Carwow....any scams?

[Sheepshanks]

While CarWow itself isn’t a scam I suppose there’s always the possibility that the OP could be directed by the dealer contact to some random person to give them his card details for the deposit.

[Camelot1971]

jjr1 said:

PorkInsider said:

KungFuPanda said:

I’m also a part owner.

And me!

I saw that offer to buy in last year and just can not see how the business model is both sustainable and profitable. I imagine that they are haemorrhaging money and just as all these new tech ideas have a once in a lifetime rate of return, the majority will fall by the wayside.

Good luck but for me I am out.

What Carwow competitor do you work for?

[treeroy]

It's fairly normal for a chain dealer to call you from somewhere other than the actual showroom you'll buy your car from.

Carwow is legit and they just are a broker with main dealers.

Now as to the question of whether main dealers are scammers, you could very well argue that...

[Vickers_VC10]

Be sure to click the subscribe button and the bell icon.

ARGHHHH.

[Sheepshanks]

HTP99 said:

They are changing their charges to dealers, currently a dealer pays CarWow £360 for a sale, they are changing to £40 per enquiry regardless of a sale or not, I think this will result in many dealers dropping them.

I know how sales works, but it does seem a bit daft that we were allowed to walk out of our local VW dealer yet they were one of the dealers who quoted us on CarWow. I ended up buying from our next nearest dealer, who are part of the same group.

Got another £500 off face to face as they let slip they were a DriveTheDeal ‘preferred’ dealer and DtD had been almost a grand cheaper but wouldn’t talk to me unless I agreed to wait the factory lead time. The DtD guy who called was curt, to say the least. I got the car in 8 days.

Got the full handover experience and overall it was the best new car experience I’ve had, so if these deals are killing dealers they didn’t let it show.

[jet_noise]

Carwow worked for me too.

Up! GTI long lead time, no money off?
Not through CW - took almost exactly a month from applying to pickup.
And some of that was to get hit the next reg. 58-19.

I don't know how much of that was luck, maybe my spec. was typical, cancelled order or speculative stocking but it was a smooth process.
In any event a really good one-stop method of contacting many dealers at once.
Only issue was the supplying dealer missing the CW discount from the first invoice(!).
Immediately fixed on query

[jjr1]

Camelot1971 said:

jjr1 said:

PorkInsider said:

KungFuPanda said:

I’m also a part owner.

And me!

I saw that offer to buy in last year and just can not see how the business model is both sustainable and profitable. I imagine that they are haemorrhaging money and just as all these new tech ideas have a once in a lifetime rate of return, the majority will fall by the wayside.

Good luck but for me I am out.

What Carwow competitor do you work for?

I don't work in the car industry Sherlock.

[Alex]

I bought my wife's Kia Sorento through carwow. It was a very pleasant trouble-free experience, and we saved £3,600.

[HTP99]

ACCYSTAN said:

There is no way dealers will stomach £40 per enquiry , it’s bad enough they give car wow £360.

I have purchased 2 cars via car wow, it a useful tool although in the past 12 months I’ve made enquires for vehicles for extended family and have found far better prices elsewhere.

I do know a friend who purchased a Peugeot after using car wow to find the best price dealer, he knew about the £300 car wow charged the dealer so he drove down to the showroom with his part ex and they did the deal with a nice addition of sharing the £300 charge.

Yep, 2 enquiries this morning, one says "thanks for the offer but you are too expensive", the other asks "do you do 0% finance", so that would be £80 straightaway; 1 definitely not buying and the other I'm likely to not hear from again based on my experience, you also get asked lots of stupid questions one of which was "will this engine be fine for motorway driving", I replied and never heard from them again.

If they introduce the £40 per enquiry, we will be dropping them, we do very little business via CarWow anyway, the odd one or 2 here or there is fine, the dealers who rely on it will invariably be on financial rocky ground anyway.

Word amongst the motor trade towards the end of last year was CarWow wasn't in the rudest health anyway.

