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Government Screws Up "Cash for Clunkers"

Cash for Clunkers If you're like most people who visit this site, your goal is to save as much money as possible when buying a car.

Car buyers who are serious about saving money prepare ahead of time. We've been telling you about the "cash for clunkers" program for months now and most of you have checked the fueleconomy.gov site to see if your car qualifies for the program.

Now we find out the EPA decided to review the mileage ratings of 30,000 models from the past 25 years and changed the mileage ratings of some eligible models.

Under the "cash for clunkers" program, you can only trade in vehicles that get 18 mpg or less.

The EPA changed the ratings so that about 50 vehicles that didn't qualify before now do.

The bad part: they changed about 50 vehicles which used to qualify but now don't!

So for those of you who prepared ahead of time and checked your fuel ratings, you better check again to make sure your trade-in still qualifies.

There have been many angry car shoppers who only found out about the change at the dealership when they were ready to buy.

Some popular models that no longer qualify are:

As if this wasn't bad enough, the program didn't launch on time because dealers couldn't login to register the trade-ins. Apparently, some knucklehead decided to put the online registration on the same server as the cars.gov web site (which went down due to heavy traffic).

Everything seems to be working now, but again, we recommend you double check the fuel ratings before buying a new car.






3 Steps Every Car Buyer Needs to Take to Save Maximum Money

The key to getting the best deal is to gather price or lease bids from as many local dealers as possible. Then shop that best price around until no one can beat it. Here are the steps:

Step 1 Get Prices From My Trusted Network

Select the vehicle you're interested in to see if there are local dealers in my network who will provide you with their best upfront price. You will get direct access to an internet sales manager who you can further negotiate with online (no need to visit dealership).
Select Vehicle to Get Local Pricing

Step 2 Get Prices From TrueCar / CarsDirect

TrueCar, and CarsDirect are my top 2 online price quote recommendations. These services show you pre-negotiated prices from dealers closest to you - and the deals are usually pretty decent. But remember, you can still negotiate further.

Step 3 Complete my Checklist

Follow this up with my checklist to make sure you squeeze out every last bit of savings.
- Gregg Fidan

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About The Author

Gregg Fidan Gregg Fidan is the founder of RealCarTips. After being ripped off on his first car purchase, he devoted several years to figuring out the best ways to avoid scams and negotiate the best car deals. He has written hundreds of articles on the subject of car buying and taught thousands of car shoppers how to get the best deals.

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