Thanks for the recommendations of Costco and fleet sales departments. Those are what I would use for my next car.
I tried Carwoo for my parents buying a new car. Since it was an all cash deal, and they were shopping for a new car, the cars and quotes were directly comparable. After visiting a couple dealerships from Carwoo, we had the same shitty experience as we would have without Carwoo. Salesmanship, adding several thousand dollars of "extra but very necessary fees not included in the Carwoo quote", exploding contract price, etc. I was embarrassed that my parent's car buying experience was that bad in 2012, and it cost them a couple weekends on the phone, driving out there, hearing that somehow the quote was not the final quote, etc.
In the end we just ended up at CarMax for a fair price and a decent buying experience.
The best thing I've ever seen were the BMW (and presumably other manufacturer) military/diplomatic sales deals out of Germany. 10-30% below US prices for some models, and 50+% below the local market prices in some countries. You email them, they send you a selector PDF, you reply with what you want and the price, and they take a deposit.
You have to be deployed military (although not necessarily to Europe), a contractor on specific orders, etc. to use the program, but it's pretty awesome if you can.
I tried Carwoo for my parents buying a new car. Since it was an all cash deal, and they were shopping for a new car, the cars and quotes were directly comparable. After visiting a couple dealerships from Carwoo, we had the same shitty experience as we would have without Carwoo. Salesmanship, adding several thousand dollars of "extra but very necessary fees not included in the Carwoo quote", exploding contract price, etc. I was embarrassed that my parent's car buying experience was that bad in 2012, and it cost them a couple weekends on the phone, driving out there, hearing that somehow the quote was not the final quote, etc.
In the end we just ended up at CarMax for a fair price and a decent buying experience.