Not haggling for cars is IMHO definitely anti-consumer. That's the last bastion of defense a buyer has against a giant information void they are facing. Square 6-12 dealerships against each other in a deathmatch for your money and watch the price drop. Until actual sales prices start being disclosed (not the meaningless invoices or the less than useless MSRP), we will never know the true price of a car. It's a one sided market. The only advantage a buyer has is the ability to make dealers compete.
Well, first, TrueCar doesn't exist: http://www.truecar.com/. Second, what does Costco do for you in terms of getting a better price? In either case I don't believe they deal with pre-owned cars, which is really the best bang for your buck IMHO.
But yes, my main point is that we should not just submit to the will of the car dealers and take their "best price everz" as gospel. Things like CarWoo and TrueCar need to exist, if only to protect those less likely to haggle face to face.
Edit: oh, TrueCar does exist, just looks super spammy.
Costco (supposedly) has pre-negotiated, no haggle pricing. I used them in the past, and the experience was great (except for the trade-in). Also, there are still car brokers that you can hire to do your bidding.
I really don't know much about them beyond my own limited experience as a shopper (about 6 years ago). I came to know of a local broker (southern California) via a referral at about the time I was looking to buy a new car, and decided to try the service. This particular broker charges an up-front, fixed fee (maybe $100? I don't remember), and he shops for the best deal in the region for your specific vehicle configuration.
Even though I hired him, I decided to also see what the local Costco deal was (wasn't completely confident Costco couldn't do better). The pricing the broker negotiated was a shade better than I could get through Costco (maybe $75 less, including the broker fee), but the big plus was that the car was delivered to my door, and the contracts were signed on my kitchen table. I never had to set foot on a dealer lot (minus my own Costco experiment). No "finance guy" circus. It was cleanest car buying experience I have had.
Has CarWoo done used cars? I wasn't aware, yeah, that would be a nice differentiation, but difficult market to corner - so many more variables thrown in the mix (# of owners, clean title, mileage, etc.)
