TrueCar Used Cars and New Cars Reviews

by Angrybaldman107

Last year I used TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars which was pleasant and helpful. I was able to research cars without the dealership squawk and hassle. When I found the vehicle I was interested in, I could request to be contacted by that one dealership selling that vehicle. I actually ended up purchasing the car I found on TrueCar.

Now, needing to replace our other vehicle, I logged on today to do some research and discovered that True Car has totally changed. Within ONE minute of logging on, three car dealerships had blown up my phone with calls.

So, I am deleting TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars and complaining to my Credit Union to stop using them. True Car is not what it once was and is now being used as an opportunistic tool for dealerships to find customers, instead of existing as a consumer resource to find a vehicle. Today, it seemed as True Car has been transformed into a major scam!

by Danivanity

True car was my go-to for car shopping research, now it’s the garbage way to get spammed incessantly by dealers. They took all the value away from consumers and gave it to car dealers. You can’t get info on what others paid for their car, or even a “true car price” without agreeing to let true car share your information with dealers, which then shares it to a database, which allows other dealers to access your email and suddenly you’re getting dozens of ads in Facebook and endless solicitations via email for months. I will never use or recommend this worthless resource again. Someone needs to reinvent the old true car so consumers can better price shop, without getting harassed by dealerships. I get this is a business and they need to make money, which comes from dealers, but if you don’t provide enough value to consumers and they all leave, so will your dealers.

by TrailSkater

DON'T USE TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars! They INSTANTLY sell your information! I signed up and within 5 minutes my inbox was inundated with generic emails from dealerships all over saying they have the best vehicle for me. Now I'm worried I'm going to start getting sales calls because they require a phone number to sign in. ALSO, their filtered results are HORRIBLE! If you want a particular trim, they don't use specific trim levels from each make and model, the trim levels that show up are whatever people write as trims, so the sheer amount of trim levels are ridiculous, seriously, some differences I saw were literally a comma. Keep is simple people SLE, SLT, Denali... SIMPLE! Use CarGurus, you'll like it way better, they don't sell your information, they don't require a login and they put ALL dealerships on an even keel so you see ALL cars available, not just the dealerships that pay to get in front of you.

by Jppff

Just awful and I don’t even understand how this level of harassment is even legal in 2018. Basically what happens is that after you just view a car and I mean it (just viewing), they will send your phone number to numerous dealerships and trust me that they wont stop calling and emailing you, even after you remove the car from the apps menu they even tell you that you will continue to receive calls and emails, there is no way out out of this that I could find and ( I’m even in the do not call registry ).... apparently they don't even share the databases with the dealerships.

There was a time at the very beginning when they truly care about the customer, now they just blatantly and with no apparent way out just give out your personal info, how is that for a balanced scale between the dealerships and the car seeker, this is even horrible for the dealerships imo as i pretty much blacklisted them all from my current and future car purchasing experience and now they wont be getting my business....

by Polymedu

True Car is nothing but a scam to sell your private information to other companies. When you search a cars price they give you a value that is way below MSRP and make you sign up with your email to look at prices in the area. However, they do not give you price lists afterward, they just sell your phone number (which you don’t give them, they just raid your phone for it) and your email that you used to sign up to all of the dealerships in your area. These dealership prices are no where near what True Car tells you they are before you sign up, and the dealerships send you info for all cars, not just the one you were looking at. Amongst 8 dealerships, 19 emails, and 7 phone calls, all within the first hour, there was only 2 cars that matched what I had searched, leading me to believe that True Car doesn’t even tell the dealerships what you searched for. It is just as easy and quick to avoid True Car and you won’t have to be spammed by the dealerships.

by Kraig R

Like others have said, TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars is advertised as a new way to buy a car with less hassle. It should make it clearer to users that dealers will call them despite asking for email contact only.
The idea behind TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars is great, and I like the ability to see inventory on dealer lots. But the phone calls kill the purpose.
I downloaded TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars about a month ago and clicked through to see the price on a car, suddenly my phone blows up with calls and texts and voicemails. These eventually slowed as the date on the offer passed. Yesterday I completed a survey in my email from truecar asking how my experience was. I filled that out and boom the phone calls start again.
TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars needs to be clear that dealers will get all your contact info, despite your preferences.
If I could leave a zero star rating I would, and if I could redo the survey I would give a terrible rating. Better yet, don’t fill out the survey because they turn around and tell the dealers to contact you again!