Edited by HTP99 on Thursday 12th March 11:01

[treeroy]

Carwow has reported a £15.9m pre-tax loss for 2018 less than a week after it called for investment from car retail partners as part of a new crowdfunding initiative.
https://www.am-online.com/news/supplier-news/2019/...

[Tom74]

I enquired on Carwow for a Merc, dealers that responded weren't local to me at all and when I contacted our local dealer they almost matched the average of £6k discount carwow dealers were offering. (it was just as cheap after travel to the UK was taken into account)

The local dealer immediatley referenced carwow when I talked about discounts available online and said that most dealers treted carwow enquiries as fleet, enabling the discounts. The quicker responses some are reporting above maybe from these fleet salespeople, as well as the random phone numbers not at the retail dealer premises.

[Sheepshanks]

treeroy said:

Carwow has reported a £15.9m pre-tax loss for 2018 less than a week after it called for investment from car retail partners as part of a new crowdfunding initiative.
https://www.am-online.com/news/supplier-news/2019/...

Intereresting that Mercedes led the last investment round. With that, and their move to online showroom, they must really hate their dealers.

[Karl_Alp]

We have been really happy with the service Carwow provides and have bought 2 new VW using it, one for my wife, the other I organised for my parents.

You don't pay carwow anything directly, so I don't see any financial risk to you. I guess you might get better discounts on your own, if you enjoy that kind of thing.

I hate haggling, so walking in with an agreed price was brilliant, and an idea of discounts. It just took a lot of the stress out of it. The fact is that you have multiple offers from dealers gives you something to compare. I also found it to offer better discounts than the online brokers. The fact that you can select options you want, and it's easy to use is awesome, unlike some of the online brokers.

Tbf our local VW dealer was competitive, which then allowed me to use the same salesman too, using the Carwow offers, so it was a win win all round I guess.

The only observations I have noticed a couple of times:
1) It takes quite a while for new models to appear, so it would be nice if you could send an 'other' request to dealers. I suspect this is down to data not being available.
2) Some of the finance offers were not as good as shown on the manufacturer's website. There are lots of reasons why this could be, so I would just double check and talk to your selected dealer.
3) Not all dealers use the service

Edited by Karl_Alp on Friday 13th March 16:18

[anonymous-user]

So the dealer has gone very quiet despite showing earlier promise, more so since I queried the geographical telephone thing, which hardly inspires confidence.
Plan was to call the dealership direct today anyway. Should all become clear.

[KTF]

For what its worth, I have found autoebid cheaper than carwow.

[Sheepshanks]

Crossflow Kid said:

So the dealer has gone very quiet despite showing earlier promise, more so since I queried the geographical telephone thing, which hardly inspires confidence.
Plan was to call the dealership direct today anyway. Should all become clear.

Perhaps worth contacting CarWow - it's obviously in their interest to make sure it works and customers are comfortable with the process.

[anonymous-user]

Sheepshanks said:

Crossflow Kid said:

So the dealer has gone very quiet despite showing earlier promise, more so since I queried the geographical telephone thing, which hardly inspires confidence.
Plan was to call the dealership direct today anyway. Should all become clear.

Perhaps worth contacting CarWow - it's obviously in their interest to make sure it works and customers are comfortable with the process.

Indeed. I’m not massively paranoid about it. Just not 100% convinced either.

[Tim bo]

AMG C63 Coupé bought through Carwow two years ago.

Got a 13% discount off £66k RRP.

Definitely happy with that.

[anonymous-user]

We’re looking at 20% discount on a lowly Kia.

[N111BJG]

We bought a Mini convertible, the Carwow offer was received quickly & was competitive. But when I rang the dealer there was the usual initial apathy.
I dislike the service reception woman at our nearest Mini place intensely so I decided to punish her by persisting with the Carwow lead and not asking local dealer to price match.
Everyone lived happily ever after, SWMBO has new car, we PX’d her old one at a good price, it was a sought after colour & spec so dealer had a customer for it, so they were both happy too.
At 1st service local bint notices brand new car bought elsewhere, icing on the cake.