Does the very idea of car shopping give you the prickly hives?
Going toe-to-toe with salespeople who, let’s face it, have a few negotiating tricks up their sleeve has intimidated car buyers for decades. So the prospect of doing the entire transaction online— without fielding calls and e-mails from dealers—at a fair, fixed price is tantalizing.
If you’re shopping for a used car, you can get pretty close to that promise. Building on CarMax’s fixed-price model, Vroom and Carvana let you pick a car online, line up financing and have it delivered to your doorstep. No fuss, no muss, no “C’mon down to the showroom and let’s talk.”
For new-car shoppers, this quest remains more elusive. In theory, you can get awfully close to buying a new car online, though state laws requiring actual signatures on paper documents and red tape for financing approvals are often an impediment.
This story is from the June 2019 edition of Kiplinger's Personal Finance.
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This story is from the June 2019 edition of Kiplinger's Personal Finance.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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