed the term from 48 to 60 months. Whoops! I think it ended up taking close to 3 hours to come to an agreement.
To this day, I'm still getting emails and phone calls from some of the dealers I initially contacted and there seems to be no way to make it stop. I would happily pay a small premium to buy from Amazon or direct if I could avoid giving my details to a local dealer.
That reminds me, I'm always getting junk mail and phone calls from scammers trying to sell me some aftermarket warranty. How did they get my name, phone, address, and car information? Is that a public record? The dealer swears they don't sell or share their customer lists.
> None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them.
Maybe you weren't insistent enough? Many dealers don't like negotiating over email, but they also hate to lose a potentially valuable lead. If you make it absolutely clear that you'll only negotiate a certain way (e.g. via email with OTD price quotes), most will play ball.
I'd also suggest starting with a service like TrueCar. The prices they give are generally not the best you can get, but it makes for a good starting point for the email negotiations. I also used CarWoo in the past, but they've closed down. Edmunds has a similar service, though I haven't tried it.
I bought a Honda Accord and many dealers would not quote by email at all. The remaining dealers quoted a price that did not include a $1000 package of addons that were worth much less (door guards, nitrogen tires, wheel locks, etc.) Every Honda dealer I have seen in this region puts these add-ons on each and every car.
People talk as though the "get quotes by email" thing makes buying a car painless but the simple fact is that it's still a minefield.
My experience with Honda dealers (sales and service) has been so awful that I doubt I will buy another Honda, even though I generally like the car.
I noticed that the window tinting on my car isn't factory tint (some bubbles have started). The Toyota dealer orders cars for the lot with no tinting then they add it themselves. I'm guessing this makes them more money.
The Kia dealer I talked didn't have a car with the upholstery I was interested in and I found out later that the quote they gave me included a charge for taking the car to a local guy and getting the seats re-upholstered.
My wife bought an Acura and so far that dealership seems very good. If they keep treating us right, that's where I'll buy my next car.
Kind of. I like centralized service though. I can take my Toyota into any Toyota dealership in the US and they can bring up all the service records on my car. Within the 100k mile warranty every Toyota dealership has to fix, for free, any issue I have that isn't glass, brakes, tires, or body. It's a pretty substantial perk.
The thing is, we almost had this already with Saturn. There were dealerships, but all the cars had fixed prices- no haggling- so it was almost direct-to-consumer, with a bit of added tax for the useless middleman. It was great! But it built up too much resentment at the rest of GM so it had to be killed. It sucks that we're just now starting to get the future we already had, but better late than never.
Yup, thankfully Tesla is carrying on that torch. Went from Saturn -> Tesla and the new purchase experience was very similar(aside from ordering the Tesla on a website).
I think Saturn showed that the model most consumers want is going to have to come from a non-incumbent who doesn't have the baggage of existing dealers.
I went to Saturn back in the day. I also knew someone that worked there. My impression was of a cold environment that did not entice me to compromise $20k on a vehicle.
So, although I believe the model is appealing to some (or many), I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options. It's more of a personal choice, and definitely it's unnecessary for say Teslas. I feel the car salesperson is not just something to be disrupted and eradicated, but to evolve into a more modern counterpart, like the people at shift.com.
OTOH, car dealership mafias should definitely die.
> So, although I believe the model is appealing to some (or many), I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options.
Then you should pay for someone to offer you that service. He would be more likely to be impartial too.
"I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options."
A good salesman would be good for this. My last salesman did not know how to operate the in-dash entertainment system. Information-wise, I would have been better off ordering my car from a kiosk.
Saturn's sticker price was fair - as opposed to other car makes having their sticker price as "we would make a killing if someone bought it at this price."
Some individual dealers are no-haggle with "fair" (discounted of MSRP). Some brands may be as well--Scion possibly?
