By: Kate Dodge
I'm a first-time
car buyer. I picked up my shiny new friend on Friday, the 13th of March,
superstitions be damned. I was way too excited to wait until the 14th.
That's how car
buying should be, an adventure, not a nightmare.
Confession: I didn't
do all the work myself. I hired the delightful Chris Martin at Car
Smart to do the ugly work for me. I never even had to speak to a
dealer.
Hiring someone
to do the dirty work can greatly ease the new-car buying procedure,
and it can save you money. Buying services such as Car Smart know how
to buy cars, they know invoice costs, they know car dealers, and they
will save you money off of the sticker price. The one caveat, and it's
a big one, is go with someone you can trust. Get references, choose
a service that charges a flat rate, not a percentage of the sticker
price. A good buyer will deal with most, or all, dealerships in your
area. If you find that your buyer will only deal with a select few,
he may well be working for the dealers, not for you.
Your biggest defense in any transaction is educating yourself. Knowledge
is power, baby. I spent hours on the web, learning everything I could
before I called Car Smart, and it was great. The Web is a vast source
of information, available 24 hours a day, and you never have to hear
a car salesman call you sweety, and ask if your boyfriend is with you.
(A gender-specific obstacle, to be sure, but men can benefit from no-pressure
research as well)
I started at Woman
Motorist's New Car Buying Handbook, to get an idea of my budget, both
purchase price, and long-term costs. Check out their article, "What
Can I Afford to Spend on a New Car?". As it turned out, I ended
up leasing instead of buying, but not until I really got my head around
what exactly a lease is, the good, the bad, and the cryptic. I got lots
of help from Edmund's
and Motor Trend.
Once I had a notion
of what my budget was going to be, I headed over to Car
Point to do some window-shopping.
Words of warning:
- Only visit when
you have plenty of time, because Car Point is by far the best thing
Microsoft ever made (high praise, indeed) and you could easily lose
track of time.
- Go armed with
a nice new browser, speed isn't such an issue, but you will need some
small plug-ins for the pricing utilities and the surround videos.
That being said,
the information here is vast, and so well organized. Car Point makes
a great case study for the potential of the World Wide Web as an information
transfer medium.
I did a number
of searches by price; read reviews of all possible cars (and many of
impossible cars, just because they were there); I made use of the comparison
feature to see how one choice stood up to another; and I checked reliability
ratings for used cars, to try to judge how my new one would last, and
what it's resell value would be.
Once I knew exactly
what I wanted, down to the optional features (or lack thereof, in this
case), I called Car Smart, and unleashed them on the dealers in my area.
If you feel comfortable negotiating with your dealer yourself, do so.
I'm just not a haggler, so I farmed the work out.
This is by no means
a how-to guide, it's more a narrative of my experience. Go your own
way. Browse through AutoGuide.net's
Buy and Sell category, you will find step by step guides, checklists,
reviews and pricing utilities galore
Whether you handle
dealer interaction and negotiation yourself, or hire someone to do it
for you, your research will be your best defense -- and your ticket
to a better deal.
And above all,
have fun.
