Car Edge: Giving YOU the Edge or Overrated?
(In full disclosure, I did not pay full price, but I did pay for the service. Caredge was offering a big discount in February, and I have been using their service to see how it works. They have not paid me, and they probably don’t even know that I exist. So, this is good for you because I paid for the service out of my pocket, and I am not biased by them pushing me for a review.)
Introduction
You know that routine… “Hey, can we get???” “Gee,…. Ah…. let me talk to my manager.” That right there is why people don’t like going to car dealers. What if AI could negotiate for you? Remember how we used to avoid dealerships while finding the car we wanted?
I remember back in the 90s, that if you wanted to find the perfect vehicle, you talked to a car wholesaler. A car wholesaler would hunt down your perfect car. You set the price and paid a finder’s fee. This person would go on the hunt. No stone would be left unturned until you had the perfect car. Okay, so basically the dude would go to auto auctions for you and use his connections in shipping companies to get your car to you. The beauty of this model is that you never stepped inside a dealer’s showroom. None of that manager/salesman routine, like Abbot and Costello, minus the humor and entertainment.
The other advantage to this is no pushy sales team. I think the pushy sales team model is changing, but there are certainly dealers who promote the attitude “Always Be Closing.” A good salesperson pays attention to what the person is actually looking to acquire and closes a deal that is a win/win rather than just a deal.
You see, the whole test drive sucks, the negotiation sucks, the hour-long process in the dealership sucks, overall: the whole experience just sucks. So, people schedule root canals rather than go car shopping at the dealer. This is good for dentists, but bad for car enthusiasts. I know I hate dealers and prefer to buy from a private party when I buy cars. It has to be an exceptional deal from a dealership for me to buy from them.
This is why I like Car Edge. It removes the dealership PITA factor. Yes, I said PITA. This is not PETA; it has nothing to do with the ethical treatment of animals or eating animals. Rather, it is a Pain In the Bottom End!
Why would you give CarEdge your money?
1. You can save cars that are listed at dealerships on their site. So, you can have a list of cars to continue to work through. This way, you do not have to negotiate 900 deals, and it takes away the scarcity mindset in your search. You learn that there is always another deal out there if this one does not work out.
2. You can search for cars directly through their site. This is really nice, where you can set up your search and just run the search.
3. If you find a car that you like, you simply enter the VIN, it finds the car, and you have the option to save the car or let the AI negotiate for you.
4. The AI does the work for you, so can you can do other things and check in every hour or so. This is the biggest benefit. It reduces the drain in finding a car. Instead of budgeting hours to interact with a dealer, you just let the AI work the deal for you. You decide whether you want to accept it or reject it.
5. I called their help number just to test and see what happened. You get a real human being. You are not placed on hold! Great JOB!
Some things I would like to see offered:
1. I would love to see coaching to negotiate a private party deal. Car Fax will give you the suggested price. It would be cool if Car Edge looked for the used vehicle that is for sale and gave you the target price. This would mean you are doing the negotiation work, but Car Edge is telling you if you are being a Cameron. You know the guy that Ferris claimed could turn out a diamond in a week if you placed coal in Cameron's non-sunny place, or if you are living on this planet and making a reasonable offer. This would be a great tool to use when pricing the car that you are selling. Some private parties did not get the memo that COVID prices have come and gone.
2. I did not see an easy way to get notifications. I would like to receive text messages if a dealer responds or if there is an offer on the table.
Is this Service Worth the Price?
If you really hate negotiating and you want a good deal on a car from a dealership, then the monthly service is worth it for you. You will get money off a deal and learn how to negotiate if you study the email exchange. So, read through the messages, take note of what the AI chatbot asks for in the deal. It is pretty eye-opening how you can get hundreds to thousands of dollars off a car.
If the service seems high to you, then this is my alternative. I would pay for one month. Spend some time reading through the email exchanges to see how the AI would negotiate. I would take note of the negotiation tactics. I experimented with negotiating other deals via e-mail. I would have Chat GPT, Grok, or Claude help me draft an inquiry. I would send the inquiry to the dealership, and I would take their reply and put it in Chat GPT, Grok, and Claude. I think I had better results because I could make the messages sound more human. Car Edge really did well, but sometimes it did sound a bit AI. Overall, it really did nail a human tone. So, please don’t take this as a slam on the service.
I think that ChatGPT performed the best overall in my experience. However, Grok is a very close second or maybe a tie in sorting out a deal. Claude is great for helping you communicate clearly, but Chat GPT and Grok helped drill into the deal. So, there is a way to get a deal on a car for less than 50 bucks per month, but you will have to be very hands-on. CarEdge does the work for you while you can work on other things.
Honestly, if CarEdge.com could get the price down to 25 bucks a month or less, then they would have a tiger by its tail. I would recommend the service without any qualification. It is nice to have the autopilot working the deal for you in the background. It is like the wholesaler who works for you round the clock while you tend to things in life. So, the 50 bucks per month will realistically save you thousands on a brand new vehicle, hundreds on a used vehicle. If you are patient and cheap, you can use ChatGPT to work the same deal, but with more hands-on effort.
If you are very busy and you want something to work for you that is not emotionally attached to a car, then CarEdge is great. You will pay a premium. If you want to invest some time and are willing to walk away from the “Deal of a lifetime” line, then you use a different AI service, do more hands-on work, and spend some money on upgrades for the new ride. CarEdge is a big disruptor to the car industry, and so I give them huge kudos for their work.
Conclusion
This is a service that I can recommend for people who hate negotiating. It has a lot of nice features and is certainly something that will make sure you get the car for less money than the asking price. If you get emotionally attached to cars, and you are scared to ask for a revision to the deal, then this service is great! The AI is the Dragnet of car negotiating, “Just the facts, ma’am!”
I really like the fact that the AI is working the deal for you behind the scenes. This means you can spend time working and doing other things while the AI is negotiating. I would just check in every hour or so to see how the AI was working the deals. Negotiating takes time, and if you are busy, this is very nice.
However, if you can stay unattached to a vehicle in the purchasing process, then ChatGPT is a great alternative. Yes, you will have to do a lot of copying and pasting, but you are only spending 8 bucks. You will get a better deal. The key is you have to ask yourself, “Can I stay objective in this process?” If the answer is no, then use CarEdge. The money will be well spent.
Leave a comment if there are other car services that you use which work well. Thank you for taking the time to read my post!