Researching used car prices on the Internet

By: Dakota Caudilla

No sooner have you started searching for car prices on the
Internet, your head will be spinning with competitive car prices
and promises of prompt delivery, dedicated customer service
response, and huge discounts. Are all of those promises and
claims to be believed? Your guess is as good as mine, if you
want the truth. But then, there are ways to help you find the
less unscrupulous ones on the Internet and bring you
honest-to-goodness car prices that are well worth your time and
money.

There are tons of car and used car websites where you can
research on car prices on the Internet. Some of the more popular
ones are www.cars.com, www.invoicedealers.com, www.autoweb.com,
www.carsdirect.com, www.edmunds.com, www.autos.com, www.car.com,
and www.autousa.com. These websites are, essentially, websites
that lets car sellers and dealers post their cars and used cars
for sale together with the car prices that they are willing to
sell the car for. Car buyers will log into the website looking
for the car that they want and when the sale goes through, the
car seller and car buyer will perform a transaction and the
website gets a cut and the car seller gets the rest. The car
prices consist of the price of the car, the commission of the
seller and the commission due to the listing website. Well,
that's if we assume that there are no other parties involved in
this transaction. If there are more people stuck in the middle
trying to make a quick buck out of the car sale, the car price
will hike up accordingly.

If you already know the make and model of the car you're
interested to purchase, the only thing left to do is to go to
those car listing website, search through their database, check
out the car prices they have there and compare the car prices
they have with the ones in other websites. Don't forget to
compare the car prices with the local car dealer and used-car
dealer too, just for good measure. You'll be surprised,
sometimes, the local car dealer may have better car prices for
you. if not, perhaps the used car dealer may have a fabulous
deal in store for you with a car with an unbelievable price and
in perfect condition (not the banged-up, knocked-around, and
shabbily fixed-up) kind.

Comparing car prices is important. You can do this with a
spreadsheet like Excel file. This is easy but if you are going
to take your own sweet time researching the car prices, make
sure you mark down the date you extract the prices. Car prices
go up and down faster than you can imagine. Try find car prices
at http://search.ebay.com/car_eBay-Motors_W0QQsacatZ6000

When researching car prices, the more important thing to ensure
is the condition of the car. One of the ways to determine if the
car price is worth it is to take a look at the picture of the
car, if personal examination is not possible at that point in
time. However, pictures can be manipulated. And some pictures
are not genuine, i.e., the picture is not the real car picture
of the car that is for sale. So, be wary, keep in touch with the
seller and if the seller sounds dodgy, dodge him...or her.

About the author:
Dakota Caudilla, journalist, and website builder Dakota Caudilla
lives in Texas. He is the owner and co-editor of
http://www.great-car-deals.com on which you will find a longer,
more detailed version of this article.