Costco Car Buying

[MrsE]

Has anyone used the Costco Car buying service lately? I searched and the latest thread seems to be over a year old. Any tips or tricks? We’re in the market for a new (certified pre owned) vehicle and want to buy before 12/31.

[ny96]

I don’t think there are any tricks to it. Our experience is that you get a referral from Costco to a dealership that works with them and then they give you a price. We were leasing so we didn’t negotiate, but the price the dealership was offering was the best of any of the quotes we’d gotten.

[icedcoffee]

I just tried to. Basically you tell them what you want and they send you a referral to a dealership they work with and they give you the price. In my dad's town in NJ they made it super easy. They emailed the quote and it was a really good price so he just bought. When I tried to use it in MD the dealership made me come in person to get the quote and they were difficult to work with. The price was not the best I had seen and in general I just hate that dealership. It's disappointing because my dad and sister used it this year successfully in different states.

I ended up going through the USAA car buying service who basically does it the same way, but you actually get quotes from 3 different dealerships. 1 of the 3 was by far the best price I had seen so I went there and bought it.

When my sister went through the Costco car buying she took their quote to a different dealership and they beat it by $1,000. Apparently that dealership had an overstock of that car and they wanted to unload it. That's probably not common.

[MrsE]

Oh great to know about USAA! We have USAA too!

[pumpkin]

I haven't used Costco or USAA car buying but I have a friend who has used the USAA service more than once and been super happy with it.

[mrssandro]

We used the costco program for two new cars a few years ago. No haggling and no drama both times. We would do it again. We did use the Navy federal credit union for the financing with preapproval.

[sloan]

We tried it last year, though ultimately bought used through Carmax.

IME they make you come to the dealership, the Hyundai store we went to was great but ultimately H didn’t want the car, but we’d totally buy from the salesperson we had. The Toyota location was crazy pushy and wanted us to nail down a monthly payment and essentially a verbal commitment before showing us the Costco pricing which was obnoxious especially with a baby in tow- and considering we hadn’t even test drove it yet. My mom bought her Subaru through the program and everything was very transparent and easy, she hates pushy and would have griped to me if they had been. When I bought my Civic in 2008 the Honda dealership was great, and I did buy it with no hassle.

So long story short it can be great or it can be frustrating- a shitty pushy salesperson doesn’t change their stripes, but the good or ok ones who follow Costco’s process (verify membership and then whip out the Costco pricing) make for easy and straightforward buying options.

[chimera]

We had the pushy awful experience with it.
We knew exactly what we wanted - had test driven, knew trim etc. we were just thing to price shop. They won’t give us a price unless we went in. OMG they wouldn’t stop calling. Give me a price if you want my money. If you don’t give me a price stop calling.

[gt7301b]

I used the Costco service and my complaint was it was hard to just get a price without going into a dealership. When I did finally get a price the price that I had gotten from emailing dealers was already cheaper. I think it is a good service if you don't want to negotiate, but I think most people can do better on their own. At the very least I'd use it to get a baseline for a price.