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Comment by monooso | Hacker News Reader

When public transport ground to a halt during COVID, I suddenly needed a car. I bought one online via Cinch [1]. No haggling, no hassle, and it was delivered to my door a few days later.

I have no intention of entering a car dealership ever again.

[1] https://www.cinch.co.uk/

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I did the same thing with Carvana. The experience was wonderful until after I got the car. They waxed the stupid thing with the windows down. There was wax in random places EVERYWHERE in the car. I asked for money for an internal detailing (I was willing to just deal with the external part having the worst buff job I've ever seen). They offered $75 and the lady on the phone said she could get her SUV detailed for that much. In Texas.

Anyways, in the end, you can get them to do almost anything by simply saying you want to return the car. That's pretty damn expensive and something they have no choice but to honor. Still, if you don't know this trick, it's a good way for these guys to be sneaky. This would've been easier for me to deal with if I could just physically bring it in somewhere and say "give it back clean".

That being said, I also understand you have better consumer protections in the UK, so maybe things are different for you.

Did you find this at the time of delivery? Or was this something you found out afterwards?

I would assume "decline to accept" is different than "return car", is that true?

Yes - declining to accept happens at the delivery truck itself. Once you've accepted it, you have a small window of time (1-2 weeks?) to return it. To do that, they have to send a truck back out to pick it up.

I think it's because of some law in the US requiring a grace period to return cars. One of the best consumer protection laws in the US, in my experience. I saved a lot of young military guys a lot of money by forcing them to return their 22% APR, 0% equity, brand-new, street demon car and get something vaguely reasonable.

I had to threaten to sue them by opting out of their time triggered arbitration clause to get them to give me the deposit back on a car they couldn’t/wouldn't deliver. Carvana sucks.

The haggling involved in car buying is a choice. Over the years various sellers have used “no haggling” as a selling point, Saturn for instance. But I can walk into any dealership and choose to pay the listed price without haggling.

They have multiple avenues for haggling beyond price. Leveraging loan terms or penalizing you for cash, insisting on addons like 'safer' blinking tail lights that they auto-install on every car, the creativity never ends.

Assuming you pay via dealership financing that is likely true but many dealerships have a different price for a car if you are paying cash for it.

I wish I could be comfortable doing so for such a large purchase, but there is too much variability in the quality of used vehicles and sellers have a disincentive to disclose potential issues.

I don't like buying at dealerships but I do like being able to inspect the vehicle at the same time I am signing the paperwork.

Carvana has 7 day return policy no questions asked. Buy it, take it to mechanic. Return it if its no good

I'm aware, but there are more caveats to a return then there are to a transaction that never happened.

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