The problem is that people love to complain but a lot will simply walk if they go into a dealer and are told the price is the price. There are also still financing and trade-in games that most people don't have the luxury of simply ignoring--in part because they're trying to get themselves into a car they can't really afford.
Me too! I thought I had a pretty good experience the last time I dealt with one. Low pressure process, they were friendly, and I got a good deal. Then I bought a new car and attempted to trade that car in. Turns out the dealership had filed my title with a lien on it as if I had financed the purchase through them, which ended up being a gigantic multi-day hassle talking to the dealer, to the car company's financial arm, and to the local DMV office.
Selling it yourself can also get you more money for the old car. If the dealer gets to couple the two deals, they can come down $3000 (say) on the price of the new car, if they can rip you off $3000 on the price they give you for the used one.
You can also go to a business like Car Max which will give you a quote for your used vehicle which is good for 7 days. Take the quote with you when going to buy a new car. If the dealer doesn't want to match the Car Max quote as trade-in value, then don't trade in, and sell your car to Car Max.
And/or if you drive cars until they have very little value like I do, just look up the Bluebook value and donate it if you can't get something in the ballpark of your tax deduction from the dealer.
The bottom line is that if you have a figure in mind that's a hard floor, you can just say no; no bargaining required.
The problem, unfortunately, as we learned through some of Tesla's struggles, is that car dealerships are deeply embedded in a bunch of localities through legislation. There are literally written into law as the way consumers needs to buy cars.
So the tough part here is that we consumers would LOVE a better way, but it's going to be a while before this takes nationwide. A few progressive municipalities will, I'm sure, adopt (and make it legal to buy via Amazon Cars), but don't hold your breath for the death of car dealerships in the next ~10 years.
This matches my understanding too. According to Sen. Warren's book 'A Fighting Chance', the dealers lobby was able to get significant exemptions added for themselves when financial regulations were being discussed in 2013 [1]. One of these was the ability to change the rate of a loan after the sale is done.
While a generally agree that dealerships are awful I think the service they provide is the test drive. Car companies don't want to spend money managing "drive centers" all over the world. Since dealerships provide this "service" to them they must in turn ensure that the dealerships can survive by keeping them the most common place to buy a car. If they did all of their sales online the dealerships would go out of business.
Yet Tesla maintains "drive centers" all over the place.
Also, if it weren't such a racket, you would have a single drive center that sold Chevy, Mazda, Toyota all in once place, and then the dealerships wouldn't have to worry about sending people there. They would compete for people's business.
I always thought the dealership system was mandated in the US to prevent companies from selling a car but not providing any required maintenance for it. With dealerships, they're required to give someone else the repair guides.
Obviously there's much better ways this could've been done…
I was just wondering yesterday, if there is a service out there, which would let me see the type and model of cars which are popular, and most-bought? I assume there must be such a dataset available somewhere through government sources? Or perhaps not. Such a data could be a valuable service based on crowd's wisdom. Amazon here seems to provide public comments, which is generally available via Google.
I doubt the government has any data, there's no need or desire for dealers to send them info on their sales. Look at things like Consumer Reports who go out and survey large audiences of everyday people to see what they purchased, how much they paid, how much they like the car, etc.
Likely not helpful, however it is possible to check registration records in Germany (Europe?).
Isn't there a way to check these in the US too? Is the type of car recorded (and on which administrative level)?
If you could get these info and subtract cars previously registered, a blurred picture of recent sales should emerge.
In the not-too-distant future: "Amazon now largest car dealer in the US, and fleets of Amazonian drones flying cars across the country are now a common sight. Fatalities from dropped cars are down 25% on the previous quarter. More news at 11".
I think it would be great to buy a car from Amazon. The WYSISYG pricing is something missing from car buying. Negotiating a car price can be a lot of fun if you're a good negotiator, but people who aren't might love this.
It also gives you a tool for negotiating if you DO plan to take the offer in to a local dealership.
> The WYSISYG pricing is something missing from car buying.
