Q: What does Good Carma do, exactly?
A: It’s pretty simple. We help people find the best cars to suite their lives.
Q: Okay, but how do you do that?
A: We take information you provide us, compare it to information about cars on the market, and write a report that provides specific recommendations for you, either in your area or deliverable to you.*
Q: What are the services you provide, exactly?
A: Currently, we offer three levels of service:
A. $50 – Model recommendations: A range of 3-4 specific car models on the market we think you should check out.
B. $100 – Model recommendations, along with a short list of specific cars for sale we’ve found near you (or deliverable to you*), which we’ve verified as good-to-go (no accidents, accurate listings, and clean ownership histories).
C. $150 – Model recommendations, a short list of specific cars in your area, and an up-to-30-minute phonecall with one of our experts to go over our report, and answer any questions you have.**
Q: What do you do with the information I provide you?
A: Our process is a combination of art and science. On the science-side, we take your answers to our questions and cross-reference them with tons of market and industry data. But, because data isn’t everything, we also bring a human element to the process, where one of our car experts reviews all your information. Often, we’ll find some things the numbers alone won’t reveal. The end result is a report that tells you what cars we think you should consider, and also explains why.
Q: How else do you use this information? Do you sell it to, or share it with, anyone else?
A: Absolutely not. We firmly believe in your privacy, and have strong opinions against the widespread use of your data and information that you share in good faith that is then sold to who-knows-who, and used to market to you. Virtually every website out there does that these days, and we can’t stand it.
We use your information once and only once, and that’s in preparing your report. If we ever do revisit your information, we view it anonymously (your name and personal info are not attached to it), and we only look at it internally, to better understand how to serve other customers in the future.
Q: So why shouldn’t I just go to a car dealership to learn about cars?
A: You certainly can! The problem we find there is simply a conflict of interests. Any dealership you visit is going to want to sell you their vehicles, regardless of whether or not their vehicles will actually be the best options for you, relative to what else is on the market.
Q: Can’t I just do research on the internet?
A: Of course! You’re very welcomed to. We encourage it. However, we’ve often found this can be a confusing and consuming process – which is why we started Good Carma.
Also, virtually all car “research” websites out there have business relationships with marketing companies and/or car dealership networks, who make money when you buy cars through them, or even just click on the links to their (usually disguised) ads. Again, we think this is a major conflict of interests. The whole arrangement clouds the information that’s out there, and creates stress for people that just want to learn about cars and make an informed decision.
Q: So how is Good Carma different?
A: Simple: we don’t sell cars. We also don’t have any third-party relationships that incentivize us to steer you to certain dealerships or other websites. Our aim is simply to help you by giving you expert opinion on your situation. Where you end up buying a car is up to you.
Also, the report you get from us is 100% unique, written just for you, not copy-and-pasted or algorithmically-generated by some formula (we’ve tried those “car finders” offered by some other websites – and they’re consistently terrible).
Q: Why don’t you just sell the cars yourselves?
A: Selling cars online is incredibly competitive. Stepping into that cutthroat world, as such a small company, would be demanding, complicated, and expensive for us. Maybe one day we’ll try it, but only if we can do it without compromising the integrity of our opinions and the quality of our primary services.
Q: Why did you call it Good Carma?
A: Because puns are fun, right? But also, we donate 10% of our proceeds to a few different charities that we think are doing good things at the intersection of cars and people. You can learn more about them here.
Q: And why did you start Good Carma?
A: Because we love doing this. We are a small team of car nerds, who love cars, love talking about them, and always have. In a time where honesty and objectivity are hard to come by on the internet, we wanted to offer a service to share our car love with others in a useful way.
You can think of us, collectively, as that person who your friends and family come to for car advice. We simply took it one step further and decided, why not offer it on a website?
So here we are. Welcome to Good Carma!
* There are a handful of reputable, nationwide car dealers that will deliver a car to your door, and even let you drive it for a few days, before you have to commit to buying it. If you so chose, we’re happy to recommend cars from these dealers in our report for you – but we can also find strictly local vehicles for you to check out, too!
** We do not provide negotiating, financing, or leasing advice, beyond some basic pointers. In the future, we’ll offer more expertise in this area, but for now, our focus is strictly on the cars themselves.