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Buying A Used Car?

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we are buying a used car for the 1st time but due to the risks involved, we only bought new until now.

our requirements for our second vehicle were:

  1. budget of rs. 2.5 L
  2. automatic
  3. certified
  4. loan or card payment without any fees / surcharges

all these were met by first choice in thane:

we are getting a 2004 sonata gold with under 45,000 km for rs. 2.63 L and 2.5% card fees waived off which is about rs. 6 k

since we were ready to pay with cheque as backup we now get the bonus of frequent flyer miles with our purchase also and it covers a mumbai - delhi one way ticket on jet

so the singular question most used car buyers have is did we overpay?

- the hdfc insurance had an IDV of rs. 5 L which is a good start

- the online valuation on carwale was rs. 4 L which is better

- 12 of the 15 sonata golds being sold in mumbai were worse off in terms of age, price, or km

- the best deal was one being offered for rs. 2.3 L so we paid about 15% more for peace of mind

the nice thing is that mahindra buys the used cars and shares the risk with the customer instead of selling on pure commission basis like 99% of used car dealers who take virtually zero risk and pass it all on to the buyer

1st choice will never buy any car that's been in accidents, flood damaged, odometer rollback, rusted etc and do a 100 point check before purchase

they also take care of all RTO formalities for a complete solution

unfortunately they only offer warranties for cars below 7 years and ours was a month over but it was also priced lower

my rule of thumb is rs. 10/km for 'breakeven' on your car purchase so we only have to drive it for 27,000 km more to get our 'paisa vasool' then we can get rid of it and upgrade to something else

in comparison our current car has 106,000 km and still not reached breakeven for another 29,000 km so that sonata might get there sooner than our 2006 corolla!

if all goes well, we will never need to buy a new car again and save a ton of money with certified used cars ...

it was also my dream to be able to buy a used car on my cards without fees and i reached that goal this week!

its our 1st car with a v6 engine and leather seats.

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By the way first choice doesn't check for odometer rollback. See a recent thread on team bhp for the same, where a man's money was stuck with First choice because they tried to sell him a rolled back Honda city (done 57k, MFC told 27k, it was revealed by a call to Honda Service center), and refused to return the booking money. Anand Mahindra had to intervene to give back the money.

I liked the 10rs per km logic :) Congrats on your purchase. Just check the odometer by calling Hyundai SC asking for last service details by giving the registration number.

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congrats for the new car..

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Odometer rollback at First Choice was clearly highlighted and found out at the Tbhp thread as mentioned by ani_meher.

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