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Originally Posted by clyde

Thanks!



A few notes about Carmax. I went there Thursday evening. They say they're only doing appraisals by appointment now. I took them at their word and scheduled one for 7:30 that evening. I got there about 7:20. It was least busy I've ever seen a Carmax, but they had more than a few customers in the store.

They took my info right away the way they've always done it. It probably took a little less time since I'd been there before and they had appraised the car before. After that is where it was different.

Instead of taking your keys and directing you to the lounge, they send you outside with your keys, ask you to open hood and trunk and wait. Maybe two minutes later, the appraiser walks up towards me and asks me to start the car. He then walked around a bit and took some photos. He sent the photos and car info off to the "buyer team" and told me to hang tight and someone would be out with an offer in a few minutes. Five minutes later, the woman I spoke with initially came out with an offer for $18,500. We thanked each other, I got in the car and drove home.

Arrival to departure was about 20 minutes. The delivery of the offer was SOOOO much better than the normal way when they walk you through a bunch of crap before giving you the number. The saleswoman/advisor (whatever Caramx calls their employees) was very kind. Just a really pleasant person to work with in this kind of way.

The appraiser isn't really an appraiser as he told me. He just looks for stuff, takes pics, makes notes, enters info about the car and sends it off to their buyer team. I couldn't tell if there is a single Carmax buyer team for all their stores or if they have regions with one team per region or what. What was clear were the team was off site. As he was walking around the car, he asked if I had brought the car in before because he remembered the tag. "We see a lot of stupid tags, but I love and remembered this one!" He also told me he thought they would give me a really strong offer on it because they "need sports cars, like, really bad."

Interesting!

And, yeah, they're probably flooded with mediocre SUVs. Although, that's probably what most people want to buy, too.