You can do this on most manufacturer's sites. Just configure the vehicle and print out the result. Unless it's an extremely hot vehicle, they will give you that price since most people are trying to haggle below that price.
The real problem is inventory. You're not likely going to find one with exactly what you want, and you can order one at that price but then you're 1-4+ months before it arrives. That's fine if you've got a lease ending soon and can plan for it, but when I buy a new car it's usually because my current car has a problem and I can't really wait more than a month.
They need to figure out how to shorten lead times (perhaps making more options dealer installed), or change the way inventory is ordered/stored so Dealers aren't all ordering the same thing (which I don't blame them for doing).
My dad's last car had some dealer installed trim applied to the door sils, they drilled holes to mount the trim, and didn't properly re-seal the metal, so it rusted.
Dealer installed radio in a previous car had faulty wiring.
Friend had a car where the dealer had replaced the normal badge with the premium hood ornament. Rust again.
Apparently dealers are selling cars like hot cakes nowadays, because the last few times I went to a dealership and tried to get a discount they wouldn't really budge. When you threaten to walk, they say "Well.... bye!" A few years ago, they would practically sell for less than cost. So, yea a service that gives you a WYSIWYG price sounds pretty good these days.
Do manufacturers not advertise prices in the US? Right now I can go to UK site for Mercedes, or Audi, or any other manufacturer, click on a model, and the website will show me a price for a new car + pricing on all options. I know I can walk into any dealership and they will sell the car for that exact price. What am I missing here?
You're missing that a lot of people (here and elsewhere) want a fixed price but they want that fixed price to be what you'd get if you bargained down the price from MSRP.
Is there something like this for buying new cars online? I thought I something a while back about a company like this working directly with dealerships selling new cars but I can't find it now.
I'm planning on buying an EV car this year for the tax benefits, but I'm dreading the dealership.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 335 ms ] threadhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Amazon
At least, that's the theory. In practice you still need to do 100% of the due diligence or you'll end up with spark plug wires that are for the non-California version of the engine of your girlfriend's 2004 Outback, and then you have to build an awkward bracket over the motor because you're too stubborn to return them...
It is an interesting feature and sometimes useful, but like you I found that when I even was buying car parts it wasn't always on the ball about whether or not the part I was looking at was compatible. I believe I remember errors in both the false positive and false negative directions, so I stopped trusting it's screening capabilities really at all and mostly have ignored it since.
It's motorcycle part match is an even larger adventure.
Rock Auto is my go-to for most parts. Example, for my 2012 civic:
http://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/honda,2012,civic,1.8l+l4,...
It would be nice if they fixed this problem. I saw a ton of parts that incorrectly said they'd fit my vehicle. Windshield wipers are an easy example. You'll see varying length wiper blades they say will fit.
Edit: It seems like they could favor search results matching specific vehicles to combat this. For example, a part should be viewed as less relevant for claiming compatibility with more vehicles. This would be problematic for universal stuff like tires, wiper blades, and other accessories, but I'm sure they could differentiate between the legit universal stuff and the seller's who claim their part fits every vehicle in existence.
I'm sure this is harder than I'm making it out to be, I can't imagine all the edge cases they have to deal with. But some effort would really help, and I'd be more likely to buy this stuff online if it wasn't so damn difficult to verify that the part is compatible.
Varying lengths of wiper blades will fit your car. Most cars have a front-left, front-right, and rear wiper blade, all of which are different sizes.
I never understood why they under-size them to begin with.
So a 16" will almost certainly fit where a 14" goes.
If one orders a spare that doesn't fit in the existing vehicle, it may prompt purchasing a vehicle instead. Who knows?
First let's assume that Amazon can't sell new cars due to restrictive franchise laws in every state.
