Feels like I've been here before

[JST]

Originally Posted by clyde

Selling to Carvana during a pandemic is turning into an adventure. Hopefully, not a disaster, but I am not confident it will finish before the current accepted price expires on Saturday. The latest fresh offer this morning was only $26 under, so not a big deal if it holds steady...but if it holds steady, why am I selling to them when a car I can buy could show up?

Sigh.

Did you take it to CarMax to see what they would do? They'll give you an offer in about 30 min and buy it on the spot if you accept.

[lemming]

Originally Posted by JST

Did you take it to CarMax to see what they would do? They'll give you an offer in about 30 min and buy it on the spot if you accept.

How different are CarMax from Carvana? Do they use the same pricing algorithms?

[clyde]

Update: Pickup is scheduled with a finalized price for tomorrow afternoon.

I have an appointment at Carmax this evening. If they beat Carvana, I'll sell to them.

[JST]

Originally Posted by lemming

How different are CarMax from Carvana? Do they use the same pricing algorithms?

I'm sure they use different algorithms. Not sure which are better or worse. I've found that Carmax can give you offers that are really, really attractive, depending on the car/state of the market/number of vehicles they have in inventory. And it's about as painless a process as you can imagine.

They can also give you terrible offers that are a waste of your time, but again, it depends on a lot of factors.

[clyde]

Originally Posted by lemming

How different are CarMax from Carvana? Do they use the same pricing algorithms?

CarMax is brick and mortar. Almost all used cars (they own two Toyota dealers that sell new cars...my wife's RAV4 was purchased at one of them).

Carvana purchases and sales are all online. Their gimmick is that some of their "lots" have tall buildings that act like vending machines. When you go to pick up, they give you a coin and your car comes down like in a vending machine.
https://www.carvana.com/vending-machine

Both are no haggle sales and no negotiation trades. They both list their inventory, pricing and fees on their websites in a no bullshit and straightforward manner. Both offer seven day money back offers if you decide you don't like the car you bought from them.

Carmax will not give you an offer or estimate online. You have to take your car to one of their locations. They do a quick once over, sometimes a short test drive, give you an offer. If you accept the offer, they will complete paperwork with you and have you on your way with a check within about 30 minutes. Or you can come back anytime in the next 7 days/300 miles and they will honor the offer (and if you don't, they will email and text you a bunch to remind you...and if you go past 7 days, they will suggest you come back for a new appraisal).

Carvana gives you a real offer online. If you have seven days to accept the offer and complete the sale. If they don't have your car by the end of the seven days, it has to reappraise (which could make it more or less than the original price). You then upload some documents to verify ownership (title, registration, driver license, lien holder/payoff info). They verify/approve and then ask you how you want to paid (paper check, ACH transfer, or debit card deposit) and then schedule pick up. At pick up, the Carvana "advocate" shows up with a hauler wherever you want in their pickup areas, looks over the car quickly, and takes it for a spin around the block. From what I've heard, they are only looking for anything seriously out of line from how you described the car. Based on that, the value could drop, but it seems unliekly to happen. (I've found a bunch of complaints and negative Carvana reviews about a whole bunch of things, but having offers unexpectedly being reduced is not one of them.) After they take your car, it can take 1-2 days for an ACH transfer to show up and they wait 3-5 business days to payoff any liens.

On the buying side pre-COVID, their offers were usually pretty close to each other on most cars. I found a thread on leasehakr.com where a lot of people have compared Carvana and Carmax offers. They're usually pretty close to each other, but occasionally wildly different.

Carvana's primary target market are millennials that don't really want cars. Their offers tend to be a lot stronger on high volume, lower priced, mainstream cars than more expensive luxury cars.

Carmax's primary target market are breathing humans.

[Alan]

Originally Posted by clyde

Update: Pickup is scheduled with a finalized price for tomorrow afternoon.

I have an appointment at Carmax this evening. If they beat Carvana, I'll sell to them.

Wow pretty exciting !!!

[zach]

Good luck Clyde! You inspired me to get a Carvana offer on our X5.

[wdc330i]

Good luck, indeed!

[JST]

Originally Posted by clyde

Carmax's primary target market are breathing humans.

This is true, but what I find interesting about Carmax is that they aren't at all afraid to stock (and buy) pretty niche machines. They have a decent inventory of high performance cars at any given time; I once test drove a 6 speed manual E60 M5 at a Carmax (and of course that's where I bought my current M3). When I bought the M3, they also had a 6M Audi S4 sitting next to it on the lot.

My guess is that their national inventory model (which permits trades amongst Carmax locations for a fee that ranges from really reasonable to not so reasonable) lets them sell these cars quickly enough to make sense.

[clyde]

Originally Posted by JST

This is true, but what I find interesting about Carmax is that they aren't at all afraid to stock (and buy) pretty niche machines. They have a decent inventory of high performance cars at any given time; I once test drove a 6 speed manual E60 M5 at a Carmax (and of course that's where I bought my current M3). When I bought the M3, they also had a 6M Audi S4 sitting next to it on the lot.

My guess is that their national inventory model (which permits trades amongst Carmax locations for a fee that ranges from really reasonable to not so reasonable) lets them sell these cars quickly enough to make sense.

I agree with absolutely all of that.

I've had a number of Carmax appraisals done on a walk-in basis over the years. Tonight, with an appointment, was the quickest ever from arrival to the piece of paper with the number. I also learned a little more about how they do it.

Pre-COVID, you would arrive, they'd take your info and keys and you would take a seat for XX minutes waiting for someone to look at your car, do their stuff, and the rep to get back to you and walk you through a bunch of words before giving you the number.

Tonight, it was arrive, give them my info (which went quicker since I've been there before and they have appraised this car before), and then return to the car. Open hood and trunk, then wait (in this case) about three minutes for the person to get to the car. He has you start it, walks around, pokes head kind of inside, but not really, and takes some pictures.

Since they had looked at the car before (same guy, actually...he remembered the tag), all of the option, color, condition info was already there, so that cut some time because he didn't have to reenter it.

That info and pics then go to their buyer team which is located somewhere else. I couldn't tell if he said it was one team for the entire chain or there are several regional teams, though. But, I thought it was interesting that they have it down to that much of a process and so much distance because the product and people making decisions about money for that product.

Anyway, after sending the info, the guy leaves and tells you the rep you spoke to initially will be back in a few minutes with the offer.

A couple minutes later, she was back. $18,500. I was back in the car and headed home about 18 minutes after I pulled into their parking lot.

I didn't think they would meet/beat Carvana, but it feels better knowing rather than having that little bit of doubt.