What do you guys think it is my chances of getting the dealers desperate enough to offer me a better price than truecar price during the end of the year?
Also lets say for example the truecar price is 30k and a dealer agrees to that price. Is there any reason they can offer that price for purchase but not for lease? (I know in a lease you dont pay all 30k, but the lease’s starting point is from a “sales price” which is basically the 30k)
This truecar crap is really starting to piss me off. Does anyone understand how this works? How do you think truecar works? It’s just a lead generating system for dealers, they pay to play. They give you the impression that you are getting a good deal and people fall for it hook line and sinker. Just do your own leg work and I guarantee you’ll get a better price than truecar. Do take advantage of any of their rebate deals though.
Seriously. I’d be embarrassed if I couldn’t negotiate substantially lower than the truecar price. Years ago it was a great site, now it’s just something to look at and has turned into a dealer lead generator.
You can always do better than truecar.
Financing and leasing can have different incentives so yes sometimes the buy price is better than lease price.
how do you know how much you are aiming for? Currently I am looking at a clarity plug-in with 34295 msrp and I mean through truecar I can see some stats like how much people paid and i guess the “truecar price”. But tbh, how do you know how much you should pay? I also live in bay area so price might be inflated a bit compared to other cities.
how do you usually start the negotiation with a dealer? and what reference points do you use to set your price goal?
Search around. This has been discussed extensively already.
There’s quite a few threads on the Clarity, take a look
@ursus summed up truecar well here…
You are right on the money Joe…True Car is one of many, many scams run by auto dealers to try to make the unwary and lazy customer think there is some “source” that if followed will result in a good deal. Spend some time, read the many, many comments here and get the deal that is out there but certainly not on “True Car” or any of the other promoted sources.
According to TrueCar, I bought my Accord for less than the lowest person in the entire country 
TrueCar has basically become what the dealers want to sell the car for. So I basically look at that as “MSRP” and go from there.
I did take a look, but they are mostly from east coast or south california, the south california prices are pretty similar to what I see on truecar and the ones from east coast feels kinda unrealistic and I am not even sure if that is possible in bay area.
What are the factors that changes the price depending on the location of the dealership? (other than the obvious of location rental price, etc.)
what about edmund’s pricing? I mean I gotta start from somewhere? I dont know what is considered a good price without some reference point and especially since the price is the bay area is higher than any other place in the US.
Just go to socal if you can save a couple thousand
You will need to figure out the maximum discount given on the car you want. I did that by searching the forum here.
I used Edmunds for MF and RV values.
Once you know these 4 things, max discount, MF, RV, and incentives you qualify for, you will also know the bottom dollar price on car, and can begin the search.
Know exactly what your car should cost first, then use Trucar, not the other way around…
Hey was trying to find an answer to this and did not wanna start a new thread … Is TruCar pricing pre or post incentives?
I believe the answer is it is pre-some incentives.
I would put very little stock in the TrueCar price.
Thats what I am finding on here … their historical reporting suggests really aggressive discounts on the cars I am looking at so I am trying to make sense of what it means
Unfortunately, without context (such as included incentives), historical data doesn’t really do much good.
True car price is Crap. I posted a while ago where my ‘true car’ price didn’t work because the car they quoted me didn’t exist.