Carvana

[J Galt]

Has anyone purchased from Carvana? How was the experience? Any things to watch out for? Thanks.

 

[jwamplerusa]

I haven't purchased from carvana, but I have been helping my daughter look for a car and carvana keeps showing up.

Pay attention to the fine print in their ads, you have to scroll down a ways. It appears that they add a delivery fee to everything which for the cars that I looked at was on the order of $600. They also had a basic title and registration fee which added over another $1,000 all of which were portrayed as non-negotiable.

Buyer beware.

 

[Super Bee]

Be careful. I have heard lots of bad things from other dealers about them. Junk cars, people not getting titles. They have had lots of legal issues from what I have heard/read.

 

[jbombelli]

 

[tim87tr]

Has anyone purchased from Carvana? How was the experience? Any things to watch out for? Thanks.

Just spoke to them as they had the lowest mile not common car I was looking for. As others had mentioned my vibe was buyer beware.

Young person on phone related to me there is no test drive, you can't go look at one, etc. They treat it like you're buying a candy bar from a vending machine and even name their delivery hubs as such. Place where you probably sign away your consumer rights for a picture of a vehicle you saw online. They have some kind of guarantee fine print online that makes young buyers feel good.

Kid on phone said "we've sold a million vehicles this way" to which I replied "not to me you haven't". End of story they're out $40k as I bought elsewhere and it really doesn't matter to them with their progressive millennial business template. Just keep reading from that cue card!

 

[BigRed]

In this space, Carmax is a better alternative...JMO based on about a half dozen transactions with them.

 

[Leo]

My Neighbor bought from them last Summer. Said it was the easiest purchase he ever made. The clean, low mileage late model car has been good, they took his old one away with no troubles.

Since then it is hard to look at the news without some real issue, bad titles, delayed titles, no titles, stolen cars, etc, and stories of how people are getting burned. As hard as it is dealing with traditional dealerships, at least there you can walk out and there is a face that you can drill with your fist if you have to. When you are dealing with a faceless corporation of some type and you cannot even know where the guys office is, rectification of issues can be horrible.

Your mileage may vary

 

[RobbyMaQ]

We bought a 2015 Escape in 2018. Was a smooth process overall... The carfax showed it was owned by a snowbird couple living in NY and traveling to FL during the winters (Where most of the maintenance had been done).

They delivered it a few days before Christmas to the wrong address (Which, is actually a common problem. Our two homes wind up delivering mail to one another every other month despite being over 2 miles apart lol).
Funny part was, they were having a big family christmas party when the delivery guy showed up with the flatbed truck lol. Some people were all excited thinking they were getting an SUV for christmas.

Anyways, he'd already unloaded it and because he was so close we just drove down to meet him and pick it up. We returned to the house to handle the final walk around and paperwork. They gave us a week to decided if we wanted to return it. I took it to my mechanic to have him give it a thorough look over and everything checked out.

The mechanic warned that some sellers had experienced recent floods and were selling their vehicles to unsuspecting buyers but it appears that ours had not been flooded.

They're not as cheap as finding local sellers and doing all the legwork yourself if you can get there before someone else snags it. However after spending months chasing good deals only to have them snagged out from underneath us while car shopping for my son, I'd consider using Carvana again in the future.

 

[snapping turtle]

In noblesville one round about east of Home Depot is a lot that sells trucks. 4 flat bed tow trucks with carvana on the sides are in that lot.

Sounds like the business model is at least not support the delivery fleet or doing so well enough to replace those four specialist trucks with new ones.

 

[d.kaufman]

I would NEVER, buy a vehicle without a thorough lookover and hour test drive. City and Highway driving, then a secondary thorough lookover once test drive is over

 

[marvin02]

Hey @Snapdragon, who did you get your truck from?

 

[MCgrease08]

In noblesville one round about east of Home Depot is a lot that sells trucks. 4 flat bed tow trucks with carvana on the sides are in that lot.

Sounds like the business model is at least not support the delivery fleet or doing so well enough to replace those four specialist trucks with new ones.

That's an Isuzu dealership and Isuzu makes the chassis for the Carvana delivery trucks so I wouldn't read too much into why those trucks are there.

 

[Cameramonkey]

I haven't purchased from carvana, but I have been helping my daughter look for a car and carvana keeps showing up.

Pay attention to the fine print in their ads, you have to scroll down a ways. It appears that they add a delivery fee to everything which for the cars that I looked at was on the order of $600. They also had a basic title and registration fee which added over another $1,000 all of which were portrayed as non-negotiable.

Buyer beware.

I wonder how they get around the state's "we wont sue you if you charge more than the actual cost of "doc fees" so long as you only screw the customer for $200 or less"
That BS still ticks me off. I pay $199 for them to send a minimum wage flunky to sit at the BMV for an hour.

 

[Snapdragon]

Hey @Snapdragon, who did you get your truck from?

Carvana. Overall it was a good experience. During the 7-day test drive, an electrical problem with the bluetooth/radio system came up, and Silver Rock (their warranty company) took care of it completely. Silver Rock has some weird list of in-network repair shops like PepBoys and some random guy's muffler shop in Gary. I took it to the Nissan dealership and gladly paid a $50 out-of-network fee. Radio/bluetooth was replaced and no issues. They also took care of some paint work on a few dings that were not disclosed in the ad.

My only beef with Carvana is that it took over THREE MONTHS to get my title and plates. They use some kind of third-party deal to handle the state paperwork, and apparently my stuff got lost. When all was said and done, they sent me two duplicate license plates. I guess I have a spare if one gets bent.

OK, I have another beef after all. I'm ticked off that my truck did not come equipped with a halo.

 

[J Galt]

I'm going to pull the trigger with them. From the posts here and online reviews it seems to be great, or really bad. I'm ready to take my chances after the games played by the dealers.

If I hear one more "Someone was just looking at this. It could go any time." My verbal filter will probably fail completely.

I view the extra charges as payment to not deal with a car salesman. After 2 weeks of shopping in person, it will be worth every penny.

 

[2tonic]

Carvana was recently banned from doing business in Illinois.
Shady title practices.....some customers still waiting for titles after 9 mos to a year.

 

[Ingomike]

I cannot believe American’s are such wimps when it comes to negotiations. Many cultures around the world negotiate every purchase, heck, the kids are taught to negotiate to get stuff the family needs from the market.

Those petitioning government because they cannot negotiate blow my mind.

 

[CHCRandy]

I cannot believe American’s are such wimps when it comes to negotiations. Many cultures around the world negotiate every purchase, heck, the kids are taught to negotiate to get stuff the family needs from the market.

Those petitioning government because they cannot negotiate blow my mind.

I agree......if we cant negotiate, I dont want it. Heck, that's most of the fun to me.....

 

[DoggyDaddy]

I cannot believe American’s are such wimps when it comes to negotiations. Many cultures around the world negotiate every purchase, heck, the kids are taught to negotiate to get stuff the family needs from the market.

Those petitioning government because they cannot negotiate blow my mind.

When I was (much) younger, I found negotiating intimidating, but as I've gotten older (and crankier), it's gotten a lot easier.

 

[blain]

Kid on phone said "we've sold a million vehicles this way" to which I replied "not to me you haven't". End of story they're out $40k as I bought elsewhere and it really doesn't matter to them with their progressive millennial business template. Just keep reading from that cue card!

I wonder if potential investors might have heard a similar reply from Bernie Madoff...
"Listen, I've done tens of thousands of these investment deals."