Does anyone have experience using Costco Car Buying referral service?

Ms. K'hawk saw a new Toyota Corolla on display at local Costco and fell in love with it. Is it a better bargain than Consumers Reports service?

Any help would be appreciated?

I HATE buying new cars. HATE it with a passion.

This time last year , I wanted to buy a new Camaro SS. I have one Dealer 45 miles away the other about 40. So I wanted to buy from one or the other.

I happened to remember that CostCo does the new car sales. looked into it and bought from the nearer Dealer. It was Frankly....Quite painless. I think I got $3K+ off , then a $700 cash card for use at CostCo. So I had free gas for the year.

Look into it. Maybe your situation is different , but out here in rural MT ,there are few Dealers and the buying process is a royal PITA.

I think it's reasonable.

Years ago we had them price a car we were looking at, but it was outside of our area. I would have to fly out and drive it back.

I have an employee of a local dealership that I do business with. I call him up, and he give me his friends and family pricing plan.

He was within $150 of the Costco price.

The Constable

Thank you for the response.
So you saved $3,000.00 off posted retail price and got a $700.00 gift card on top of it or was the money saved off what Consumer Reports reports as actual cost?

Thank You nadvance for clarifying this question.

A1abdj,

Thank you for your response.

I don't know anyone in the car industry anymore. Maybe the General Manager wants to be my friend

Once again thank you.

I considered it and did a similar search a couple of years ago. Consensus is that theirs is a reasonable deal. Slightly better deal can be had by doing your own negotiations. But to do this successfully you have to play the game.
Friends of ours have used the program a couple of times and have found it painless.

I tried using this a couple years ago. Basically, Costco just referred me to a dealer and gave me some sort of code to tell them.

Nobody at the dealer had a clue. Had no idea what the Costco deal was.

Total waste of my time.

quote:

Originally posted by Knighthawk:
The Constable

Thank you for the response.
So you saved $3,000.00 off posted retail price and got a $700.00 gift card on top of it or was the money saved off what Consumer Reports reports as actual cost?

Thank You nadvance for clarifying this question.

The $3K off was off the actual retail...NONE of the Dealer added fee's applied. We got into a pissing match on a $300 Document fee. Told them I would happily send the Origination off to the DMV for a 8x10 manila envelope and a $2 stamp. So they dropped it.

The sales kid , who was a nice young guy, stated he liked doing the Costco deals as they were cut and dried, none of the haggling. Here's the price...that's it.

Good Luck!

I bought a Toyota truck through Costco in 2015. Great experience and savings.

Costco has contracts with local car dealerships. Costco members call the car buying program phone number and get the name of the dealership and the sales rep to contact.

The agreement between Costco and the Costco selected dealership is the Costco discount revealed to the buyer and openness of the sales process. This eliminates the annoying sales talks and all other things hated by many car buyers.

The cost saving comes from below MSRP starting negotiation point, 50% discounts on “packages”, accessories, extended warranties, etc. There was a $200 gift card from Costco sent to me a week later. To give you and example, the Tundra listed at 42k was bought for 33k plus $600 for 100,000 miles extended warranty.

Definitely look into it.

Every car buying service I have ever looked at is never going to give you as good of a deal as doing the negotiating yourself. Negotiating with Car Dealers take patience but I have been able to get the exact deal I have wanted on the last four cars I have purchased. For example, we tried the USAA car buying service which I believe is TrueCar, and the price they gave me was still higher than the initial offer I received from the dealer. We recently had our VW Passat bought back and ended up getting a Honda Pilot for the wife. It took three months but even with the Honda dealerships telling me they could never meet my price, one of them caved on the last day of the month. Obviously there are going to be exceptions to this, especially if you are buying something that is very hard to get or coveted, but if you are trying to get a Carolla, you can DEFINITELY do better by being patient and persistent with a dealership than buying through Costco.

One thing to note, I was able to get about $300 off a 10 Year Factory warranty at the Honda dealership just by being a Costco member.

All,

Thank you for your responses and input. I guess we are going to Toyota tomorrow to see what they have to say.

Once again thank you for sharing your experiences.

I went in at the end of the month at the end of the year got the Costco price and told them that if they would beat it, I would buy and be done with it. They did, I did and we were done. I saved about $5k over what my neighbor paid for his exact same SUV at the same dealer about 3 months. Timing is also key as to when you go IMHO.

Bought my Honda Ridgeline little less than a year ago. Good price as I had Comps, something like $3K under + no haggle, no fees. Based on Ridgeline forum I made out like a bandit - and they even had to go to Orlando to get the car. But - dealer had to participate and not all do. Painless, but my BMW / MIni could not be bought through it as no dealer had signed up (still worked out a good deal there )