[reh99876]

Entered my vehicle into a local dealership advertising the Kelly Bluebook Instant Cash Offer on thier website and got a much better price than Carmax or another dealership offered. Has anyone actually received the KBB price when trading or is just something to hook you in the door. Almost feel its "too good to be true".

Went back to the first dealership with the lowest offer and he matched the Carmax offer which brought the trade up a couple of thousand.

SHould be able to get the RTL-E Silver / Gray within a couple of weeks. Was going to wait a few months but talked myself into going ahead even though I know there will be some problems with being early adopter.

Bob

Im in Socal and have no idea if the offer is done elsewhere. Does offer hope the dealership will trade a little more fairly.

 

[ranger519]

Carmax (at least here) gave me two offers - 1 from their appraiser and 1 from KBB. The KBB offer was about $1000 higher. I faxed that to the Honda dealer and they matched the price of the KBB offer on my trade for a new RL BE. I thought the KBB offer was fair and was satisfied with the deal. The process was very smooth.

 

[davidnd1]

In my case, the Carmax offer was better on my trade and it helped get the dealer to raise their price.

 

[stantaur]

I did the KBB tool with 5 dealerships on our 41K mile '07 Tundra Double Cab with TRD Off Road, all maintenance records incl recent Blackstone used oil analysis, pictures, etc. We're 2nd owner since 2010 when we got it with 10.7K on the clock from CarMax. MaxCare extended warranty set to expire in Oct, so we were shopping for a good long-term replacement (and weren't towing a racecar anymore - we'd only towed 6 times at under half it's rated 10.5K capacity).

Kudos to KBB's service. KBB gave us a fair range, and helped squelch the BS static some dealer estimators gave about the truck being 2WD in a region that's predominantly 4WD.

CarMax quoted $15.5K based on in-person assessment by their staff estimator and what they said was KBB's "range" but dinged $2K for it being 2WD.
2 local dealerships offered $17.5K with KBB and on-site visual inspection & review of my maintenance records.
2 dealerships within 200 mile offered $17.5K based on KBB and a ton of detailed pictures I shared on Flickr.
1 local dealership offered $18.5K based on KBB, on-site inspection, detailed pictures & records.

I took the local dealership's $18.5K and put $500 deposit on an RTL-E scheduled for delivery in Aug.

Dealership needed nearly zero prep work to post it 3 days later at $22.9K. And that is fine with us, as we don't want to feel responsible if something went wrong with a 10 year old (Toyota, yeah, so not likely) truck whether we knew the next owner or not.

 

[volinbham]

Just recently used it and felt the price was higher than I would have thought for trades.

3 local dealers offered to be buyers - buy it outright at that price or higher pending visual inspection. 2 Honda dealers offered to honor the value on trade towards a Ridgeline.

As it happens, I went to a different Honda dealer just looking around and ended up with what appears to be a good deal.

In the initial negotiation I didn't tell them about the KBB and the trade offer was 1200 below the KBB guarantee. We were 4K apart on the total deal and they ended up adding 2K to their initial offer putting it 800 over the KBB.

Bottomline, dealers appear to honor the KBB number.

 

[jschwanke84]

I work for a dealership group and can say that the KBB tool is simply to give you a ballpark estimate. There are always disclaimers with that stuff that a final valuation cannot be made until the vehicle is inspected. That said, many dealerships are more willing to negotiate up on trade-in value before they will negotiate down on sale price of the new vehicle. The margins are much greater with used cars. A dealer might make $500 on the sale of a brand new $30k vehicle, but $2000 on the sale of a $15k used car. My point is, always remember you have more negotiating power with your trade-in value than you have with the new car price, and never tell a dealer about your trade in until you have agreed on a final sale price of the new vehicle.