CarWoo Promises Car Buyers Hassle-Free Quotes Online, Raises $4.2 Million

The Internet was supposed to make car shopping easier, Tommy McClung is explaining. Back in the 1990s, sites like Vehix.com, Cars.com, and Autotrader.com promised a future where you wouldn’t have to haggle with a salesman, and where you didn’t have to drive from dealer to dealer just to see who could offer the best price or who had the model and color you wanted in stock.

Well, it didn’t quite work out that way. The major car shopping sites, McClung argued to me yesterday, have turned into little more than lead-generation engines for car dealers, where shoppers are enticed into handing over their personal information and are promptly buried in spam and phone calls from pushy salespeople. “The industry has started to realize that they have created a disservice to customers,” McClung says. And it’s not like dealers are profiting either: McClung says they’re lucky if five out of 100 leads results in sale. At $20 to $40 per lead, that’s an expensive form of marketing.