Comments on: Negotiate for a car?? Bahh

By: David Bush - Iasta

David Bush - Iasta — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:10:15 +0000

Mike, trust me, I was more disappointed! I thought car salesmen would make pallet suppliers look like Bill Gates, but now I think they could have handled it. Next time you buy a car, give me a call…open invite to test the theory.

By: Mike Smith

Mike Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:13:04 +0000

David,

As I was reading your post andthe sourcing process you went through I absolutely assumed that your plan was to use iasta to run the acution, and i was STUNNED to learn at the end of the article that you hadn’t.

I’ve always believed that the retail car industry in particular is ready for a one-time consumer based reverse auction tool. Here’s your opportunity!

By: David Bush - Iasta

David Bush - Iasta — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:20:09 +0000

Thanks! This is a story that almost any one can relate to. There is almost nothing worse than being intimidated by your vendor, and only being sure that, the only thing you know, is that they know more than you know. I have bought the last two cars this way and had A LOT of fun doing it, while saving gobs of money.

By: Charles Dominick, SPSM

Charles Dominick, SPSM — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:24:58 +0000

Great story, David!

The thing about buying cars, unlike buying other types of goods and services for a corporation, is that you can rather definitively find out what the supplier’s costs are (including holdbacks and dealer incentives). So you can go in with your target price in mind and say “meet my demands or I’m walking.” For most cars (excluding the higher-end models) as you’ve found, most dealers’ most aggressive prices will be within about $100 of each other.

But I think that your story and mine just go to show how much fun car buying can be!

Keep up the great work!

By: Alan Buxton

Alan Buxton — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:25:19 +0000

http://www.autoebid.com already seems to do this sort of thing, though UK only apparently

I’m in the process of negotiating a hardware contract for TradingPartners, which I’m doing offline. And I tell you, it’s much more of a job overall than the recent reverse auction I did. (Though I guess I would say that, right?)