[www.realcartips.com]

also does this, a bit cleaner site too IMHO

@Rabbi Dave: Thank! I'll add that in.

I like the idea that both the sites are using...consumers working together tends to help consumers...but, I do have to agree that the information presented from RealCarTips is much more readable.

Now that is psiffy. Nice to see I'm on the lower end of the spectrum for my car!! :) Yay for financing through my credit union and negotiating before they knew it!!

O.O I got a damn good deal when my fiance and I bought that Rav4.

A nice idea, but I have a vivid mental picture of mass armies of car salespersons with TONS of time on their hands (waiting for their "ups") loading these sites with total BS.

@GiselleBeardchen: I think you're right - that exact thing will happen once this site becomes known.

@GiselleBeardchen: What exactly are they going to do? People will look at the lowest price that others have haggled down to. So if salespeople add fake sales where people saved almost nothing, people will either ignore that data, or avoid that dealership altogether. If they add fake sales where people saved a ton, it will just lead to people coming in making unreasonable demands, since they believe someone else got it cheaper. About the only thing they could do is up the dealer's satisfaction rating.

@GiselleBeardchen: I could see just as many (if not more) bored (and poor) college kids driving down the prices of cars they want/like.

Hmmm.. I never buy new anyways.

It is good to have a central resource, but before I bought my Mazda, I poked around on a couple of Mazda message boards, and found a thread with a few hundred listings of what people paid. This site is easy if you don't want a lot of fuss, but if you want a really good collection of prices, almost every major brand has independent message boards associated with it that people post what they paid and what model they purchased.

@Scuba Steve:
Certified used is the only way to go. Extended warranty backed by the dealership, and someone else takes the big first depreciation hit.

I used the forums at emunds.com to see how much others paid before I bought my car. It was a great tool.

As an economist, I have to say that I'm dubious. Selection bias is going to mess this all up. Generally the people who post there will be the kind of people likely to negotiate aggressively and want to brag about the low price they got.

That's useful info for people who are going to be negotiating, but doesn't tell us what the average actual price paid is.

Take these with a grain of salt, and don't expect to get these prices just by asking for them.

hybridcars.com does a similar thing, but only for hybrids.

@GiselleBeardchen:

Hi Giselle, This is Gregg, founder of RealCarTips.com. I was afraid of the same thing when I started the site. I figured car dealers would go in and put fake data. There are a couple of things I'm doing to prevent this. One is that I collect the IP address when someone submits a price. If they try to submit more than 1 price, I get alerted.

So if a dealer tries to do that, they will only get away with 1 submission. I also follow up via email whenever someone submits a top ranking price.

All in all, like one reader commented: you gotta take all of this with a grain of salt. There are price submissions where people have taken time to write out detailed comments on how they got their deal. Those are the best ones to consider when figuring out what you should be paying.

wow! a whopping ONE person bought a jeep wrangler in missuri! What a great database!

I can envision a lot of problems..... the beggie is the purchasing cycle issue (end of the model year versus beginning of the model year). Small data bases are going to only amplify the issue.