First I want to start by saying that I am in no way affiliated with TruCar and receive no compensation from TruCar. Here I am going to share my experience with TruCar and how you can use it to save thousands on a new car. 

Quickly My Thoughts on Saving Money

I don’t argue the fact that I must pay for something that I want to buy. But, I refuse to over pay on anything that I can get for a better price. Please understand that I find this different from cheap. If a premium item fetches a premium price so be it. But, if that item can be acquired for a better price I intend to take advantage of that.

What Is TruCar Pricing?

This can really confuse people for one simple reason. It really seems way too easy to save thousands on a new car! 

Quick Disclaimer

This is really the only thing I don’t like about TruCar. But it is one of the ways that they earn their money. If you ever put in your information to their site ie, phone number and email. Just about every dealership in a huge radius around you will have your number and you will begin receiving phone calls about the car you are looking at, within seconds. If you don’t believe me just try it. They sometimes call so much that it can get annoying. But, if you are looking at buying a new car this bit of annoying can save you a ton of money.  I will tell you in a bit how to stop them.

The way to using TruCar is really straightforward. You simply go to their site and put in the car you are wanting to buy. TruCar will then give you a price that is an average of what other people tend to pay for that particular car. You can even customize the exact car you are looking at. From Color to features the car has you can customize so much of it.

Is The Discount Real?

YES! The discounts you find on TruCar are real and you should take this number as the max you will ever pay for the particular car you’re looking at. Certain types of cars like Pickup Truck will tend to have massive discounts. So if you see something telling you that your TruCar Price is $10,000 + below the MSRP. You simply saved $10,000 + that easy. 

My First Experience With TruCar!

The first time I heard about TruCar I will admit I was pretty skeptical. I thought to myself “how can this be so easy”. So, I decided I would go and put this to the test over at a local Nissan dealership. At the time my father was looking at purchasing a Nissan Rouge. It’s a great looking car and we wanted to know what it actually costs. (We believe sticker is rarely a price, it’s just a starting point)

So after test driving and deciding that this particular car fit what we were looking for. We decided to sit down and talk about price. I wish all cars would just have a price of take it or leave it like Tesla, but negotiations are a must at car dealerships. When we sat down the salesman started to talk to my father as if he had already bought the car.

Maybe I was rude?

I literally had to interrupted him (he just kept going, he acted like he already sold the car) I told him we haven’t talked about price yet. He literally went silent then turned quite serious. Without speaking a word he shuffled through the papers in front of him and pulled out a copy of the monroney sticker (window sticker). He looked directly at me and said “what do you mean? Heres the price of the car”. I of course said “Thats the window sticker there’s always negations”, this must have been a gut push or something because he seemed quite agitated. He said “What are you expecting 1-200 dollars?” If you have read any of my other experiences at dealerships, you would know that we were way off on pricing. 

I really didn’t do much research on this car because we really wanted to see it in person vs just online. But, we knew that most dealers around the area offered the car for $2,000-$4,000 off the MSRP. So I just told him that I was expecting about $3,500 off. He literally asked me if I was serious, of course I said “Yes”. This is where my father asked me to show him the “TruCar Thing”. This was my first time with using TruCar at a dealer and it was AWESOME.

The Power Of TruCar (Seriously!)

Our salesman really seemed like he wasn’t like us, and at this point what can we lose right. I pulled the TruCar website on my Ipad and showed him a car that was Identical in features, color and trim.  It was showing “Your TruCar discount of $3,500”. He looked at the Ipad and said if we can take the car now its a deal. This was without him even going to the manager, he simply accepted this price. 

I don’t recommend ever wasting anyones time. We had only gone into this dealership to look at the car and if you have ever done this you know once a salesman gets you. It can be pretty tough to leave without “talking numbers”(in my salesman’s case selling a car at sticker) 

Is TruCar the Lowest Price?

I will start by simply saying you can definitely get a lower price than the one TruCar gives. When you are shopping for a new car I would recommend that the price you get off TruCar to be your absolute max price. You can take this price to just about any dealership and get a discount with no haggling. A perfect example is with Pickups. At just about any time you will be able to usually get $10,000 off the MSRP. But, TruCar can sometimes drop in the $6,000 and $8,000 range.

Number One Tip In Car Buying

Addendums = Dealer added fees and add ons. Many of which can be extremely over priced. 

The number one Tip I would recommend to anyone looking for a new car is don’t pay price addendums. Dealerships will tell you without a flinch that all dealerships charge this. Look around and you will be able to find one without it. If you find a dealership with the car you want but has addendums on their cars. You should know that this can usually be discounted.

Conclusion

Make sure you always check TruCar before ever make a new car purchase. IT IS FREE!

Side Tip – I would recommend allowing dealers to contact you to contact you through TruCar. It may be annoying for a little while but these dealers know they are competing for your business with other dealers on the same car and the same discount you saw on TruCar. So theres not much to lose here. 

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