You are easily off by an order of magnitude on the billion dollar business statement. Carmax is the largest used car dealer in the nation, with a market cap of over 11 billion. As of 2015 they captured about 1.7% of used car sales. (They sold 582,282 vehicles to consumers and over 33.8 million used vehicles were sold, I'm on my phone so I can source this later if you'd like)
Second Amazon is an beast and anyone in a market that Amazon is considering should pay careful attention. That said I think that vehicle sales is such a different market in many ways that Amazon will either take a long time to figure out the whole process and provide a consistent quality product or they will acquire a company currently in the used vehicle market. The two leaders in the online space had a huge leg up due to ancestry or acquisition. I doubt Amazon would be stubborn enough to learn the business the hard way.
My pet peeve with Amazon is a similar "nice but not quite good enough feature" : their selling of fasteners. Nuts, bolts, etc fall into a clear if quite complex N-space of sizes and features. This can be represented nicely in a web site, for example : http://www.mcmaster.com/ however even though Amazon acquired a nuts-n-bolts retailer some years ago, their site is a horrible mess for this kind of item. I'm not sure if this is because there are no humans curating the catalog, or because Bezos doesn't do his own maker projects and vehicle maintenance...
I had a 2008 Lancer and the owners manual constantly had to make distinctions between "California" and "non-California" versions for various procedures/features.
(I'm not even in North America, that's just global manufacturing for you)
Find the fitting you need but you found it in 3/4 instead of 1/2? You need to start over from scratch 90% of the time.
I'm a fan of supplyhouse.com but mcmaster.com looks good too!
If that's the case, why didn't Amazon include older model cars? I know the Chevy Volt has models starting from 2012 or 2011, yet only 2016 and 2017 models are shown
UPDATE: I was wrong. The different models do show up if you search for it, but for some reason I did not see it while browsing.
I just wish that Amazon could start selling cars directly.
Given that I can add an 1896 Duryea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duryea_Motor_Wagon_Company) to my garage, I think it's safe to say they include older model cars.
They are waiting for people to buy enough accessories that aren't suitable for their existing vehicles.
Subsequently, they'll start selling vehicles that might be suitable for the accessories sold.
If this is the competition Amazon is going to make a lot of money on this Garage thing.
You select your make, model, year, and engine, and it comes up with a list of parts that fit your vehicle, that can be filtered by use.
They also offer free shipping. I got a new front bumper and apron for my truck for $200-odd shipped to my front door.
Infact you can even put your vehicle registration number in and it'll do the work for you.
I stripped some caliper bolts on an 90's truck. I needed a heli-coil(odd size one), and a new bolt. When ordering the program suggested new caliper bushings. Everything fit perfectly.
I thought, if they can keep accuracy of orders spot on, and prices cheap; they will put a huge dent in the automotive parts market.
That said, I've noticed when Amazon goes into a new market, they nail price, and accuracy of order.
They then seem to raise prices slowly. I notice those price increases, and will shop elsewhere, but as of now--I will buy all my auto parts from Amazon.
Whomever programmed that automotive garage did a really good job.
Five Stars
By wangchengxuan on July 21, 2016
lalala
Seriously though, if I were in the market for buying a car I would love to use Amazon. I wonder what the restrictions are for them to register as a dealership in each state...
Then again I didn't think Uber could work and now I take them all the time so who knows!
I would actually prefer this to a dealership since a real owner probably knows that one car he/she drives everyday way better than the lazy sales guy who is trying to sell 10 different models and rarely drives them himself.
OTOH, this doesn't do much for specific used cars.
Since they have a fair number of listings, I'm waiting for them to offer something where the buyer gets a substantial discount for buying it directly from the Redfin agent, without using a buyer's agent. Next step would be to sell listings exclusively through Redfin and not through the MLS, though this would be riskier.
I don't understand how agents can charge 6% in America when they charge 1 or 1.5% in the UK.
As such, real estate agents need to be highly informed and often rigorously certified. This has the dual effects of raising costs to offset their own, and it also shrinks the potential labor pool, which has the expected outcome of higher wages.
