I recently used Car Woo as part of my car buying process. I wouldn't rely upon these numbers or those from TrueCar, Edmunds, etc. I have been using my bank's ca

I recently used Car Woo as part of my car buying process. I wouldn't rely upon these numbers or those from TrueCar, Edmunds, etc. I have been using my bank's car buying service, TrueCar, and direct emailing of dealers. New Car pricing is highly variable on the dealer, dealer's stock, sales, per-dealer deals from, hold back, quota-bonuses, per salesman specific bonuses etc. It is important to remember that a middleman service operates either on a flat fee or a commission. This is money the dealer cannot use to negotiate down with you. I do not know CarWoo's sales structure, but TrueCar makes 300-400[1][2] per sale. So if this is data based on CarWoo deals it will not reflect the best deals, because the cars all had to include this price. Now, that said most people are not prepared or comfortable buying a car or negotiating. Given that you get some degree of anonymity and can haggle back and forth online is nice and you are paying for the convenience. Many people will likely save more money than if they tried to do it on their own. This is an application of the wisdom of crowds to determine a market price. It is a good indication of what the market is willing to pay, but not the best deal you can get. Savings as a representation of MSRP are misleading; think about how many things you buy off the shelf and the price is usually much less than MSRP for any number of per-store pricing or sales, coupons, etc. Car buying is no different. In the case of the model I am looking for, the CarWoo price is close to the two offers I got on CarWoo, but the offers I got directly or through my bank are much lower( Best Direct quote I received was through my Bank's no haggle direct car buying service, which is about 7% lower than the CarWoo average). Mean averages on their own are not very helpful in evaluating offers, perhaps if we saw a distribution or standard deviation? Prices over time (later in the model year should higher prices be used in the average, are they still relevant or should they at least be weighted?) would also be good for the car buyer. I also have a hard time believing CarWoo would publish this information if it were not in the best interest of their customers (the dealers, car buyers are the product). Therefore, I would be lead to believe that this data only serves to keep buyers from trying to negotiate lower rates based on the average. Then again, maybe a tech startup has not yet considered this and just thought it would be cool to share data and be transparent. It's a cool service and it's probably a good fit for many people. You could also just create a new email address and use a google voice number for privacy reasons. At any rate, I would advise you to do your research and try every tactic and service you can to optimize your wallet spent and time spend. [1] http://www.dealerelite.net/profiles/blogs/true-car-and-zag-cyber-bandits-or-good-for-the-car-business http://www.dealerelite.net/profiles/blogs/true-car-and-zag-c... [2] http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/12/truecar-versus-honda-online-car-buying-challenges-hit-home/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/12/truecar-versus-hond...