Carwow- massive difference in same dealership !

[Ashtons99]

I went with my daughter yesterday to buy a new VW TRoc. On the face of it we got a reasonable deal with money off the retail price of the new car and a good PX price on hers (a couple of hundered over Cap clean price ). She is buying on a PCP. She placed a £200 deposit on the car but no delivery time on the new build.
Out of interest she put the same model into Carwow, the same dealer we had dealt with came back with a price £3600 less than the price of the car quoted in the showroom.
A number of other dealers were around £3k less.

She thinks if something looks too good to be true it probably is. However I’m minded to go into the showroom and get them to explain where the difference is. Admittedly the carwow price didn’t consider and PX price but with a difference of £3600 we could afford to just lose the £200 deposit and take a big hit on PX and still be well in profit.

Accepting we should have done the carwow thing before walking into the showroom has anyone any experience of this and is it likely that such big differences can happen

[noidea]

I used Carwow when I bought the wife's Beetle.
In my case the local dealers couldn't touch the price the dealer on Carwow offered. It was delivered on a trailer. Very straight forward process as you deal direct.
Slightly different to your daughter's position but as you say even if you lose the deposit she will still be quids in.
Have you done a we buy any car quote or Evens Halshaw as they can offer better prices. That could be an alternative?
The reason they offered such a good price in our case was because it was treated as a fleet sale. So as they delivered it there was no need for any of the dealer reveals in the showroom or the free gits that sometimes get offered.

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[Arcam]

I went with my daughter yesterday to buy a new VW TRoc. On the face of it we got a reasonable deal with money off the retail price of the new car and a good PX price on hers (a couple of hundered over Cap clean price ). She is buying on a PCP. She placed a £200 deposit on the car but no delivery time on the new build.
Out of interest she put the same model into Carwow, the same dealer we had dealt with came back with a price £3600 less than the price of the car quoted in the showroom.
A number of other dealers were around £3k less.

She thinks if something looks too good to be true it probably is. However I’m minded to go into the showroom and get them to explain where the difference is. Admittedly the carwow price didn’t consider and PX price but with a difference of £3600 we could afford to just lose the £200 deposit and take a big hit on PX and still be well in profit.

Accepting we should have done the carwow thing before walking into the showroom has anyone any experience of this and is it likely that such big differences can happen

Bit of an obvious question but were the vehicle specs identical?

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[higham5]

When buying my wife's MX 5 last year we used Carwow initially. It came in about 2.5k below list from a range of dealers on a £23k car.
I guess they see it as another channel and when I read up on them they describe their customers as the people who would never visit a dealership, hence under cutting the bricks and mortar dealership.

Our car was enroute eg shown as due in the country eg 1 week delivery. When we sat with a local dealer with no part ex he beat the Carwow price easily.

So OP as been stated above, wait until all the Carwow quotes are in, 5 from memory, print them off and then return to the dealership who has your deposit for a “chat” about price down offers.

[Ashtons99]

Thanks for the replies. I’m certainly going to go back in. The carwow price is based on the same model car she signed for. I can understand maybe even £1k difference between showroom and carwow but £3600 is ridiculous

[TKH]

Ok as a dealer well retired 8 weeks ago after 32 years here’s my advice / input

Carwow dealers set up a price matrix in the settings and we decide how much discount to give on each model so the quotes are automatically generated they have to be super competitive to be in with a chance of getting the business more often than not there is zero margin left in vehicle crazy but true and we pay carwow £300 intro fee dealers do this in the hope they can hit targets and get bonuses which are not guaranteed crazy business.

Anyway it sounds like you have potentially been an easy target and the dealership rather than offer you the best price they can do have seen an opportunity?

That said make sure before you go in and kick off that the specs are identical also I think there’s a FDA on the pcp make sure this is again like for like.

PX a couple over CAP is about what we have to pay for good retail stock irrespective of the price on the new car deal.