Here is a truly horrid video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yISx15OYogU
https://www.amazon.com/gp/your-garage/
From the surrounding comments, it seems they do something similar with home appliances and photography equipment.
* keep away from pets and small children
Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.
As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it turned out to be one of the best mattresses I've ever slept in. https://www.saatva.com/ $1000 for the luxury firm Queen, and that included shipping and taking the old one.
Repeat 2-3x, pick the lowest price dealer and be willing to walk out the door if anything funny comes up.
Also quite a few dealerships are directly or indirectly part of a franchise so they won't compete with each other. In that case you usually need to expand your radius to ~100mi. Here in PNW there's great Subaru competition but when we looked at Mazda they didn't haggle at all until we went to dealers in a different state.
Pretty transparent and only changed once we started emailing dealers across state lines. Either way they lost our business. Subaru on the other had has a pretty diverse set of dealers and we ended up with one well below "inventory"(that's a whole nother bit of misinformation) at a dealership ~15mi away.
That said Tesla still wipes the floor with any dealership experience I've had which is why I'm pretty excited to see the Model 3 hit the market and more people experience it.
I also ordered mine because we wanted a specific set of options like adaptive cruise control, upgraded sound system, but no navigation and a very specific color combination that we couldn't find anywhere.
Our other car is a Tesla and while I prefer ordering online and checking out with a credit card, emailing multiple dealers was pretty painless.
EDIT: If you're curious why we didn't want navigation, this video explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/hCDt02UXzkQ Not to mention it's really expensive, hard to input destinations, I generally know where I'm going, and phones work great.
I was very pleasantly surprised that with the touch-screen, which supported swipe and seemed generally (though not-quite) as responsive as an iDevice, and CarPlay, most of the ugly edges/sharp corners of a typical auto infotainment system were gone, and it generally seemed very good.
I will say that CarPlay has the potential to be very good, but it's still very basic for now, and needs a lot more work before its as good as standard iOS. It was particularly nice, though, to use Apple Maps while listening to music on Spotify!
I think that's actually a feature, less possibilities to distract a driver with.
* the navigation is crippled. You can't even scroll the map. But why could you--you can't even scroll the map on the iPhone.
* it connects only via a cord. Bluetooth connects automatically and wirelessly.
* it is filled with glitches. Sometimes it hangs or pressing buttons does nothing.
* many apps are poorly thought out. For instance the list of stations in Pandora is always in alphabetical order, rather than showing recent stations first, and the only way to change stations is to scroll through this massive list.
I have mostly abandoned CarPlay and use my iPod hooked up by the cord for music, and the phone in a holder for navigation and Bluetooth phone.
Last car I bought was through an online auction. Didn't actually see the car in person until I went to pick it up.
I eventually went to the Toyota dealership because although they wouldn't negotiate via email, they didn't phone me either. When I told that to the salesman, he said that he could get in trouble for that because he was supposed to call.
Like every other car buying experience I've had, buying the Toyota sucked. They want to know what payment I want and all I want them to tell me is the out-the-door price. We would go back and forth and eventually they would bring some paperwork with an offer and they had accidentally changed the term from 48 to 60 months. Whoops! I think it ended up taking close to 3 hours to come to an agreement.
To this day, I'm still getting emails and phone calls from some of the dealers I initially contacted and there seems to be no way to make it stop. I would happily pay a small premium to buy from Amazon or direct if I could avoid giving my details to a local dealer.
That reminds me, I'm always getting junk mail and phone calls from scammers trying to sell me some aftermarket warranty. How did they get my name, phone, address, and car information? Is that a public record? The dealer swears they don't sell or share their customer lists.
Maybe you weren't insistent enough? Many dealers don't like negotiating over email, but they also hate to lose a potentially valuable lead. If you make it absolutely clear that you'll only negotiate a certain way (e.g. via email with OTD price quotes), most will play ball.
