Car dealerships don't always make a lot of sense; they're high-pressure environments in which consumers are asked to spend tens of thousands of dollars on whatever vehicles happen to be sitting around. So eBay and General Motors appear to be rethinking the process with a new car shopping website.
gm.ebay.com is scheduled to launch tomorrow and connect consumers to over 225 GM dealers. Consumers should then be able to browse the dealers' new car inventories, ask questions, and negotiate all of the financial details online.
Rob Chesney, the vice president of eBay Motors, explained in a statement, "Through this program, we are helping GM dealers to extend their physical showroom while at the same time delivering to our buyers the great deals and broad selection they expect from eBay."
It's an interesting initiative, considering that most of the cars that are available online are used. And although the initiative is indeed just an experiment, scheduled to run through September 8th and involving only California dealers, it's easy to imagine that GM and eBay would see fit to expand it.
gm.ebay.com is by no means guaranteed to succeed, however. People may hesitate to seal big deals on a computer screen, and to say that both eBay and GM have been experiencing problems lately would be an almost laughable understatement.
About the author:
Doug is a staff writer for
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Probably not! The problem
Probably not! The problem with this is they are only essentially doing buy it now or haggle with the dealer. They aren't letting the ebay marketplace decide the price as I feel they should be. They should start it out at the actual cost and then let people bid on it like traditionally. They may even bid more than what the dealer is looking for! But I'd bet they'd sell more cars for a profit with traditional bidding!