The big question is stock availability on any new car deal try to be flexible on colour and options If it means a significantly better deal.

But as to your question yes get in there and drop it on desk....nicely.

[Ashtons99]

Ok as a dealer well retired 8 weeks ago after 32 years here’s my advice / input

Carwow dealers set up a price matrix in the settings and we decide how much discount to give on each model so the quotes are automatically generated they have to be super competitive to be in with a chance of getting the business more often than not there is zero margin left in vehicle crazy but true and we pay carwow £300 intro fee dealers do this in the hope they can hit targets and get bonuses which are not guaranteed crazy business.

Anyway it sounds like you have potentially been an easy target and the dealership rather than offer you the best price they can do have seen an opportunity?

That said make sure before you go in and kick off that the specs are identical also I think there’s a FDA on the pcp make sure this is again like for like.

PX a couple over CAP is about what we have to pay for good retail stock irrespective of the price on the new car deal.

The big question is stock availability on any new car deal try to be flexible on colour and options If it means a significantly better deal.

But as to your question yes get in there and drop it on desk....nicely.

Thanks for your informed input.
As a minimum we are going to go back in. It seems madness when a price £3600 less comes from a guy who was sitting in the same showroom 2 offices away from the salesman we dealt with.

[JeremyO]

I bought my Golf two years ago through CarWow.

Was going to dispose of outgoing car via We buy any car. When speaking to CarWow introduced dealer re pick up he offered me slightly more thanWe buy any car as part exchange so I went ahead with that.

CarWow price was just under 5k cheaper than list price on a Golf 7. This was when the Golf 7.5 had just been announced, I was very happy with that deal.

Last year I sourced a Fiat 500 for my wife’s mum at a 4k discount to list from a different dealer. No part exchange and it was very easy. Certainly they are my first port of call when looking for a new car.

That said, they couldn’t get near the discount my local VW dealer offered on an Up when we bought that shortly after buying the Golf so it pays to shop around.

[de30m]

last three cars I've bought have been via Carwow deals
2 directly 1 indirectly

previous Q5 for my Wife I got my local dealer who we've now bought 3 cars through to match the best I could find from a dealer around 100miles away, they agreed but did say they really were almost at no margin, but we're a good customer etc etc.

now they also did the same on the new Q5 we picked up in March, and it was even easier I didn't even need to show them the carwow quote, they had a record that we'd want the best deal, so went lower than their carwow quote to secure our business


had a similar experience with my most local BMW dealers when buying my car last year, nearest and most convenient to my work, were very flaky, I guess I didn't do myself any favours really (I think what you miss once you start wanting to make changes) this is the price you pay with Carwow, you are just a ref number not really a customer, could be anyoneon the web really, so any real effort starts to be less attractive to them, or they just don't like me...

my nearest to home dealer though stayed true to their best deal and beat CAP valuation for my incoming car by £400 and honoured a 21.2% discount and zero% APR deal once I got the invoice, lots of man maths, but it really was a no brainer

+1 vote for using carwow from me - almost takes the fun out of dealing with dealers!!

[Boss13]

Another carwow buyer here. Had no problems at all and MUCH cheaper than local dealer.

[craig1912]

Got mine via Carwow (there are others aswell) From a local dealer who were second on the quotes- took the quotes in and they matched the best quite. 22% off a £40k car in total (with finance incentive and dealer discount)
I just see carwow as an easier way to haggle as generally you won’t get a much better price.

[Maris]

I've always found Drive the deal to be cheaper. Some people like the free coffee, bunches of flowers and bow on the car but to me buying a new car is like buying a fridge except you have to put more effort in not get ripped off, it's just a lump of metal and plastic that depreciates like crazy so may as well pay as little as possible.

[TKH]

As an early adopter of carwow it worked for us as a dealer early days when we had a territory/ postcodes and it was driven by dealer reputation as well as best price, it’s now morphed into every dealer being on there because they need to be and well it’s a bit of a bloodbath which at the moment is good for consumers but it’s killing off many smaller friendly operators as the big PLCs dominate buying business taking big losses on deals to do just that and to hit whopping targets.......don’t look at Pendragons share price (Evans Halshaw / Stratstone)..PDG !