I'd also suggest starting with a service like TrueCar. The prices they give are generally not the best you can get, but it makes for a good starting point for the email negotiations. I also used CarWoo in the past, but they've closed down. Edmunds has a similar service, though I haven't tried it.
In all of their items they say: We will share your data with qualified partners.
I was also thinking DMV records might be public.
that's why i always use an different email/google voice for dealing with these sleaz- ahem, persistent salesmen
People talk as though the "get quotes by email" thing makes buying a car painless but the simple fact is that it's still a minefield.
My experience with Honda dealers (sales and service) has been so awful that I doubt I will buy another Honda, even though I generally like the car.
The Kia dealer I talked didn't have a car with the upholstery I was interested in and I found out later that the quote they gave me included a charge for taking the car to a local guy and getting the seats re-upholstered.
My wife bought an Acura and so far that dealership seems very good. If they keep treating us right, that's where I'll buy my next car.
I think Saturn showed that the model most consumers want is going to have to come from a non-incumbent who doesn't have the baggage of existing dealers.
So, although I believe the model is appealing to some (or many), I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options. It's more of a personal choice, and definitely it's unnecessary for say Teslas. I feel the car salesperson is not just something to be disrupted and eradicated, but to evolve into a more modern counterpart, like the people at shift.com.
OTOH, car dealership mafias should definitely die.
Then you should pay for someone to offer you that service. He would be more likely to be impartial too.
A good salesman would be good for this. My last salesman did not know how to operate the in-dash entertainment system. Information-wise, I would have been better off ordering my car from a kiosk.
The problem is that people love to complain but a lot will simply walk if they go into a dealer and are told the price is the price. There are also still financing and trade-in games that most people don't have the luxury of simply ignoring--in part because they're trying to get themselves into a car they can't really afford.
The bottom line is that if you have a figure in mind that's a hard floor, you can just say no; no bargaining required.
The problem, unfortunately, as we learned through some of Tesla's struggles, is that car dealerships are deeply embedded in a bunch of localities through legislation. There are literally written into law as the way consumers needs to buy cars.
So the tough part here is that we consumers would LOVE a better way, but it's going to be a while before this takes nationwide. A few progressive municipalities will, I'm sure, adopt (and make it legal to buy via Amazon Cars), but don't hold your breath for the death of car dealerships in the next ~10 years.
(PS - I deeply hope I'm wrong.)
Also, if it weren't such a racket, you would have a single drive center that sold Chevy, Mazda, Toyota all in once place, and then the dealerships wouldn't have to worry about sending people there. They would compete for people's business.
Obviously there's much better ways this could've been done…
If you could get these info and subtract cars previously registered, a blurred picture of recent sales should emerge.
It also gives you a tool for negotiating if you DO plan to take the offer in to a local dealership.
---
In the used-car market, this is what CarMax does.[1]
[1]: https://www.carmax.com/car-buying-process/why-carmax
You can do this on most manufacturer's sites. Just configure the vehicle and print out the result. Unless it's an extremely hot vehicle, they will give you that price since most people are trying to haggle below that price.
The real problem is inventory. You're not likely going to find one with exactly what you want, and you can order one at that price but then you're 1-4+ months before it arrives. That's fine if you've got a lease ending soon and can plan for it, but when I buy a new car it's usually because my current car has a problem and I can't really wait more than a month.
They need to figure out how to shorten lead times (perhaps making more options dealer installed), or change the way inventory is ordered/stored so Dealers aren't all ordering the same thing (which I don't blame them for doing).
My dad's last car had some dealer installed trim applied to the door sils, they drilled holes to mount the trim, and didn't properly re-seal the metal, so it rusted.
Dealer installed radio in a previous car had faulty wiring.
Friend had a car where the dealer had replaced the normal badge with the premium hood ornament. Rust again.
I'm planning on buying an EV car this year for the tax benefits, but I'm dreading the dealership.
I already have my car in my 'garage', they've had that functionality for years.