Buyer Beware: Real Offers vs Price Quotes

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Usually when consumers receive a quote (say to get their house painted or trees trimmed) they’re getting a real offer from a real person who can provide the service.  So it’s reasonable to expect the same when buying a new car. Not so fast!  The “Request A Quote” forms which have become ubiquitous on the internet (just gimme yur make, model, and zip!) have a darker side.

Let’s take a minute to break down the difference.

Real Offers

  • Made by humans
  • Competitive price
  • Designed to sell a car
  • Referes to a actual vehicle on the lot

Price Quotes

  • Auto-generated by computers
  • Higher price (usually a fixed amount below MSRP)
  • Designed to capture your contact info
  • Referes to any vehicle that matches the description, may not actually be in stock

Request a quote

Don't fall for it.

Bottom line: a real offer is something you can print out and take with you to the dealership to pick up a car. A price quote is just a way to capture your contact information.

In fact, price quotes are part of a roughly billion dollar industry known as “lead generation”. Every time you fill out a “request a quote” forms, you’ve just generated about $100 worth of revenue for the website you were on (they sold your contact info to 5 dealerships for $20 each). Get ready for a bunch of spam and phone calls coming your way!

I’ll wrap up by saying that CarWoo! is one of the few sites where you can actually get real offers instead of price quotes from car dealers. Your information is never sold, and we have real human beings in our call center talking with real car dealers to bring you offers. (Shocking, I know.)

Be smart – next time skip the price quotes (the nice looking support rep pictures on their website doesn’t actually exist) and opt for real offers.  This is just one more way CarWoo! is restoring consumer trust to the car industry.

  • http://www.howdyhonda.com Mark Z

    Dear Friends,

    My name is Mark. I am the director of an Internet sales department for a Honda store in Texas. You need to know, there are REAL people answering those requests you send in. Maybe that is what separates us from other places. All of my managers are expected to answer each online purchase request with real numbers on real vehicles. We believe in the integrity of selling a vehicle person to person.

    Sure the Internet has changed the shopping landscape. People still hope that somehow they can buy a car or a house without having to “deal” with a sales person. AND yes, now there are the automated software driven processes like Responslogix that completely remove the human element out of buying a vehicle. But please remember with anything of value in our society we must never let the human element be removed from our lives – even if it shopping for a car, or a house, or a large screen TV, or a braclet, or even a box of cereal.

    Even though, there is tons of evidence that just about everyone (94%) uses the Internet for their initial research, only a stunning 2% of people shopping online actually click to send in a request for pricing. Which leads me to wonder if we (the automotive industry) have made any head way in proving to customers we want to earn their business with good solid customer service, fair pricing and a willingness to adapt.

    My desire in responding to this blog is to demonstrate that there are people just like you on the other side of this business and I hope it never gets to the point that we lose that.

  • http://carwoo.com Brian Armstrong

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks for the comment – yes you are right: there are some honest dealers like yourself out there giving real offers and those are the ones we want to work with.

    CarWoo! is all about putting the human element back into it. Consumers really only feel duped when they were expecting a human response and all they get is spam. Thanks for helping us bring some integrity back to the car buying process!
    Brian

  • Elodia Barriara

    I would never buy a vehicle in Texas, esp. in Seguin, Texas. My little sister was so the lemon that takes the all time proverbial cake. No thanks, live salespersons there are the worst.

  • http://www.soundandvision.co.uk Gary Thomason

    Great piece of advice and it’s useful on so many different levels. Especially when it comes to sensitive data such as my address as email information!

  • Brian Armstrong

    Thanks Gary!

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