Category: AutoTempest

Find your next car… Faster.

Caution: Scam site impersonating AutoTempest

Just putting the word out that a scam site has popped up at “autostempest.com” (with an extra ‘s’). They’ve copied AutoTempest’s name and branding, plus a bunch of content from Edmunds it looks like, and appear to be directing people to their site from craigslist postings, and then trying to get money sent for cars that don’t actually exist.

So, a reminder first of all that if anyone tries to get you to send money (directly to them or to a third party) for a car you or someone you trust has never seen, don’t do it. AutoTempest (the real autotempest.com that is) is a great way to find those difficult-to-find vehicles that might not be right in your neighbourhood, but once you do, it’s important that you do your due diligence. We recommend finding someone local to the car to take a look if possible, and then arranging with the seller to take the car to a garage (or dealership) of your choice for a thorough inspection.

If all that checks out, you can fly to the car to do the deal in person, or work with an agent local to the vehicle (again, of your choosing, not the seller’s) to facilitate a long distance transaction and shipping. I’ve personally bought cars that way and it can be done safely, but you do have to be careful. Again, do _not_ send money to anyone to reserve/hold/pay for a car that you haven’t independently verified is legit.

And finally, when you’re using autotempest (or any website!) make sure you’re actually at the correct address: www.autotempest.com (no ‘s’). The easiest thing to avoid mistakes is to add a bookmark in your browser.

In the meantime, we’ll do what we can to work with the authorities in hopefully getting these scammers shut down.

PS: This blog doesn’t get updated much anymore, but we’re still hard at work! Finished up the SearchTempest design overhaul a few months back. Right now we’re working on improving keyword search on AutoTempest, as well as adding additional filters.

Now you can save your searches in AutoTempest!

If you’ve been using SearchTempest for a while, you’re probably familiar with its My Searches feature. It automatically saves your recent searches so you can access them later without having to fill out the entire search form again. It also lets you tag your searches as favorites, so those searches will be saved forever (or at least until you don’t want them anymore). It’s handy if you run the same search pretty frequently, or if you are jumping back and forth between searches.

If this is the first you’re hearing about this feature, then you should totally try it out. You can access it by clicking that little yellow star just above the search button on the SearchTempest home page.

Why am I bringing this up? Because we just brought that same feature over to AutoTempest, that’s why. You can find it in the navigation bar at the far right. So now your favorite used car search just got that much more awesome.

Eventually, we’d like to add to both SearchTempest and AutoTempest the ability to login to those sites and save your searches so you can access them from a different computer too. Keep an eye out for that in the not so distant future!

If you’re new to AutoTempest and would like to know about it, keep reading after the jump.
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More AutoTempest Improvements – Making things even easier for Canadian car buyers

As you know, we’re on a mission to make used car buying the easiest, fastest most efficient process possible with our used car search engine AutoTempest.

With that said, constant improvements are the name of the game!

As someone who lives in Canada, ever feel like our friends south of the border have it WAY easier when it comes to finding a used car? We certainly thought so, and we’re pleased to say, no more!

Canadian car buyers – AutoTempest is here for you. Here are the 2 major improvements we’ve just made…

A new car classifieds addition

AutoTempest already searched Craigslist and eBay north of the 49th, but we’ve now added the #1 used car classifieds site in Canada, AutoTrader.ca to the AutoTempest car search platform as well.

When you search used cars online with AutoTempest, you’ll now get an even greater volume of listings in Canada.

Improved search results for Canadian postal codes

But what if you’re planning to look across the border too? As we all know, there are some great deals to be had by buying a used car in the States. Well, AutoTempest now supports Canadian postal codes, even for sites like Cars.com and CarsDirect that only operate on the US side of the border.

No more wasting time figuring out and looking up nearby zip codes in the US… perhaps while cursing the fact that the only ZIP code you can seem to remember is 90210! AutoTempest will now automatically find the zip code of the border crossing nearest to you and use that for any sites that require a zip. So if you’re like many, curious about the incredible car deals you hear about down in the States, AutoTempest will give you the straight goods, as always, all in one place.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the Canadian improvements… let us know in the comments.

Why we’re lovin’ CARE International (and what we did about it)

On behalf of AutoTempest, our used car search engine, I recently decided to make a charitable donation. We had $10,000 to donate and just needed to find the right cause to put it towards.

