Buying a car can be one of the most stressful financial decisions consumers make. Two people can walk into the same dealership, buy the same car, and leave having paid very different prices. The outcome often depends on how much the buyer knows going in. For customers who want help with that, Delivrd offers on-demand personalized deal negotiation services.
Joining us on today’s episode of CBT Now is the founder of Delivrd, Tomi Mikula. After more than a decade inside dealerships, including time as a finance manager, Mikula now negotiates car deals on behalf of buyers. His recorded negotiations have drawn a national following on social media and put a spotlight on how the retail car-buying process looks from the customer’s side.
The idea for Delivrd
The idea for Delivrd came while Mikula was considering a career as a finance trainer. He held a training day with eight prospects when something stood out to him. All eight prospects told him they hated the car-buying process. That’s when Mikula saw an opportunity.
“No matter how good I was at selling cars, no matter how good everybody was at finance, the problem wasn’t me. The problem was the system. So I put my notice in that day,” said Mikula.
To test the concept, Mikula did roughly 100 deals for free. He recruited participants through Reddit and paid third-party interviewers to document the experience. What he found was that it wasn’t just about saving customers’ money, but what they wanted most was to avoid the car-buying process itself.
"I realized that the time, energy and anxiety was so much more important. They didn't want the games, the back and forth."
Going viral
Mikula recorded all of his calls for internal quality purposes. One call with an Arizona Mazda dealership ran 26 minutes and produced an $8,000 swing, from $4,000 above sticker to $4,000 under. He posted it to YouTube and it went viral, getting more than 700,000 views. He began posting negotiations regularly and eventually moved to livestreaming deals so viewers could follow in real time. YouTube has since become another revenue stream for the business.
“I realized that people really were entertained with seeing the behind the scenes.” Mikula said. He now has more than 200,000 followers on YouTube and more than 100,000 on Instagram.
The importance of education
Mikula says the key to negotiating a good deal comes down to education. “If you know how to ask the right questions and say the right things, you can save thousands of dollars,” he says.
Delivrd does that work for the buyer. The team gathers client preferences, compiles local and out-of-state options, and lets the buyer decide.
“What we do is we compile all the information and do the research for you. We show you local deals. We show you out-of-state deals, and we give you all the information and then let you decide,” Mikula said.
Mikula believes that it’s not always about saving money, it’s about what the client wants. He points to a recent deal where a client could have saved $10,000 on a Porsche Macan by having it shipped from San Francisco. However, the client chose a $500-off deal at a local Texas dealership instead since he wanted to pick up the vehicle in person.
A lead, not a threat
Mikula’s videos earned him the nickname of a “Car Dealer’s Worst Nightmare,” but he doesn’t see it that way. For dealers willing to work with him, Mikula says Delivrd works more like a lead source.
For instance, one Texas dealer grew to more than 20 Delivrd deals per month and eventually came to work for the company. Mikula says over 2,000 dealers have signed up for repeat business, and about 20% of Delivrd’s volume flows to established dealer relationships.
However, Delivrd’s legal standing has drawn some scrutiny. Notably, broker regulations are tightening in several states, including New Jersey. But Mikula says Delivrd is different than a broker. The company does not advertise inventory, does not receive compensation from dealers, and charges buyers a flat upfront fee. Once a deal is agreed upon, the dealer handles delivery and the full customer experience.
"All we're doing is negotiating in the front half of the deal. Once they do, we connect the buyer and the seller, and the rest is history."
Thoughts on the FTC’s pricing policy
The FTC is cracking down on deceptive pricing, and it’s something Mikula says needs to be addressed. He documented a dealership advertising a $200 discount but found that it came with $7,000 in added fees, including a mandatory 1% commission.
For buyers, Mikula says to look for the dealership’s doc fee on its website. If it’s listed, that’s a sign the dealership is playing it straight. If not, buyers should expect trouble.
As for dealers, Mikula says they should give out-the-door numbers on the first call. The easier they can make the buying process for the customers, the greater their chances are of closing the deal. Customers who get a fair price upfront are less likely to shop around, he says.
“If you’re willing to just give numbers out the door and make that a flawless process, I promise you that alone… a lot of people are just going to be like, let’s just go to the deal. They were fair at the beginning. They were easy,” Mikula said.
The FTC’s pricing policy will be front and center at The CBT News Auto Leadership Summit: Fair Pricing & Compliance. The summit takes place June 16, 2026, at the Salamander Hotel in Washington, D.C. The one-day event will provide dealers with compliance frameworks, advertising best practices, and a clear operational roadmap for the second half of 2026. Registration ends soon at cbtnews.com/auto-leadership-summit.
Why he doesn’t want Delivrd to last forever
Mikula says his long-term goal isn’t to grow Delivrd. Rather, he said he wants to see changes in the car-buying process. If dealerships make the process fair and transparent, he says, buyers will no longer need his services.
If nothing changes, he says, Delivrd could scale to a point where buyers think of it before they think of the dealership.
“My goal is to reinvent the industry. Either dealerships cannot survive with us there so they have to change all their tactics and make it just a fair way to buy cars, or dealerships never learn and Delivrd becomes so big that people don’t even think about the dealership model,” Mikula said.
He says he hopes the industry chooses the first path.
