Guitar Gear Forum

Anyone ever use Carmax or bidlane or Carvana etc etc to buy your used car from you ? How was that experience ?

My mother in law just bought a car with Carvana last month. It was delivered to her door. Pretty easy process. There's a 7 day return policy but she didn't need it. The car was in good shape and exactly as described.

Thanks man , yeah easy seems to be the big plus . I'm wondering how fast and accurately as per the original quote that they'll pay out when they buy your car. But the buying part seems to be a big win for folks so far that is fairly painless .

I've gotten multiple quotes from Carmax, but have never bought or sold through them. I find their quotes to be too low and the prices of their used cars to be too high. But, it is a good starting point to ballpark what your car is worth, if you have one nearby like I do. You can probably sell your car for at least 10% more than they offer you. Also, their multi-point inspection is total b.s. I've never dealt with Carvana, but I drive by one of their vending machines every afternoon. I think they should turn it into a Ferris wheel and let you pay a buck to take a ride. But, I digress. KBB, NADAGuides, Edmunds, TrueCar, CarGurus, CarsDirect and AutoTrader are all good resources. You can redeem Edmunds offers at Carmax. I've bought a car through TrueCar and sold a couple through AutoTrader. I bought the TrueCar at an "excellent price" and sold it for a profit. The problem with AutoTrader is fielding all the phone calls and people that want to looky-loo or lowball.

mmm hmmm . right on . Thanks mang

Vroom and Carvana both offered me significantly more for my Jeep than I paid for it.

One was $7k over and other was $5k over, and it's pretty common in the Jeep groups. Apparently the process is really straightforward with Carvana being the easier one to deal with and Vroom offering slightly more. I haven't followed through because I set my threshold at $10k over what I paid to allow me enough profit to buy a beater while I order a new one from the factory in cash.

Pretty fuckin wild since I put 16k miles on it. Definitely unheard of even in the finance world so I expect it to crash at some point.

yeah exactly and why I'm kinda interested .. my Tacoma is a '02 , freaking '02 ! But it's minty , it's a somewhat rare stepside and the offers from those guys are very tempting . I probably won't follow through as I love my truck and it only has 35k on it , so lot's of life left . The real problem and probably why used cars prices have shot up is because New cars are very few . Most dealers have 1 or zero of the car you want . At the moment . I think this will all eventually even out but used prices will come back down too .

Ry Manchu wrote:I've gotten multiple quotes from Carmax, but have never bought or sold through them. I find their quotes to be too low and the prices of their used cars to be too high.

I got a quote on my Tacoma for like $4k less than I paid new 5 years ago. I didn’t check their prices on sales because I wasn’t looking to sell. Was just curious what they’d offer.

fretless wrote:yeah exactly and why I'm kinda interested .. my Tacoma is a '02 , freaking '02 ! But it's minty , it's a somewhat rare stepside and the offers from those guys are very tempting . I probably won't follow through as I love my truck and it only has 35k on it , so lot's of life left . The real problem and probably why used cars prices have shot up is because New cars are very few . Most dealers have 1 or zero of the car you want . At the moment . I think this will all eventually even out but used prices will come back down too .

Your truck was worth a ton before the shortage.

I’d private party sell it if you even are slightly considering it. Low mileage Tacomas from 2002 bring massive premiums.

was looking for a car in 2019 pre-COVID (car market is kinda insane right now) ... found that the online type places (Carvana, etc) were pretty overpriced. i'm a "car guy", and i research the crap out of whatever i decide to buy.

ended getting my car (Q60 Red Sport) 1-year old from an Infiniti dealer out of state with a CPO warranty. paid $600 to have it shipped to my door, and adding that cost was still way cheaper than anything i could find locally or on Carvana, etc. after i washed the road muck off, i couldn't tell it from brand new.

try CarGuru website, or Auto Tempest ... you can really refine your search to car make/model, price range, color, features, distance, etc.

to make a short story long, sometimes you can get a great deal from a dealer.

Landshark wrote:was looking for a car in 2019 pre-COVID (car market is kinda insane right now) ... found that the online type places (Carvana, etc) were pretty overpriced. i'm a "car guy", and i research the crap out of whatever i decide to buy.

ended getting my car (Q60 Red Sport) 1-year old from an Infiniti dealer out of state with a CPO warranty. paid $600 to have it shipped to my door, and adding that cost was still way cheaper than anything i could find locally or on Carvana, etc. after i washed the road muck off, i couldn't tell it from brand new.

try CarGuru website, or Auto Tempest ... you can really refine your search to car make/model, price range, color, features, distance, etc.

to make a short story long, sometimes you can get a great deal from a dealer.

I agree. I'm guessing they're burning through investor cash extremely poorly and creating a glut of inventory that won't move without taking huge losses.

Or they're ahead of the curve and stocking up before things get really bad.

Who knows!

Thanks Dave. You are right.perhaps some day. I probably just keep trucking for now. I love my toy truck. Cheers

You'll never be able to replace it for a sane amount of money so I'd personally hold on to it. Pretty damn awesome you have owned it since new and have such low mileage.

