Review of Carwoo.Com

This review of Carwoo.com comes with a surprising confession: at the age of 34, I have never bought a car of my own. I live in NYC, where a car is not really a necessity, so I have made do with a clunker like my current 13-year-old ride. However, my husband now has a job in Connecticut, so a reliable car is a must. We decided: it's time to shop for a car.

In researching various car-buying options online, I ran across a new website called Carwoo.com, which promises a hassle-free method of getting a great deal on a new car. In theory, it sounds like a brilliant idea -- you pay a small fee to Carwoo ($44 currently), create a "reverse auction" for the car you desire, and Carwoo shops your request to local dealerships. Carwoo lets you create up to three auctions, if you are undecided on the make and model of your desired vehicle. Carwoo has a fairly large network of participating dealers, and guarantees that you will get at least five offers. Once the offers come in on Carwoo, you can compare them, make counteroffers, or allow the dealers to try to undercut each other, which theoretically should get you the best price possible on your new car.

I had already begun the tedious process of gathering internet price quotes by the time I found Carwoo, but I decided to sign up anyway in the hope that Carwoo would make the process more efficient and reach out to a greater variety of dealers than I could reach on my own. I created two Carwoo auctions for models that interested me, and about an hour after I signed up for Carwoo, I received my first offer, from a dealer that I probably wouldn't have found on my own. Yay for Carwoo! Or so I thought.

After several days, I had received only four offers on one Carwoo auction and two on another. When I followed up with the dealers via email or phone, I was dismayed to learn that they didn't always actually have a vehicle in stock that was available at the quoted price, or that the quoted price didn't include fees (which vary widely from dealer to dealer), or that it was based on rebates for which I didn't qualify. All of these tactics allowed the dealers to submit enticingly low quotes on Carwoo, but didn't allow me to find out the true price of a car without hours of tedious research outside of Carwoo (i.e., the same thing I had been doing on my own before I found Carwoo).

Due to the lack of offers, I got an email from Carwoo customer service, stating that one car I had chosen was out of stock at many dealers and that I could create a new auction if I desired. I replied that the system hadn't worked for me and requested a refund, which they were happy to provide. If nothing else, Carwoo's customer service practices are terrific.

I still think Carwoo is a great idea, but they need to require a bit more honesty and transparency from their dealers if the system is to function correctly. Dealers should be required to submit price quotes that are broken down to indicate the selling price of the car, the price of any options, the destination fee, any other dealer fees, and they should NOT be allowed to include rebates in their Carwoo quotes without disclosing them, so that customers can do a true apples-to-apples comparison without all the extra work. I hope Carwoo has worked out the kinks by the time I need to shop for another car!