Car Buyer Labs

Car Buying Advice, Tips, and Reviews

Why Online Car-Buying May Be Better Than the Traditional Route

As a prospective car buyer, you may be content visiting a traditional dealership and completing your purchase through that individual business. However, by pursuing this route, you may be missing out on all of the advantages that accompany online car-buying. This alternative route isn’t only considerably more convenient, but it could also save you plenty of money in the long run. Unfortunately, many consumers fail to see the advantages associated with this route.

Of course, you can’t simply take our word for it. Rather, you should be exploring all of the advantages inherent in the digital route. We’ve compared the buying process of both digital car buying and traditional car buying below, providing you with some clarity if you’ve been comparing traditional dealerships vs online options. Once you’re finished seeing everything that the digital avenue can provide its customers, you’ll understand that you should be ditching the traditional method…

Shopping for Cars Online

You don’t have to leave your house for this car-buying experience. In fact, you don’t even have to leave your bed! After all, the majority of the online car-buying process can be completed through the internet, meaning you won’t have to sign any documents until the transaction is nearly complete!

Most online car sellers make it incredibly easy to submit an inquiry. As a prospective buyer, you’ll have to submit a simple inquiry that includes all of the attributes they’re seeking from their next ride. Often times, the sellers can sort through the following categories as they find you your ideal car:

  • Type of car (new or used)
  • Year
  • Mileage
  • Price
  • Make
  • Model
  • Trim
  • Color
  • Transmission (automatic or manual)

 

The applicable business’s staff will search through their vast database to find a vehicle that’s a proper match. While you’d have to settle for whatever vehicle is sitting on a traditional dealership’s lot, these online car sellers provides you the opportunity to find your legitimate picture perfect ride!

Next, it’s time to reap the benefits that these online car sellers provide their customers. These individuals will immediately recognize the monetary incentives that accompany this car-buying route. For starters, many of these venders promise a lower price guarantee, all but assuring that you won’t be able to find a better deal elsewhere. Purchasing a vehicle via these unconventional routes is also a brilliant way of improving your credit score. While you won’t see a complete turnaround over night, you’ll gradually see improvements after you’ve successfully made consecutive monthly payments.

There are several additional monetary benefits that these online car sellers often provide to their customers. If you guide a friend to the business and that individual purchases a vehicle, you’ll usually walk away with some type of monetary benefit. Best of all, many of these sellers promise free delivery, meaning you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg if the company locates a relevant vehicle across the country. Rather, the vehicle will be delivered directly to your front door, free of charge.

If you’re worried about the quality of your used vehicle, then you won’t have to worry if you opt for a ride via this route. After all, these de facto dealerships usually attach a free lifetime mechanical warranty to each of their vehicles. Therefore, if you run into any mechanical problems with your new ride, you can rest easy knowing that a mechanic will happily resolve the issue. Of course, that shouldn’t be a concern in the first place, as they also often attach a clean CARFAX Vehicle History Report to each of their rides. If your targeted car has endured any accidents or problems, you’ll certainly know about it.

Of course, the one risk is that you may finally have the car delivered to your front door… but you quickly realize that you made a mistake. The driver may find that the interior isn’t as roomy as they anticipated, or perhaps the engine isn’t as powerful as they were hoping. Fortunately, you won’t be stuck with the car. Many online car sellers provide their customers with some type of money-back satisfaction guarantee, meaning you’ll have plenty of time to recognize if the vehicle isn’t actually a proper fit.

 

 

Traditional Car Buying

When someone opts for a vehicle from a traditional dealership, they will actually have the opportunity to view and drive the vehicles before they commit to a purchase. Unfortunately, this is the extent of these business’s advantages over online car buying.

Convenience is the name of the game when it comes to buying a car online, so it’s naturally difficult for a traditional dealership to keep up. It could take days looking through the more than 100 new and used vehicles sitting on the business’s lot, and even then, it’s unlikely that you’ll find the exact vehicle that you’re seeking. On the flip side, customers can simply submit a detailed description of their ideal vehicle to an online car seller, and the online dealership will search around the country for the best fit. This means that you won’t have to settle for a vehicle that you weren’t necessarily seeking, and it can also save you an invaluable amount of time.

When it comes to monetary incentives, traditional dealerships usually don’t attach any incredible deals to their vehicles. The values may be competitive, but online car dealerships literally consider their brick and mortar rivals’ pricing when determining a fair offer. Sure, the dealership may occasionally have a deal that’s supposed to usher customers through the doors of the business, but this isn’t an advantage that can’t be found elsewhere.

Traditional dealerships also usually offer an expert service department that can fix up any of your vehicle’s needs. You could presumably negotiate some type of maintenance plan into the purchase of your vehicle, but few dealerships will be willing to automatically include this offering like those online car sellers. Furthermore, few dealerships will allow their customers to return a recently-purchased vehicle after it was already driven off the lot, another disadvantage that accompanies the traditional route.