CarWoo!: Online Car Buying Service with Buyer Privacy Protection

In my opinion, buying a car is one of the most painful experience after dental surgery. In the “old days”, you had to spend at least a month of research and 4 hours in a row with a car dealer before being able to make your purchase. Since the Web 1.0 Age, emails and websites have made the negotiation process somewhat easier, although it is still far from perfect.

CarWoo! is launching a new online service that allows buyers to receive competitive offers from several dealers while preserving their privacy, unlike other similar services. Using an asynchronous messaging system embedded in the CarWoo website (see screenshot above), the buyer can interact with multiple dealers anonymously, ask questions and negotiate. By allowing the dealers to know exactly what other offers the buyer is receiving, CarWoo! is able to provide more competitive offers to its customer base.

To ensure transparency and to protect the consumers’ interests, CarWoo! claims that it will never send spam or unsolicited email to car buyers, it will never take money from dealers.

The service is available today at http://www.carwoo.com with 3000 dealers to select from (50-100 dealers are joining every week, according to CarWoo!). The Basic plan costs $19 with 2-3 dealers competing for offers and for $49, you can get the Plus plan with 3-5 dealers.

Eliane Fiolet
Categories: Shopping, Top Stories, Web