My Jeep is 5 months old and I'm over 16k with a big road trip through Colorado at the end of November that will add a couple thousand

Thanks man , yeah no doubt about that , we got this during the great tax break of '02 Bush era where there was no tax on big item purchases . Remember that ? So there was no tax paid and MSRP was like 18k or so , so a good bit cheaper than today .
here she is . I just took this yesterday . I did put that bush guard thingie on it . You would be shocked by the amount of inconsiderate aholes that bump into this thing in a parking lot . I can always push around cows or homeless people if I have too . lol .It's pretty minty but every single dent was done by some cunt in a parking lot . Shit drives me nutty . It's small though and the only reason I'm even thinking of replacing it , but I'll survive for now .

I had a friend buy a car on Carvana and the experience seemed pretty painless.
He’s not really a car guy and wanted an experience that was similar to buying an appliance so it was a good fit for him.

At the same time I saw some comparable models from local dealers for a bit less. Like many of these newer companies the concept seems good but there appears to be a premium tacked on for a slick website and ease of purchase.

K-Bizzle wrote:
At the same time I saw some comparable models from local dealers for a bit less. Like many of these newer companies the concept seems good but there appears to be a premium tacked on for a slick website and ease of purchase.

when it comes to selling a car, as much as i hate dealing with tire-kickers and flakes, i'll sell it on my own and make an extra $3k-$6k vs the ease of trading it in or having Carvana pick it up.

Drove by one of those Carvana vending machines on my way to the Phish show in LA the other day. I wanna go in, point at the top car, and be like "gimme that one" and watch them shuffle it down.

Of all the things I think are stupid, and there's a sizable list, a vending machine for cars is on the first page...

Millennials need to man the fuck up, go to the dealership, haggle like your next meal depends on it, wait for the sales guy to "talk to the manager", agree on a price and then drive it off the lot. The way God intended... I'm all for convenience, but that's the automotive version of paying some stoner $6 to deliver your $10 Taco Bell order.

Landshark wrote:

K-Bizzle wrote:
At the same time I saw some comparable models from local dealers for a bit less. Like many of these newer companies the concept seems good but there appears to be a premium tacked on for a slick website and ease of purchase.

when it comes to selling a car, as much as i hate dealing with tire-kickers and flakes, i'll sell it on my own and make an extra $3k-$6k vs the ease of trading it in or having Carvana pick it up.

Normally I'd agree with you, but this is a strange situation. For certain vehicles they're paying more than they're worth on the used market.

It's been speculated that they're burning investor cash to manipulate valuation. Buying and selling lots of units looks good to investors, pumps the stock price up, which brings in new money, while the insiders are selling off for personal gain. The brains behind Carvana are tied to multiple investor scams in the past. They're directly tied to DriveTime as the online sales branch.

They just posted their first profitable quarter in 2021. They lose money on every car sold. They claim they reduce the cost of buying and selling vehicles by removing the normal dealer infrastructure.

tl;dr if you are looking to sell your car get the free quote and see if you get an absurd offer in your favor. Take advantage of the scam if you can.

Dave wrote:

Normally I'd agree with you, but this is a strange situation. For certain vehicles they're paying more than they're worth on the used market.

It's been speculated that they're burning investor cash to manipulate valuation. Buying and selling lots of units looks good to investors, pumps the stock price up, which brings in new money, while the insiders are selling off for personal gain. The brains behind Carvana are tied to multiple investor scams in the past. They're directly tied to DriveTime as the online sales branch.

They just posted their first profitable quarter in 2021. They lose money on every car sold. They claim they reduce the cost of buying and selling vehicles by removing the normal dealer infrastructure.

tl;dr if you are looking to sell your car get the free quote and see if you get an absurd offer in your favor. Take advantage of the scam if you can.

this is true - i always sold my car on my own pre-COVID, but everything is crazy right now.

i got a quote on my car i bought in 2019, and it was $500 less than i paid for it two years ago, with 10,000 more miles. not going to sell, though, because i really like my car.

Rubato should trade in one of those mom buses he drives and get a Lambo .

I just asked for quotes on my F-150. The KBB private party is $38-$42.7, trade-in is $35-$39.4. KBB offered me $28.7 instant cash and Carvana offered me $24.3 to sell or trade-in. Carvana can suck a dick.

Ry Manchu wrote:I just asked for quotes on my F-150. The KBB private party is $38-$42.7, trade-in is $35-$39.4. KBB offered me $28.7 instant cash and Carvana offered me $24.3 to sell or trade-in. Carvana can suck a dick.

Strange, it seems like trucks are typically the ones they overvalue. In my case Carvana's offer was right in the middle of the KBB private party value range, and Vroom's was at the top of the value range.

More proof it's some half-assed algorithm coded by people that dgaf

For the fuck of it put in our ‘04 Acura. Offered me $200…. ……:cry:

It's pretty absurd how fast they usually fall in value though . This will all smooth out eventually and my '02 will fall back to 3 or 4 k probably .