As you know, here at Tempest, we’re kind of obsessed with quality. We’re on a mission to bring you the best search results, for Craigslist through SearchTempest, for used cars through AutoTempest, and for movie listings through MovieTempest. So when it came to choosing a charity, it was very important to me to take the time and effort to ensure that we chose a top-notch organization with a similar commitment to quality.

I started by doing some internet research, and I also read The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier while I was considering this stuff. (Great book by the way; I definitely recommend it.) From all that I came up with a list of questions to pose to various charities. In the end, I decided on CARE International. They’re doing some fantastic work in developing countries worldwide, and I particularly appreciate their focus on building skills for the long term, rather than providing ‘band-aid’ solutions.

If you’re interested in finding out more about CARE and the work that they’ve been doing for the past 65 years (the organization started by sending care packages to Europe post WWII) check out their websites: International; United States; Canada. If you’re looking for an excellent charity to support, you should definitely check them out.

And of course, if you’d like to help out AutoTempest, it’s as easy as spreading the word!

You can also read the official announcement about our donation here.

And finally if you’re interested, you can read the full set of questions I sent to CARE and their answers below!

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What We’re Doing with Your Feedback

Thanks everyone for the feedback on the new AutoTempest design! You have no idea how helpful it’s been for us. Seriously, you guys rock.

From listening to what you guys have been saying, we’ve garnered that you don’t much care for being sent to the landing tab after you make a search. So we’re getting rid of it, easy as that. Now when you make a search, you’ll be given listings instantly, not having to worry about clicking through to another tab to get what you came for. To make up for some of the functionality lost with the landing tab, we’ll be adding a toolbar to the bottom of the page that will allow you flip through the tabs, adjust your search settings, and access a tips page that will give you pointers for using AutoTempest more efficiently. Lastly, we’ll be adding a Getting Started guide to assist those who need a bit of a helping hand using our application.

So, thanks again for your feedback, and keep it coming!

New AutoTempest Version and Future Plans

The new version of AutoTempest came out of beta today. It’s got more new features than I can list here, so you’d best just check it out. 🙂 http://www.autotempest.com/

A few of the new thing though, are

  • Super-awesome new styling
  • Automatically pulls up reviews, buying guides, pricing guides, and more, matching your search
  • Now has a ton of useful info an recommendations on everything from vehicle shipping to car insurance

I hope you like it! We’re not done yet though. Coming soon is better support for Canada, more sites in the results, and the ability to search multiple models at the same time!

New AutoTempest Nearing Completion!

We’ve been hard at work on the new AutoTempest for a couple months now, and it’s nearing completion. We’re hoping to have a beta out in early September, then launch by the end of the month. (This is an actual iron-out-the-bugs-and-launch type beta, not the Google-style remain-in-beta-for-years beta that AutoTempest has been in so far.. 🙂 )

Anyway, for now, I finally have a teaser screenshot for you! Some aspects will likely change, but this should be reasonably close to what the final version will look like! (Click through for the full-size version.)


Updated Help Files; new AutoTempest to be the best thing since the new SearchTempest :)

Actually, I’m going to go on record and say the new version of AutoTempest, due out this summer, will be better than the new SearchTempest released a few months ago. It’s going to be awesome, and I can’t wait until it’s ready to share! What I can share is a much-needed update of the AutoTempest FAQ/Help document. Not quite as exciting, but hopefully.. helpful!

My all-time Favorite AutoTempest Blog Post

… is not this. 😉 Actually it’s not even on this blog. It’s this one over at wisebread.com. And not just because they call AutoTempest possibly the “best search engine ever for cars”… although that helps. It’s because of how they found the site.
The site is one I found quite by accident. I’m not in the market for a used car, I was actually looking for a quote from Bill Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and stumbled upon this gem. Ahh, I love the Internet.
How awesome is that? The best part is, Kevin Purdy at Lifehacker apparently read that post, so the next day, AutoTempest was on Lifehacker and got it’s most visits in a single day, by about 300%. Better to be lucky than good, huh? Although I guess ‘you’ve got to be good to be lucky’ might apply too. Let’s go with that one. PS: My second-favorite AutoTempest coverage is this interview with Keith Griffin of about.com. Mostly because, as an engineer turned web programmer, you don’t tend to do a lot of interviews. 🙂