CarWoo! is an online platform for automotive buyers and sellers. In the CarWoo! MarketPlace, consumers can select the type of car they are interested in, find and communicate anonymously with dealers, compare offers, and ultimately make a confident purchase decision. Dealers have the opportunity to receive never before available competitive intelligence and insight into the behavior of the online buyer. CarWoo! has been featured on The View, TechCrunch, NY Times, Today Show, CNN, and more.

CarWoo! is the best way to buy a car online today. It is the easiest way to get a great deal on a new car without having to negotiate face to face with a car dealer. CarWoo! is also available via iPhone/iPad app and the mobile web.

Unlike other sites that claim to be hassle-free, CarWoo! is the only site that doesn’t give the buyer’s name, email, or phone number to dealers until they’re ready to buy.

Additionally, the CarWoo! MarketPlace connects the buyer with great dealers who provide an exceptional experience. A great experience on CarWoo! is a combination of a competitive deal on the vehicle of choice and a dealer who provides an outstanding buying experience.

Our dealer rating system uses automated, peer-based and buyer-based triggers to determine which dealers provide great experiences … and we work hard to make sure the best dealers get connected to the most consumers.

We cut the cost of selling a car by 44% (according to NADA 2012 stats on the cost of selling a car). We reduce car sales costs from $1,328 (according to NADA) to $724 based on data from our dealers.

Not only do we cut the advertising cost by half, but we also reduce the time to sell a car by 80%. This means more cars sold per dealer with less effort.

We’re also great for dealers because we let the dealers sell their way. Dealers place offers only on actual inventory, and each offer is specifically suited to the exact situation. Dealers have complete control over how (and whether) they participate in every situation, and our program rewards good customer service over low prices. The low price only wins about 30% of the time in the CarWoo! MarketPlace. Professionalism, courtesy, responsive and goodness of fit determine the winning offer.

In addition to AOL Autos, CarWoo! has also partnered with FindTheBest, CarBuyingTips, Cars.com, and others. Chris Eschenburg, Vice President and General Manager of AOL Autos, summed it up nicely: “CarWoo! is a different and better way to shop for cars … and we only want the best solutions for our community.”

CarWoo! is a great fit for any consumer-facing site that wants to offer their visitors the best way to buy a car online.

CarWoo! is the only site where a buyer can anonymously get and negotiate for pricing on VIN-specific inventory. (As an additional layer of security, CarWoo! does not access the dealer’s DMS, where the user’s information is stored.) Conversely, CarWoo! is the only site where a dealer can sell cars online using their own unique approaches with a full understanding of the buyers through the CarWoo! transparent MarketPlace. Buyers retain complete control over their privacy, get great market prices, and save a ton of time, while dealers are presented with buyers who purchase within 3.5 days 80% of the time.

The alternative to an anonymous car buying experience is filling out an online quote form. In that world, the buyer’s information will get sold many times over into a billion dollar ecosystem of automotive lead generation. Oftentimes, the buyer will also be sold to complementary services that they hadn’t opted in for: auto warranty, auto financing, and auto insurance companies.

Learn more about the leads ecosystem

It’s easy to participate today for free! Sign up online here.

We also recommend that you learn more about our subscription service, Dealer Plus

We have a free and a paid offering for both buyers and dealers. For consumers, it’s free to search for one vehicle. However, to search for more than one, they need to upgrade to a paid plan.

For dealers, it’s free to participate in the MarketPlace with offers, comments, and counteroffers. However, to have access to our full suite of competitive market intelligence, pre-qualified buyers, and the time-savings associated with the end of secret shopping, they would need to upgrade to Dealer Plus. Dealer Plus is a subscription based add-on to the basic MarketPlace.

How many buyers each dealer sees varies largely depending on their location, the brands they serve, their current dealer rating on CarWoo!, and whether they are a Dealer Plus dealer.

However, directionally, every dealer’s volume should increase VERY noticeably once the integration is complete. AOL Autos receives around 10 million monthly unique visitors, and the CarWoo! “Best Offer” program will be highly visible throughout the site.

We’ve carefully structured our partnership with AOL Autos so that all of our needs for high quality traffic are aligned. AOL Autos has no incentive to just push volume; they have every incentive to push quality. Quality is very important to us, and we are committed to delivering quality traffic to our dealers.

Our partnership has already started, and both sides are working hard on the integration. CarWoo!’s “Best Offer” program will be live on AOL Autos in early September.

The CarWoo! “Best Offer” program will be found prominently throughout AOL Autos.

For every supported vehicle on AOL Autos, the consumer will see a “Best Offer” price. This price comes from hundreds of thousands of transactions from the CarWoo! MarketPlace (not from the dealer’s DMS) and represents what a consumer can realistically expect to pay for this vehicle, in the given zip code, from a reputable dealer. The “Best Offer” is almost never the lowest price that any CarWoo! user has seen. It’s a market-driven price offered by a highly-rated dealer.

Both buyers and dealers play games with each other and with other dealers.

A dealer might withhold a price from the buyer, enticing the latter to meet in person on the lot. This is unfair to the buyer, as it could lead to a waste of time and an uncompetitive price. This is also unfair to competing dealers, especially those who may be at a geographic disadvantage. With CarWoo!, this never happens, because every dealer must submit an offer to participate in the MarketPlace.

A dealer might pull a bait and switch, offering an absurdly low quote over the phone or email, but later reneging on that price, or offering a vehicle other than what the buyer had wanted. This is unfair to other dealers, because the presence of the buyer on that dealer’s lot now gives the original dealer an advantage in closing the buyer. In the CarWoo! MarketPlace, Dealer Plus dealers can see the offers made by other dealers, and flag suspicious offers. Our call center will investigate all suspicious offers and punish the offending dealer with a lowered rating, as appropriate. If something slips through and does end up going to the buyer, then the buyer also has the ability to lower the dealer’s rating, resulting in that dealer seeing fewer buyers in the future.

A buyer might bluff about a phantom offer from “another dealer” in an effort to negotiate a lower price from their preferred dealer. Again, because Dealer Plus dealers can see all of the other dealers' offers, this almost never happens in the CarWoo! MarketPlace.

There are lots of other types of games that dealers and buyers play. However, the anonymous, yet transparent, nature of the CarWoo! MarketPlace, along with our dealer rating system, eliminates virtually all of the games played in automotive buying.

CarWoo! is truly a more efficient way to buy and sell at market-driven prices, while allowing dealers with great customer service to really shine.

Click here to view the CarWoo! Car Buyer Bill of Rights. And the CarWoo! Online Dealers’ Bill of Rights.