Manufacturers hate it ‘carwow’ with a passion, I suspect the business model will change going forward dealers will become service points only and manufacturers will direct supply (internet ordering) to the consumer to the front door and why not makes total sense, customers rarely want to test drive anymore and if they do the manufacture will send one for 24 hours from Enterprise etc consumers know what there getting with new cars so will order unseen and it means no messing with us pesky dealers, some of us are ok .....Haha.

Even servicing will change there is already a pilot scheme where the tech comes to your house to carry out routine servicing.


Ahhhh all change ....Amazon who ??.

[markrlondon]

Amazon who ??.

Amazon Car? ;-)

[TKH]

Amazon Car? ;-)

I can see it Mark!

The Tyrell corporation.....

[Maysie]

In a similar theme to the High Street Dying/Longines thread running today, I would rather buy my cars online nowadays anyway, as the service in the last dealership when I purchased my last car was atrocious.

They knew virtually nothing about the actual model I was buying, had no brochures, never returned a single telephone call, stuffed up the delivery, stuffed up the vanity plate, fitted the optional extras incorrectly, had no demonstrator cars available to drive, did not know the spec of the car or when it would be available, the list of incompetent behaviour was staggering. All the while I was made to feel like they were doing me a favour by handing over my £40k for the privilege.

[Integrale]

You should be able to get your deposit back if you cancel under the cooling off clause. Think it's 14 days?

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[jaytip]

In a similar theme to the High Street Dying/Longines thread running today, I would rather buy my cars online nowadays anyway, as the service in the last dealership when I purchased my last car was atrocious.

They knew virtually nothing about the actual model I was buying, had no brochures, never returned a single telephone call, stuffed up the delivery, stuffed up the vanity plate, fitted the optional extras incorrectly, had no demonstrator cars available to drive, did not know the spec of the car or when it would be available, the list of incompetent behaviour was staggering. All the while I was made to feel like they were doing me a favour by handing over my £40k for the privilege.

All that and you STILL bought off them !!

[mart broad]

Car dealers aside from servicing have not dealt with the shiny suit pointy shoe boys for years and do not miss them one little bit our main car has been a lease ( for me it means i do not have to suffer their garbage on a trade either) and a MB , current one lease Co in Leeds, finance Co in Bristol ( MB Finance need to get their act together) car delivered from MB main dealer in Devon to Nth Essex.Car Wow are decent reference point IMO and form for me an integral part of my research.

[Maysie]

All that and you STILL bought off them !!

I know! Never again.
Unfortunately I had to use that dealership as they were the only approved dealer anywhere near me, the next nearest (which was not part of the same 'group') was about 150 miles away and to add insult to injury I had heard bad reports about them too.

[Sweepinghand]

What I would do....

Firstly cancel your order and regain deposit - within cooling off period.

Pump the details of the PX into "webuyanycar"

If the diff is negligible (and lets be honest there wont be £3500 diff) sell the px that way and order the new vehicle at the lower price

[Ashtons99]

What I would do....

Firstly cancel your order and regain deposit - within cooling off period.

Pump the details of the PX into "webuyanycar"

If the diff is negligible (and lets be honest there wont be £3500 diff) sell the px that way and order the new vehicle at the lower price

Looking at the paperwork I think the deposit is non refundable if we just change our mind.

[Dave+63]

There’s no cooling off period for a face to face transaction I believe. Still, it’s only £200 and you’ll be saving £3600 so it’s still a no brainer.

I did something similar to you with our current car but the overall deal didn’t make it worth losing our£1000 deposit so we went ahead as originally agreed.

I’ll not make the same mistake again!

[redkite]

Bought mine and my wifes using Carwow. Got 11% and 25% off !!