I remember 10 years ago when we were talking about ecommerce with our customers, we would say its perfect for smaller items like books and CDs.  We would joke its not like anyone is going to buy a car online, but less expensive items yes.  Fast forward to  2010 and I am eating those words.  I just bought a car online from New Jersey (we live in Winnipeg Manitoba).  My wife had been looking for a particular model, color and I was looking for a particular price.  I said if you  can find one in this dollar range then I will look at it.  Sure enough we kept an eye on all the vehicles on trader.com and the exact model, color and price was located at a dealer ship in New Jersey.

I called the sales person and she said are you  from out of state and I said no I am from out of country.  Where she said, Winnipeg, Canada.  Little response and then I  said above North Dakota, little response, fairly close to Minneapolis – Mimmiapolis she said, so at that point I knew her geography was not that great but the deal was right.  I was able to get another grand off the sticker price and we quickly made the decision as we knew this vehicle would not last at that price.

The process was quite easy:

• $500 deposit on my credit
• I sent him proof of my citizenship so I did not have to pay state taxes
• I wired him the full payment
• He couriered the paper work and title to me to sign, we couriered it back
• He arranged delivery to just across our border (1 hour away or so)
• We had to pay the GST at the border and the PST at the insurance company
• No duty as it was manufactured in the US

For complete importing information I suggest visiting here.

We figured we saved around $8,000 and got the exact vehicle that we wanted.  Now we have to sell our van and it used to be that we would sell to buyers in Winnipeg, now if I put my van on trader.com I can attract potential buyers from all over Canada.  Turns out online is better for buying and personally selling your vehicle.

So the moral of the story is never say never, its amazing that regular consumers like my wife and I are buying cars online.  This online world has changed the way we purchase goods and services so get on the band wagon as it is not going away and is only going to increase.

This entry was posted by John McDonald on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 8:44 am and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.