How iwantcardeals.com Sources Deals

What we collect from dealer sites

We collect three public offer types: new-car lease and finance specials, used selling prices with year and mileage, and service coupons. Each listing stores the dealer source URL so you can verify the live page. We do not invent MSRP, payments, or discounts that the dealer did not publish.

New-car cards usually come from specials pages and franchise inventory feeds. When a dealer publishes a monthly lease payment, term, and due-at-signing amount, we keep those fields together instead of promoting a naked $199 headline. Used cards come from inventory search pages: year, make, model, trim when present, mileage, and the advertised selling price. Service cards come from oil-change, brake, and tire coupons with the printed price and restrictions we can read.

Platform adapters (Dealer.com / CDK, Dealer Inspire, DealerOn, Sincro) let us read structured inventory when the dealer exposes it. Sites without a feed still go through the extraction pipeline. Either way, the source of truth remains the dealer URL on the card — if that page changed, trust the dealer page.

How listings get onto the site

An operator adds a dealership URL to the roster, extraction runs against that site, and surviving offers are stored after quality checks. There is no consumer upload form. Coverage grows rooftop by rooftop, so a metro with more tracked dealers will show more cards than a metro we have not crawled yet.

Extraction is not a live scrape of the entire internet on every page view. We refresh tracked dealer URLs on an admin-triggered cadence. A vehicle can sell between refreshes. That is why every card still says to confirm stock and price with the advertising store.

We drop junk: used cars mixed into a new-car specials page, mileage over 500 on a “new” lease, payments that look like MSRP, and expired coupons when the dealer prints an end date we can parse. Remaining offers can still be wrong if the dealer HTML was ambiguous — report those so we can correct the source mapping.

How we treat price and “savings”

Selling price and monthly payment come from dealer-published labels. We do not mark up a used car to create fake MSRP savings. If a dealer shows internet price and a reference sticker, we keep both only when the labels are clear. Advertised savings are marketing until they appear on your buyer’s order.

For leases, a $399 payment is stored as a lease when the page also shows an MSRP many times larger than the monthly number. A $32,995 cash price is stored as a buy. Mixing those two into one sort order would hide the better deal, so browse new cards with lease vs buy in mind.

For used cars, out-the-door cost is selling price plus tax, title, license, and doc fee. We cannot compute your OTD from another state. Use the selling price to shortlist, then ask the dealer for an itemized worksheet.

Freshness, expiration, and stale deals

Listings reflect the dealer page at the last successful extract. Factory programs often end on calendar dates; inventory turns daily. If a payment looks too good, open the source link before you drive. Email info@iwantcardeals.com with the listing URL if the dealer page no longer matches.

When a dealer publishes an expiration date, we store it and hide expired rows from browse when that date has passed. Many specials pages omit the date. Those offers stay visible until the next extract finds them gone or replaced.

A stale used listing is usually a sold VIN that still appears on the dealer SRP. A stale lease is usually last month’s program still in a screenshot block. We would rather show fewer cards than keep a graveyard of 2024 payments.

What we do not do

We do not sell cars, arrange financing, or collect shopper phone numbers for dealer lead routing. Purchase, credit, and service appointments happen at the dealership. We also do not guarantee incentive eligibility — ZIP, credit tier, and stock unit still sit with the store.

If a page asks for your email to “unlock” a payment, that is the dealer’s form, not ours. iwantcardeals.com is for browsing advertised numbers. Saved deals on this site live in your browser unless you create an account for other features.

We are not Kelley Blue Book, Edmunds, or a lender. Independent value guides and credit unions are useful second opinions. Use us to see what local rooftops are actually advertising this week.

How this ties to the Deal Index

The monthly Deal Index on /market-snapshot counts live listings and samples advertised lease payments. It is a picture of our catalog, not national registration data. Methodology for cadence and sample rules lives on the methodology page. Always confirm every advertised number on the dealer source page before you travel.

When the Index says the median advertised lease in our sample is $389, that is the median of payments we stored as leases in the current new-car sample — not the median contract Americans signed at the DMV.

Use the Index to see whether a $249 headline is an outlier in our catalog. Use the dealer page to see whether you can actually get it.

A worked pass on one rooftop

Pick one dealer URL, note the advertised payment or selling price, open the live source page, and write down term, DAS or OTD fees, and expiration. If those four fields are missing, you do not have a comparable yet — ask the desk for a worksheet before you drive.

Example: a Honda store advertises $299 for 36 months with $3,499 due at signing on a Civic LX. Total cash before tax is $299 × 36 + $3,499 = $14,263, or about $396 a month equivalent. If a Toyota store shows $329 with $1,499 DAS on a comparable compact, that total is $13,343 — cheaper despite the higher sticker payment.

We will show both cards if both dealers are on the roster. We will not tell you which credit union to use or collect your phone number to “have a manager call you.” The comparison is yours; the source links are the proof.

If the Civic page now says $349 because the program rolled, email both URLs to info@iwantcardeals.com. That is how a rooftop’s mapping gets fixed. It is also why the methodology page exists: refresh is not instantaneous, and a Saturday visit should start on the dealer HTML, not on our cache.

What a complete listing card should contain

A usable new-car card has a payment or cash price, enough vehicle identity to know the trim band, a dealer name, and a source URL that still loads. A usable used card adds year and mileage. If those fields are empty, treat the row as a hint to open the dealer site, not as a quote.

When you email a stale-deal report, include the iwantcardeals.com URL, the dealer source URL, the number you expected, and the number the dealer page shows now. That set is enough to fix a parser without a phone call. Do not send credit applications.

Coverage gaps are normal. A metro with three tracked Honda stores will look richer than a metro where we only have one Ford rooftop. The Deal Index make table is a listing-count table, not a sales-share table. Read it that way and you will not over-fit a shopping trip to our sample.

How to use this site without treating it as a quote

Treat every card as a pointer to a dealer page, not as a contract. Rank two or three live source URLs, then ask those desks for a worksheet with the same fields we list on the card. If the worksheet disagrees with the card, the worksheet wins.

A practical Saturday: open the Deal Index for the current month, note the median advertised lease and the cheap-lease table, then open two make landings you actually shop. Save three cards with source URLs. On the dealer sites, copy payment, term, DAS, miles, and expiration into a note. If any field is missing, that rooftop is not ready to compare.

Stale ads happen because dealer HTML changes faster than a crawl. We would rather show a card with a source URL than hide a rooftop until a human re-reads every page. Your job is the same-day check. If the payment is gone, skip the drive. If the payment is still there with a different DAS, recompute total cost before you leave home.

Operator coverage is a roster, not a census. When a friend says “that store always has $199 Civics” and we show nothing, it usually means the rooftop is not on the roster yet or the specials page blocked the fetch. Send the dealer URL if you want it considered. Do not send your credit file. We do not broker leads.

Common questions

Can I buy a car on iwantcardeals.com?

No. We help you find and compare advertised offers. The sale, lease signing, and service appointment happen with the dealership that published the listing.

Why does the dealer site show a different payment?

Programs update, the VIN sold, or the headline applied to a different trim. Trust the live dealer page, then tell us if our card is still wrong after a refresh.

How do I report a stale or wrong listing?

Email info@iwantcardeals.com with the iwantcardeals.com URL and the dealer source link. Include a screenshot if the dealer page already changed.