I used TrueCar (and other similar services) as a starting point, but was able to negotiate a better price in person (~6% lower) than what TC quoted (what they c

I used TrueCar (and other similar services) as a starting point, but was able to negotiate a better price in person (~6% lower) than what TC quoted (what they considered an 'excellent' price.) I actually didn't find the process to be painful at all. My salesman was friendly, willing to work with me, and gave pretty close to the final price right out of the gate. You're never going to do better with car-buying services than just communicating with the dealers, especially their fleet or online managers. That said, one should figure out what they value their time at, and realize that they can easily spend hours/days trying to haggle that last $500 when it doesn't make sense from a time investment standpoint.