TrueCar

I'm the average person doing research on purchasing a used vehicle under a certain dollar amount and used several online searches. Found TrueCar to be the most helpful. After checking availabilities on cars, dealers emailed with a quick response and some followed up with a phone call. This was great for my time management.

I hate car shopping, particularly dealing with sales talks. TrueCar allowed me to compare several models, select the ones I wanted to explore, and get offers from the dealers without really wasting a lot of time being talked up and assessed by sales people. I got three fairly similar offers, choose the one that looked best and drove it home. I would like to add that I also used Edmund's and the offers through their website were not as good, the dealers seemed to expect to ask a higher price and haggle.

There have been a lot of complaints about TrueCar that are quite frankly, unfair. I have used this service twice for purchasing new vehicles. Yes, I received many emails and phone calls, and yes, I had to go to the lot and the price I paid was more than I expected to. But the bottom line price in both cases was very accurate and consistent with Kelly Blue Book and other sites. TrueCar provides helpful bottomline information so you can comparison shop for the best price on a vehicle you are looking for. It is not a buying service. Those services are expensive.

This is my second time using the True Car website through my Progressive policy. I have found the site to be extremely useful in finding a car make, model, year, and price that I was looking for. The first time I used this site I went to Fairway Auto in Phoenix and that was an absolute no haggle process. I was out of there in less than 30 minutes with my car. Unfortunately, I only had that car for a few days and it was in another accident. Back to True Car to find another car. Fairway did not have the cars that I was looking for. Received prices from True Car from Chapman Auto in Tempe (Curtis was very helpful) and Vans Chevrolet in Scottsdale (neutral) and ultimately found my car at Auto Nation. Auto Nation was great to deal with with no hidden fees. Very pleased with the website and ultimately the dealership.

I recently purchased a QX60 from Nalley Infiniti of Atlanta. I was able to use the TrueCar app in conjunction with my Sam's membership and essentially obtain a no-haggle price match. Great App, easy to use. It was very detailed and I like all the additional benefits that Sam's is providing with the car above what the dealership provided. My car was priced $13,000 below other comparable cars, not bad for a fully loaded QX60 with only 24k miles on it, one previous owner. I negotiated under 30k for the vehicle.

I went to TrueCar.com to find and negotiate a deal to trade for a new car. I found my deal, got an offer on my trade-in with a net price difference, accepted that deal, got a TrueCar Deal Code and set up an appointment for the next day to finalize the deal and make the trade. All this online at TrueCar.com's website. However, when I contacted the specified dealer to confirm the appointment, I was told they would not honor the deal and raised the price on the new car by about 20%. When I made attempts to get resolution/comment from TrueCar, I got no response whatsoever after a week.

I don't think it is working though the intention seems good. The listings are just to make people contact the dealers but at end of the day, people don't get for the price listed or end up buying something else. Dealers most of the time do not respect what was provided by Truecar to its clients.

So I started looking for a truck to find a decent price truck. In order for me to look at the prices, I had to put I'm my personal information. The next morning I'm getting like 10 calls, text messages, emails from different dealerships. Next time I'll just put a fake phone number, what a waste of time. And like I said I was using this website to get a good price but all of the trucks were over 5k msrp.

Got an offer of .80% from my credit union if I use one of their car buying services. One of which was True Car. Filled out all the information and started getting offers. The offers I was receiving were $5000 over MSRP. :-( Why would I need to enlist a car buying service in order to pay $5,000 over MSRP. Now I have all these car dealerships calling me on my cell phone trying to sell me Vehicles 5000 over MSRP. What a mistake this was. Now I have to figure out a way to stop the annoying phone calls... Bad experience.

I received offers from three different Honda dealerships through TrueCar and not one of them honored the pricing once I was in their showroom. I even specifically asked the last dealership if there was any possibility of additional fees or add-ons once I got there and they assured me, through both email and text, that all charges, other than taxes and registration, were disclosed in the TrueCar offer. Then after driving 60 miles to the dealership, I'm told that the specific car I was given pricing for (the Vin Number matched) actually had another $3000 in dealer add ons, plus a $5000 surcharge due to the current car shortage. What?!! Total waste of time and a horrible overall experience! Might be good for initial research, but the dealer offers are just a bait and switch.