Selling your car to CarMax
Edmunds is selling its long-term Honda Ridgeline, so earlier today I took it down to CarMax to get an appraisal. I'd never been to a CarMax before, but I always see the Best Buy color scheme and acres of cars from the freeway.
Speaking of Best Buy, CarMax has very much the same feel as a big box retailer- an open an airy showroom, a casually-dressed staff and a professional courtesy that you'd be hard-pressed to find at most used car lots. Throughout the store, CarMax advertises their car-buying program, which states they will purchase your vehicle for the wholesale cost, meaning what it would cost them to buy the car at auction...
Of course, their offered price is always on the low, low end of auction values, but it sounds like decent deal. FYI, wholesale is usually more than trade-in.
When you bring your vehicle in, they assign it a number, take your keys and sit you down in a cubicle to take some basic information. The inspection took over an hour, but Randy's donuts was just a hop, skip and a block through adult video land away, so my coworker and I got some exercise before devouring a couple of fritters while we waited.
I was surprised at what they offered us for the Ridgleine. I expected $1500 less. It was a fair price, considering the amount of profit a used car dealer expects to make on each unit. And it's guaranteed for 7 days or 300 miles. So we'll see what kind of response we get with our current listing, and worse-case scenario, we sell to CarMax, no questions asked.
- Posted by
- June 9, 2006, 9:48 AM
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- Selling Cars
I do not have any experience selling a car to CarMax, but I do have an interesting experience in trying to buy a car from them. A couple of months ago I saw a TBird listed on their online site. My wife contacted them and made inquiries...she was assured the car went through a comprehensive evaluation and check-out...because CarMax would not sell any car that didn't meet their standards. We live in Tucson, AZ and we decided to have the car transported to their Albuquerque location. The car was delivered to Albuquerque and the representative in Albuquerque told my wife the car was in very good condition with no observable damage. We drove to Albuquerque...stayed overnight...and appeared at the dealership the next morning. The car as presented to us and within a few moments it was visually obvious the paint did not match across the rear of the vehicle and the hardtop had sustained damaged along the bottom edge where it nests with the body of the car. Further investigation exposed paint overspray in the rear wheel wells. Within minutes the manager of the facility came out and within moments he said this car is not suitable for sale and refunded our transportation charge we had paid to get the car to Albuquerque from Houston. The problem is is that we had rented a car to leave in Albuquerque and drive the TBird to Tucson. We had two nights of lodging plus gas costs in driving from Tucson to Albuquerque and back to Tucson. If I recall the total cost was somewhere around $350.00. It was our contention that anyone at CarMax could have saved us a trip and expenses, yet the representative gave us no indication of any problems. I wrote to CarMax customer service asking them to consider reimbursing us for our out of pocket costs. After a month had gone by with no response I submitted the information to the CEO of CarMax. To this date we have received nothing from CarMax...not even a we are sorry letter. J. Weeks
Buyer beware as always. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
I purchased a car from Carmax, but first I did the search to see if it had been involved in any type of accident. The information that I received was that the vechicle had not been in any type of accident. However, I had my suspicions when I found small pieces of safely glass buried in the back rubber bumber mat. I then looked closely at the 2nd door on the passenger side. I found that the inside liner did not fit flush on the door. Then I had to replaced the left side grease seal. I was told by the dealer that it was probably because of age and wear. Although I also have a 2000 with 180,000 miles which has pulled a boat and I have never had to replace the seal. I did a full research on the history and I found out that 28 states do not have to issue an accident report . So if the car was in a wreck in one of these 28 states then you could be buying a vechicle that has been in an unreported wreck