Online Car Brokers

Flygaz

Has anyone used an online dealer to buy a new car? And the follow on question what was experience like?
I am looking at a company called "Buyacar".

reck_uk

I would like to know this as well. There are a few of these on-line brokers around like broadspeed, drivethedeal etc and some have been around for a long time. First time i've heard of buyacar though and their prices seem even better than the others.

Why would anyone purchase directly from a dealer when you can save thousands going these brokers?

reck_uk

One thing I have noticed from reading up on the sites. Drivethedeal literally just connect you up with the dealer who is going to sell you the car. All the discussions and payments are made directly to the dealer and not to drivethedeal which is a big plus. Also apart from the balance you pay the full amount on delivery if you want. Finally you will be the first and only registered name on the car.

With buyacar it seems you have to pay the internet company the money and all your dealing go through them. Payment is before delivery and it doesn’t say anywhere that the car isn’t going to already be registered to some company prior to you receiving the car. buyacar prices are even cheaper than dirvethedeals which is already a lot cheaper than the rrp but I wonder if they are using pre-registered cars to get an even cheaper deal?

Flyboy152

There really is very little saved, if you do a bit of leg work yourself, in many cases, the deals you can get yourself are often better than those offered by the brokers. The discounts and allowances are the same, but the dealer still gas to pay a fee to the broker. So they are more than likely be happy to save at least half of that, by giving you a bit more discount.

InsideInsurance

I used autoebid once to buy a car and it worked well for me, effectively a reverse auction but before placing a request for bids you are given a reserve so if you dont get bids below that you arent under an obligation to buy, if you do then your at least obliged to pay the autoebid fees (cant remember if its also to buy the car). The only down side is that when I used it you couldnt stipulate a PX had to be part of the deal.

I got the best of both worlds where I got them to agree an exceptionally low reserve, the auction was almost their fees above the reserve and so they agreed to waive their fees to bring it to below the reserve - thankfully the dealer also learned they were just above the reserve so also discounted their final bid by the same amount

With all of these there are commissions to pay and so in theory you could get it cheaper by negotiating the deal yourself but in my case it was a franchise 400 miles away that came up by far the cheapest (will never know why) and in reality I'd probably never have called them to even try to negotiate let alone achieved that result. All the franchises I had spoken to were talking £2,000 more even after taking into consideration the fees (plus a longer wait for the car as they had a waiting list to order let alone the wait from ordering to receiving)

jack_spratt_2

I have used carfile they have been about for years they work by putting you in touch with the dealer and payment and delivery is through a main dealer .The dealer in my case took my part ex in but it does depend on what make you are buying and the dealership and some of the manufacturers finance incentives are available as well .

Ask for Jonathan

Flyboy152

But you would probably have been able to have got the same deal if you dealt direct with the dealer anyway, perhaps even better.

jack_spratt_2

Flyboy 152

It depends on the dealer and if they will negotiate my guess is if they know you mean business and have done your home work you can and will come off with a deal just as good as a broker but some people are not very good a haggling as other people .
It a tough old market out there for car dealers they want the sales but if you go for a local dealer go for one with large dealership presence who are used to dealing with fleet sales as these the most likely to do the broker matched deal

It always the cost to change that matters and the last car car I bought for my daughter was from a main dealer and the broker could not beat the price

Flygaz

Thanks for the replies.

In answer to reck_uk some of buyacar deals are as 1st registered keeper and some as 2nd registered keeper. I was looking at VW (1st Keeper) & Ford (2nd Keeper) both were supposed to be built to order.

With what I have been offered at the dealerships buyacar are still ubder those prices, so I must not be very good at deal making

Flyboy152

Flygaz wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

In answer to reck_uk some of buyacar deals are as 1st registered keeper and some as 2nd registered keeper. I was looking at VW (1st Keeper) & Ford (2nd Keeper) both were supposed to be built to order.

With what I have been offered at the dealerships buyacar are still ubder those prices, so I must not be very good at deal making

Show the dealer the "Buyacar" quote and ask them to better it.

Flygaz

I showed local dealer the they went pale, might need to try also a bigger dealer in the nearby city.