Danstr1

I'm currently leasing a vehicle that will mature in a few months. I began looking .... even if it's a bit premature. I've decided that my new vehicle will be a 2016 A6 Premium Plus. I found the "perfect" vehicle just 500+ miles away. The deal is also several thousand less than what I'm able to land here in the Pittsburgh area. The car was a previous loaner at an Audi dealership with only 7k miles. My point being, it isn't very used so I'm not all that uncomfortable with buying it sight unseen.....I think! My apprehensions are more with the shipping. The dealer will assist with the shipping at their end but it's up to me to book the shipping itself. Their recommendation is to use UShip. I ran a quick quote and the shipping rate was surprisingly lower than I had anticipated. I initially thought the shipping costs would be too much for me to consider the vehicle. I'm hoping to gain some advice on the shipping in case anyone on here has ever had prior experience shipping a vehicle before. Even if your advice is to tell me I'm crazy :-)

uberwgn

Buy a plane ticket. Inspect the car. Turn over the payment to the dealer, if acceptable to you. Drive home.

Q5 Bob

This seems like a reasonable suggestion if the OP can pull it off. It would give you a chance to get familiar with the new car. Good luck.

DanfZX14

Yeah I would not buy a car sight unseen. Plane ticket would be money well spent IMHO.

Danstr1

Thanks for the feedback! All good points. The air fare from here is less than $300 which is substantially less than the shipping costs. I would just have to commit to the 9 hour drive back. I still have four payments left on my lease so maybe it's best that I stay off of autotrader for a few months...... I just haven't seen the exact car I wanted until now and the price is great so could still be justified. Figured I'd continue to drive my leased MKZ until lease end and garage the Audi. Figured since I'll have to make the lease payments either way, I might as well continue to drive the car on my daily commute. The expense and liability of having two cars for four months isn't at all ideal though.

tenspeed

Any chance that someone could be your agent and check the car out for you? You would know the condition of the car, make the deal and pick it up at a later date.

Danstr1

Now I'm getting into this deeper..... Gotten the price down a couple more grand which is scaring me a bit.....what's wrong with the car!? The dealer selling it is one of those huge monster dealerships that represents several brands. The vehicle was originally purchased at their Audi dealership where it appears to have been used as a loaner car for 6 months/ 7k miles. It then sat at their Audi dealership advertised for sale for 3 months until it was moved to another of their dealers. This dealer represents another brand so they don't have direct access to the service records. If I contact my local Audi dealership where I anticipate having it serviced, are they able to provide me the service records?

Acuransx

Not uncommon. If you ask they should be able to provide the service records easily. I agree best for someone to look at car for you.


Anecdotally, I am in MI and almost pulled trigger on an A6 in MA at dealer. Same thing -- ex service loaner. They sent me records and assured me car was top notch. I insisted on a PPI with a German car independent repair shop and they were fine with it. Before sending/spending for the PPI I asked the salesperson to snap a bunch of hi resolution pics of the car in addition to what was on their website. Turned out there was some paint damage on rear bumper - not awful but enough that I didn't feel like shelling out 44.5K for a car with cosmetic damage. I asked them to fix it and they would not absorb the cost. I terminated my discussions with them at that point.


So, suggest that you not commit to anything until you see/drive the car and have a PPI done. Depending on where car is possible someone on this board might be able to look/drive it for you. Best of luck. I ultimately found a leftover /15 A6 3.0T Premium Plus sticker 60K that cost me a shade over 50K after discounts including supplier discount.



Best,
Jeff

Danstr1

Good idea on considering the PPI. That might be something I investigate before pursuing any further. Interestingly enough, the dealership this vehicle is located at is also MA.... A very large dealership that has 60 dealerships so their turnover seems to be high. They can't even verify for me that it was a prior loaner as the CarFax suggests. They claim all their loaners go to auction. I'd actually prefer that it was a loaner over someone trading it in after six months for unknown reasons!?

jujuC6

I did this with my A6 +400miles away. Got the car for so unbelievably less than I would have up here. The price was enticing yet worry some at the same time. This was an Audi dealer and getting service records and car fax was no sweat of course. I asked for high res pix of almost every angle including on lift, everything checked out perfect on pix except a few light scratches on two locations of roof which seemed easy. I arranged a PPI and they refused to bring it there themselves but told me I was welcome to do so if I got over there. Everything seem so legit that I decided to go give at chance. I put down a down payment and flew there on a Friday morning just in case I needed Saturday . Car was just like I expected and like they told me, went for long test drive and lunch with wife. PPI checked out perfect drove back to dealer paid them and then drove it back home that same day. I could not be happier but not every case is the same. Do as much as you can remotely and do not buy it without looking at it. Good luck.