by AlyosaMts

TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars will allow you to search for cars BUT lacks in many other places. 1-ability to save searches- every single time you open TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars you must plug in all of my filters over and over again....it’s annoying.
2-to open the list of cars you have “liked” you much enter a search. You can’t just go directly to your list.
3-there’s a bug. If you “like” a car and want to later review the details, when you select the car from your “liked” list it takes you to a blank page.
4-your list of “liked” cars doesn’t transfer from one device to another even if you have to create an account and are signed in on both devices. Or example, if I like a car on my cell phone I can’t go to my desktop, login and find my “liked” cars.
5- The last and worse nuisance is that you must share too much personal info with dealers (name/address/cell/email) just to see if a car is available. It doesn’t provide you with their contact info

by DigitalTemerity

I didn’t give TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars permission to send my number to every car dealership within a 50 mile radius and put me on automated telemarketing machines but that’s exactly what it did. A person should be able to use TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars in the privacy of their own home to view what’s available from different manufacturers that suit their tastes and if they should spot something and want to be telephoned by a dealership it should be their decision to do so. I never opted in to these calls but I sure had to opt out of about twenty or so different numbers and block a bunch of numbers to get them off my back. You want a guarantee I won’t buy from you? Then subject me to what amounts to open harassment attempting to force me to make appointments I don’t want and refuse to hang up until you get a promise I will come into your dealership at a specific time to force a purchase out of me like a pushy car salesman. I will never use TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars again and I recommend nobody else does either.

by Dissapointed 99

This is nothing more than a sales tool for car dealer sales agents. Within 5 minutes of submitting preferences I started receiving phone calls and emails. I did so thinking I would see a few deals, but TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars only returned website advertised pricing from three dealers in the area. TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars no longer shows what the dealer paid, just a no haggle price they hope you will pay. The two closest dealers did not show up even though they had the model I was inquiring about. I think dealers must pay a fee to be included in True Car’s search results. The calls continue for three plus weeks, all unanswered. I feared if I answered them it would open a line of communication that I could not close. After a week of no response they knew I was not interested, but the calls and emails have continued into the fourth week.
I hear TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars used to be an accurate source of actual car pricing, but I didn’t find any useful advantage by using it.

by Zach Conaway

There was a time when true car was in my personal opinion, the best place to look at cars. You could select from many models and configure a car that you would in fact want to buy and the shown price and you could get at your nearest dealership in a relatively short time. However now there is no way to put together your own configurations, there are only a select few pre made ones to choose from. Also if you want to see dealers near you, you will come to find the advertising to be cars of the same brand but not the exact model you choose and you will immediately start getting phone calls, emails, and sometimes even texts from dealers. This experience is awful and this is a prime example of trying to fix something that was never broken... this place has become extremely disappointing and i will not be returning anytime soon.

by HurdlrSucks

I used TrueCar in the past years and it was really good to be able to look through and get an idea about price and options until you were actually ready to have them connect you with the dealers in the area. Today I was interested to see some details and pricing on a specific car and the next thing you know is I got bombarded with phone calls from the dealers about the car. Listen! I’m not interested to buy right now! I was just curious. Before I was able to check the deals, looks at some incentives and than decide if I wanted to connect with the dealers. It was a great buffer for the buyer before was ready to get in contact with the dealer. Very Annoying! If the dealers are paying for leads, they are getting ripped off. Like in my case, I’m the coldest lead they can ever have. I’m not interested to buy a car for about 5 years......Guess what! I deleting TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars that used to be great!

by Morrrittzzzsayenough

Yesterday I tried this from the web and from TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars .
1) Lease - basically no function to support leasing, only sales price.
2) Discounts on 3 different models I tried were exceedingly minimal. VW GTI $600 discount from msrp, Chevrolet Volt $1200 discount from msrp, Chevrolet Camaro SS
about $1000.
In their defense I imagine this might limit “junk” fees that some dealers like to charge to offset an advertised low price.
3) There is no way to browse around dealerships and look for bargains without triggering “dealer hell” where you get repeated calls and emails from sales to sales managers. I immediately contacted each dealer and apologized and indicated I accidentally triggered this while browsing.
Some continued to press the issue.

In the past, I’ve examined dealer inventory and emailed them with a detailed lease proposal using the actual money factor, mileage, residual, cap cost, tax, doc fee, and registration costs including incentives and have gotten good traction on a low cost deal.
I was hoping I could use TrueCar to achieve the same goal more elegantly, but this appears to be more a tool for sales leads than a way to functional savings on a new car for the end user.

by AstroMan87

The functionality is mediocre. First - you search for a particular model/color/package and it still shows you other colors and cars slightly related to your search... annoying. Second - there’s menu options to view saved searches and builds, but saving those searches and builds is not intuitive and maybe impossible. I still can’t figure out how to save a search.

Additionally, as other have said, they’ll quickly distribute your information to dealers and you’ll be receiving emails/calls immediately.

The ONLY positive I’ve found on TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars is the possibility of $500 cash back bonus by purchasing a car through TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars . I’ve yet to do this but it supposedly works. Generally terrible app though, so I’m worried about attempting it.

by 7$8&

I love the way TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars works. The search options helped me narrow down and find a car. I’ve tried all the other car buying apps, and this one worked the best....

...BUT, the contact info is often wrong. About 25% of the listings have incorrect contact info, especially the dealership location. I almost missed out on the car I ended up purchasing because the name and phone number from one dealership was listed under a totally different company. I wasted a lot of time trying to find and contact some dealers.

Two suggestions: 1) Include a link to a map, with correct location info, so its easier to find them. 2) I called many dealerships to schedule appointments, but the outgoing calls don’t show up in the call log, so it made it really difficult to keep track of who and where they were while driving around.

by BenGenGal

Ugh, I hate it when TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars comes up with a pop up message asking me whether or not I like TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars , and then taking me to the review page if I say yes. I wish it wouldn’t do that. But since I’ve already formed my opinion, I’ll go ahead and leave a review.

So TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars is very informative. It’s been my favorite car-buying app. But when you’re in the research mode, and you’re just flipping through the different trims of the car you’re researching, the tables of information are just so big (especially when there’s a lot of trims to compare) that the information doesn’t stay lined up. You think you’re looking at the LE for instance but you’re actually looking at the SE. I don’t think this is TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars ’s fault, knowing how tables work you just really need a screen large enough to be able to still show the header once you get really far down on the table. I found a way around this. I go to the TrueCar website and I view it in landscape mode, problem fixed.

So even though I don’t like that, I don’t think it can be helped and I found a way around it so overall I like TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars and I’m keeping it and am going to continue to use it to read up and to find cars.

by Bobbeleh

I stumbled upon TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars when I began my search in Christmas Day. What an amazing find. I was able to comparison shop a variety of makes and dealers and felt that it was an honest representation of what was available in my area.

Yes I was contacted by salespeople, both by phone and email, but that’s to be expected. I stuck all the emails into a “car dealers” sub folder to go over later.

While I was out dealing with something else, an email came in from one of the TrueCar certified dealers with an offer on my dream car that was significantly below what I was considering that I would have been stupid not to take it. Since I was paying cash, there was no haggling about financing.

I test drove the vehicle the following day and did all the paperwork. Since the vehicle had to be brought from another dealership, I was able to pick it up the day after.

I am so thrilled to have found TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars. I recommended it to an out-of-State friend who used it to find a car for his wife.

by WonderWellem

We’d been searching high and low for an older model Suburu Impreza for our 15 year old daughter to drive when she gets her license. We didn’t think we’d find anything with less than 150k miles, or in anything other than good condition. Imagine our surprise when the first time we used TrueCar, her dream car popped up! We somehow stumbled onto a gorgeous 2009 Impreza with 80k miles, in phenomenal condition. Clean title, no issues, well taken care of... everything a parent could hope for when we’re talking the BabyGirl of the family lol. This car was not listed on ANY of the other search engines we used! We found it around 7pm on Thursday; went straight to the dealership Friday afternoon, and were driving her new car home in about an hour. We will definitely be using this service again for my older son who’s vehicle was just totaled. In fact, we have already used it to go look at one vehicle already.

by Strawhat Link

This has helped me greatly in pricing research for my car buying search as well as seeing what amenities are available for the cars I’m looking into. Pictures and stats. And when I have time to answer 4-8 emails I can check pricing in my area and see who’s offering decent prices and who’s marking the car up exponentially. It’s very helpful for someone who is actually trying to buy a car. It can also be a great tool for finding out what is in stock near you. And what is impossible to find. Also when certain cars will become available. But be warned if you ask for the specific pricing near you the dealers are notified of your interest and you will receive a few emails. How ever many dealers there are near you that you received pricing for.

by Davetut019

I had great success with TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars. I saw my truck on a Saturday, and locked in my price, which was a great deal. The dealer said someone was coming in the next day to see buy it. I said if anything happens, let me know. The deal fell through, and it was back on for $900 more. I told them I had my TrueCar price, and they honored it. I went up the next day, and picked up my truck. I am extremely happy with it, and how much I paid for it.
Another thing I like about TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars over most others is that they tell you exactly what packages are in the vehicle, so you know exactly what options are included. I found this very helpful in weeding out the trucks that didn’t fit my criteria.
I plan on keeping this truck for a while, but would always use this if I’m in the market for a new or used car.

by Ericab08

Very impressed with TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars . A couple things that would take the mobile app from great to exceptional:
- a way to save searches for particular vehicles with particular parameters (ie. I’d pay x for a Benz, and up to y for a Toyota)
- “back to search” automatically places me back at the top of the list for that page. I hate losing my place especially when I’m far down the list already so being able to make it refresh in the same place would be optimal.
- Price range for cars I’m looking to buy. Excellent vs Fair price is helpful but I’d like to know how good of a deal Excellent is

by Jlwhitten

First, I know this review is not going to be read by TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars Store. That was sarcasm. It will be read by its intended audience, potential users if TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars .

After reading these reviews, I’ve deleted TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars without ever using it. Your reviews revealed a troubling theme of users’ getting spammed mercilessly by dealer phone calls. In essence, TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars exposes users to the very thing its users are trying to avoid.

There is also a disturbing theme in the developers’ responses to these dealer phone calls complaints. They all say, we will contact the dealers and tell them to stop calling you. First, they cannot deliver on that promise. Dealers maintain their own call contact lists, and those lists are their lifeblood. My experience suggests that it takes an act of God to get yourself off such lists. Second, why should you have to do this at all? TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars professes to changing the car buying experience, but too many users report the exact opposite. Based on reviews, TrueCarUsedCarsandNewCars developer does not appear to present a better experience over dealing with a few dealers on your own.

I’ll end as I started. Thank you App Store for publishing these app reviews. I hate unsolicited sales calls. And it looks like you saved me from that hell.