Buying Audi Used Cars and more!
Posted: Tue, 20 Oct 2009, 22:47:00, GMT | 1668 views Share
After living in the UK for about 3.5 years, we finally decided to buy a used car (and eventually bought a 2007 Audi A3). Although it is absolutely not required for us to drive around in a car day-to-day, we have completely enjoyed the road trips where we drive around the UK and explore the various cities, often on the spur of the moment without lots of advanced planning.
As you may recall, Tee got his UK Driving License about 1.5 years ago, and we have been members of the City Car Club (shared cars parked through various areas of the city) since. With's Troy's recent work switch, he joined Autoquake.com, which is an online site that uses fancy technology to price and list used cars for sale on the web. With all of these factors combining, we decided to make the plunge and buy a used car in the UK. We did some shopping around and decided that Autoquake did actually have the most varied selection of used cars online to browse, and I loved the overall experience. We went through the full transaction solely in my name so that there was no special treatment we received as a result of Troy. This is my biased review but it is honest and my actual experience!
First, it is really difficult to buy a used car if you think about it. Do you go to a used car dealership and face lots of arguments over price? Do you buy a used car from a random listing in the newspaper? Do you use an online service like Auto Trader to browse used cars? There are endless combinations, but most typically are frustrating. In general, I want sales people to leave me alone - be around if I have a question, but just leave me alone otherwise. So I always prefer to do transactions online and avoid dealing with commission-driven people wherever possible. Buying a used car poses a slightly different problem - it's an experience you're purchasing as much as a physical item. Plus you need to inspect the car itself - are there scratches or dents? A used car is hard to purchase online.
That's the first thing I really liked about Autoquake and its approach to selling used cars in the UK. They are blending the best of ecommerce - transactions without lots of sales people or wasted time spent - with the best of technology - online pricing that beats competitors, comprehensive pictures and documentation of every last item not perfect, and the option for home delivery. It looked almost as easy as ordering a pizza, although slightly more expensive!
- Step 1: Find a used car you like: The first step is pretty easy - browse or search for the perfect Used Car from the available inventory. In my case, I found a great Used Audi A3.
- Step 2: Reserve the car while you think more: Once you find a car you like, you can put a £100 fully-refundable deposit down, which holds the used car for 3 days, while you figure out your next step. In my case, I wasn't sure how serious I was, but I knew that if I was serious, this was the car I'd like. So I reserved it, knowing that I could get my deposit back with no questions asked. The deposit was doable online with a credit card, so one point for Autoquake that they made it easy.
- Step 3: Comparison shop to make sure you're getting the best price: With the deposit in place, you have some time to comparison shop on other online used car sites. I looked at a few used car dealerships online, AutoTrader, Car Supermarket and Car Giant. For the same make/model/year and about the same mileage and condition, I found Autoquake to beat the others by £500 - £1000. In addition, I loved Autoquake's detailed pictures and close-ups of every possible thing that wasn't perfect on the car. The other sites had various quality of details, but nothing that gave me confidence like Autoquake did.
- Step 4: Buy or Refund? at the end of the 3 day holding period, you need to either decide to move forward with the purchase, put an additional deposit down (10% of the purchase price) to continue holding the car, or to get a refund if you've decided not to purchase yet. I decided to purchase, and only had to choose whether to have the car delivered to my door (!!) or go to one of the distribution centres to test drive and pick up the used Audi. Since we were curious what the entire experience was like - and we wanted to explore more of the UK, we decided to pick up the car, which in my case was in Leeds (there are two main distribution centres for the used cars - Leeds and Birmingham).
- Step 5: Get the car: I called Autoquake to tell them I wanted to purchase the car that I had made a deposit on, and we set up an appointment for Saturday. We arrived there, the Autoquake customer service guy showed us the car, told us a quick overview of it and then - major points for customer service - said that he'd leave us alone for a few minutes as we explored the car, kicked the tyres, sat in the seats, etc. So it was great to have no hard-sell standing over us the whole time. I did a quick test drive and then handed over my money and drove away! Autoquake offered free 7-day insurance, which I accepted, and then we stopped at the local Post Office to get a tax disc.
- Step 6: Enjoy and use your 7-day money back if problems! This hopefully is going to be the easy part! From Leeds, we drove to York and explored the area there a bit, then onto Scarborough where we found a local hotel and had a relaxing evening and morning there, before driving back to London in our newly purchased used Audi A3! Each used car purchase comes with a 7-day money back promise, so I had that extra level of comfort that should something horrible come to my attention, I still had a good buffer at my disposal.
So, if you are looking for a used car, definitely check out Autoquake.com - it's a smooth transaction, very friendly, competitive prices, and I love the ability to do my entire car purchase experience on MY terms, and not under pressure from some annoying salesperson. I'd give the extire experience a 9/10 easily.