[tanstaafl]

Originally Posted by mints21

Nice and interesting to hear this. I am actually coming across someone like you for the first time. Can you also share which car and city was this. How it all initiated and what made you consider buying a car using this route. In case you have photographs, it will be very interesting for all of us to see them. At least, now we can say for sure that we have a BHPian who has brought a car this way.
Best wishes

Originally Posted by Gannu_1

He should have been a bit more specific w.r.t the city.

A Subaru BRZ in the US (Michigan IINM). We know each other from another forum.

Yep, Subaru BRZ in the US. No pictures taking it off the truck, sorry. They wouldn't let me drive it off the truck (for insurance reasons).

A lot of things pushed me to buy it online. Price was definitely a major factor. No bargaining involved and I saved $2500+.

The local dealers took two weeks to get back to me with a price quote. Not very responsive to my queries. They came back with a price that was $500 over the MRP. The only cars they had on hand had some pre-installed options that they weren't willing to remove and wanted me to pay for. I am sure these problems sound familiar whether buying the car in US or India.

On the flip side, the online dealer's quote was a no haggle price that was $3000 below MSRP. All communication was online, so no shady fees and all the numbers were clear. I was given my VIN the week after the car was manufactured. Got constant shipping updates. No dealer stickers installed. Car got shipped 2000 km from the dealer to my front door step.

If you think about it, a car's warranty is set up like that of an electronic appliance or computer part. Apple, Sony or Intel are going to give you warranty service. Not Flipkart and Amazon. The only thing you have to worry about is not having done a PDI but a reputable dealer will take care of that. Online dealers are more careful about this because a bad review will stick with them for a long time.

[V12Doc]

Originally Posted by mints21

Unbelievable but true, Can we think of buying a car in India like this? In India, the online sale of cars from Nissan has not been able to generate any interest in the market.

Forget Nissan, we in India are still not confident of buying cars from the dealers as most of us will not trust them selling us something that we have not seen. I haven't met anyone who would call a dealer to place an order on phone. Eg: Can you please send me one Maruti Swift ZDI variant in white colour. Payment can be collected at the time

I bought an Audi A4 like this. Called them, Got a quotation and Car delivered at home. Never walked into an Audi Dealership yet .

[centaur]

Indian market IMO, is still not so mature to make such expensive purchases over the web without even seeing the price. This maturity is with respect to both, buyers and sellers. Forget buying a car of over lakhs, many people think twice even before buying a cellphone worth a few thousands from the web. Like mentioned earlier in this thread, Mahindra already sells its Duro on snapdeal and its been there from long, though am not sure how many units they manage to sell so far

[saket77]

Our car was bought without a test drive, or even a visit to the showroom. Even 11 years ago, a Zen was not an unknown quantity. The sales staff used to be a known person and he actually used to drop off to our place at our convenience. The showroom was in a different city about 150 kms away from ours. The car was driven from the showroom to their service center in our city, washed and then we collected it from the service center. The process was all smooth.

The only thing that we struggled to communicate the sales staff was the colour of the car. Metallic silver was a very new color at that time and there were very very few cars in that shade on road. I had a tough time explaining the color that we wanted to him. Also since the colour was new, there were no shade cards available too which displayed that color!

[Mafia]

This is a nice change for the future. I can see myself picking a car like this.

Read the review on team-BHP and place an order in the next tab.

It is probably harder to select clothes or sun glasses on line.

[Bh.P]

I don't know if I would want to buy a car like this. For me, looking around, touching/feeling cars, test driving them, doing the PDI etc is an integral part of the car buying experience and is fun.
Even if I buy other stuff online (mobiles, apparels) due to the better deals on offer, I may go to a brick and mortar shop, see them in person and then order online.

[vivekgk]

This is how Bajaj was delivering it's (then) newly launched Pulsar 220 in India for a while. It was delivered inside a box, in a truck (Tata Ace, I think)