One of the real mysteries of the car business to me is how many people visit sites like Edmunds or KBB, take the pricing information they give them, go to their dealer, buy a car at the price they got from those sites and go home thinking they got great info and got a good deal.
As long as I have been a car shopper EVERY TIME I have ever looked there for information, it has been TOTALLY inaccurate and has NEVER quoted me the REAL price that these cars are really selling for.
I've showed examples numerous times but here is just ANOTHER example of how these guys will cost you money if you believe them.
And this is not a AutoSpies.com is better than them thing (although we are).
All we're trying to do is help customers not get taken for thousands of dollars.
Here's just the latest example of their incompetence.
A friend of mine is looking for a new Sonata and she emailed me the Edmunds.com TMV pricing screen.
I took a quick look at it and figured what the heck, it’s a $17K car so there is not a lot of markup like a Porsche or something in the high end.
How wrong could Edmunds.com be? $200 at the most?
If they were, I'd never even bother doing an article chiding them on this subject.
Everyone deserves a little wiggle room and it would be impossible to be dead-on all the time.
That said, back to the story:
So I called a dealer out of the phone book and asked them the price on the 2006 Hyundai Sonata.
Just so you know, the dealer had NO idea who I was and wasn’t even the fleet or internet sales guy.
Within two minutes, without ANY negotiation he told me EVERY one they sell is sold at $500 below invoice.
That comes out to $16,669.
The Edmunds.com true market value price is $18,106 as you can see from the graphic below:
So if she were to go to the dealer and pay $18,106, she would be paying $1,437.00 more than they needed to!!!
On a car that cheap, that is A LOT of dough!
Now here’s the best part…I can tell you that if I would have gone to the dealer, I could have done even better on the price.
We've used the Edmunds.com example here but KBB is just as inaccurate...only by $1000 bucks though, which is still WAY too much!
Moral of the story…email this article this every friend you have in the world and pass this info on, so they don’t get taken on their next car purchase!!!!