Carquake info

[lslowry]

there's a company called Carquake that sells new cars at a greatly reduced price. I googled to find reviews of this firm and came up with only 2. Having searched on AB history i see that zacmaster found the same reviews in 2009. Does anyone have a personal experience with this firm, or know of anyone that has bought a car from them? Any information would be most welcome, thankyou.

[hc4361]

Carquake does not sell any cars at all. It puts buyers in touch with dealers, and dealers pay them a commission for the contact.

[lslowry]

hc4361 thanks for that. have you had any dealings with this firm then?

[hc4361]

No, I haven't. But it is obvious you can get a better deal going directly to the dealer and haggling, because the dealer isn't paying Carquake commission.
There is no harm you getting a quote from Carquake for guidance.

[S_C]

i know the company from personal experiance.
i arranged to buy one of their cars , when i got there and examined the car i was not impressed . so did not go ahead with the arrangement.
i will admit the cars i saw appeared to cleaned to a high standard,

But the one that was claimed to be in " showroom condition " that i was ment to buy was scratched in a number of places and showed sign's of ill treatment . also the oil was "gritty" which is not a good sign.

This is the only experiance i have had of this company and will not " blast " them because of a one of experiance .

As always i would suggest making a full examination of any car you intend to buy.

[Eyeballed]

I'm comin over there !

[johnnymb]

I think you're confusing CarQuake with AutoQuake. They have no premises to go over, much less cars to view on a lot!

[johnnymb]

To be up-front with you I work for CarQuake, and just like to clarfiy a few things in this thread:
1. We are a 'direct to dealer' service, but they don't pay us commissions. They pay a set rate to advertise, therefore it is in their interest to be as competitive as possible and there is no 'hidden cut' in the deal. Which means that for a good number of manufacturers, we have very good deals. There is no other site which offers this kind of service because most do ask for commissions.
2. Going to your 'local' dealer is not always the best plan. Firstly because all dealers want their local marketplace to be the most profitable - so they don't offer the best deals in the showroom or to local enquiries. Secondly, because there are different bonuses available to dealers depending on hitting sales targets - there are many offers on CarQuake that local dealers cannot match.
3. When we built the site in the first place, the aim was to make it easy to buy new cars online. The point being that going to a local dealer is a huge waste of time, energy and often money - whereas you can, and people have, buy very easily through CarQuake.
4. if you do just use CarQuake to get your local dealer to get close to price-matching - then that's fine. But then you're just supporting the 'status quo' and we created CarQuake based around the negative feedback of so many car buyers who didn't like the tortuous new car buying experience and haggle. So, entirely up to you, support the 'old' way of doing things if you want to!
5. Finally, in the three and a half years we've been running, we've helped dealers sell tens of thousands of cars... the exact number? We can't tell, because we don't ask for commissions on sales ;-)

[lslowry]

thanks for the information everyone, much appreciated.

[S_C]

johnnymb you are correct it was AutoQuake .

my mistake was a while ago and to be honest the names sound a lot the same so im guessing thats why i mistook the two different companies for each other .

with this in mind please ignore my previous statement as im thinking of the wrong company ..

[johnnymb]

No worries. We launched CarQuake before AutoQuake existed... ah, well. We try to focus on mainly new and the odd pre-registered and demonstrator cars - but they focus on highish mileage ex-Fleet/Lease/Rental cars.

Very different businesses. But no problems - it's up to us to work harder to make CarQuake a more recognised brand.

We are expanding to Vans, however, as we grow...

[S_C]

johnnymb
a little off topic , but have just checked your companies site and did a quick search in google .
one way to help promote your site would be to offer a feedback section that is viewable by the public , im sure if people are happy with your site / service and save them money they would be more than willing to put a statement to that effect that all could see.

i also note that the other firm mensioned came up first choice on google when i did a search which i would presume means they have a higher number of links to their site thna you have to yours .

just a couple of suggestions / points to consider ..

anyway im sorry for going off topic Islowry and shall now shut up as to be honest i didnt manage to answer your question at all..

[johnnymb]

Thanks for the suggestions. We do have a testimonials section that appears in the right hand column on every page on the site - however it is a little tucked away. These are all genuine testimonials from buyers through our site, but I appreciate that you may not have spotted it.

We are considering dealer reviews, but the nature of our site means that some dealers are not happy about what we do (or manufacturers for that matter) - so offering free unsolicited feedback could lead to problems. Anyway - there are some further plans afoot at the moment - but probably won't land for a few months.

In terms of Google, I appreciate your suggestions, but we do come top of searches for CarQuake - but they are bidding against our name. We could put an ad up there, but why spend when we are top.

We also do rather well on various other searches - like 'Cheap New Cars' and 'New Cars for Sale' ... however will continue to work on this.