Where Should You NOT Look for Cars to Buy

Buying a car? Knowing where to look is just as important as knowing where not to look. Don’t waste your time looking in the wrong places.

With so many places to buy cars these days, finding the right ones is increasingly difficult. Likewise, it is easy to find yourself looking in the wrong areas. Buying a car can be an exciting and fun experience, but it can turn sour at the drop of a hat because of scams and scummy dealers. Finding the right avenues to look into starts with eliminating the bad avenues. Do yourself a favor, and find out where you should NOT look for cars to buy. When you do this, you are one step closer to finding the best cars for sale.

Keep reading to learn more about where not to look for cars to buy.

The Best Places to Buy

Before we get into the worst places to buy cars, let’s cover the best ones real quick. You can never go wrong with a good old-fashioned car dealership. A car dealership with great ratings is a good place to start because at least you know you can trust the people there that are trying to sell you cars. Other great places to look are websites such as Carmax and Autotrader. These websites have great reputations for being honest about the car they sell, and they often provide a CarFax on most cars they sell.

Shady Websites

It is becoming more and more popular to buy cars online. Carvana, the car vending machine company, blew up overnight during the pandemic because no one had a choice but to buy cars online. Since then, sites such as Carmax have done incredibly well for themselves. Unfortunately, not every website can be trusted, and some are out to scam you. You might find yourself browsing one of their pages for cars, just to learn that hardly any of them are available, and they have tons of bogus fees.

You might also want to avoid buying a car from places such as Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. While you might get lucky and score an awesome car for a great price on one of these, the risk of buying a crappy car is higher.

Dealers with Red Flags

When buying from a dealer, you want to know that you can trust them. Some dealers can’t be trusted, and usually, there are some red flags to look out for. Crazy low prices, bogus fees, low trade-in values, bait and switch, and no CarFax are all reasons not to trust a dealer. These types of dealers might have some nice cars for sale, but they are only interested in taking your money.

Other than that, you’ll want to be on the lookout for sketchy car businesses. If a dealer doesn’t have a website and they seem to be doing some shady things under the table, it’s probably best not to buy a car from them.