Carmax - quite impressive

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2004 1:33 pm

As some of you know, I just replaced the Suburban with something bigger still - a 2001 Ford Excursion Limited. I bought it from Carmax in Raleigh, and I have to say that it was a very positive experience.

First, they shipped the truck up here from their Orlando store and it was here in under a week. The price was reasonable, the truck was great, I pulled the trigger and got it. They made everything very easy. All that DMV stuff that everyone hates? They have a DMV person on site to do it all for you. Need financing? Here's three different, attractive, loan offers. Want to add it to your insurance policy? We're on it.

I also had to bring it in for some minor service - the cupholder was broken, and I needed the code for the keypad on the driver's door. Dropped it off yesterday and picked it up at 1:00 this afternoon. They secured a new cupholder and the factory keypad code direct from Ford in no time at all.

So yeah...if you're buying a used car, I recommend them. Pretty impressive.

Wes Eargle · **Joined:** Mon Oct 27, 2003 9:47 am **Posts:** 3683

That's where I got my car, no hassles, they don't shadow you as you wander around the lot and you get to see the cars online ahead of time so you can bring in a list with their part number on it. Very good experience with them, and since I'm anti-new car, I'll probably be doing business with them again.

Stephen Westerfield · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2004 2:06 pm

I bought my Maxima from there and I will say them being able to handle the DMV stuff on site was a huge plus. However....don't go in there expecting to haggle....they won't do it. The price you see is the price you pay. When I was there...pretty much everything I looked at was priced a good $500-$1500 over what you find listed on Edmunds or KBB. If you don't want to pay it....they will let you walk right out the door. I suppose if you are ok paying it...no biggie. If it wasn't for the difficulty of finding my car in good shape with a manual transmission, they wouldn't have got my business and I doubt they will in the future.

Adam Ligon · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2004 2:24 pm

Stephen Westerfield wrote:

I bought my Maxima from there and I will say them being able to handle the DMV stuff on site was a huge plus. However....don't go in there expecting to haggle....they won't do it. The price you see is the price you pay. When I was there...pretty much everything I looked at was priced a good $500-$1500 over what you find listed on Edmunds or KBB. If you don't want to pay it....they will let you walk right out the door. I suppose if you are ok paying it...no biggie. If it wasn't for the difficulty of finding my car in good shape with a manual transmission, they wouldn't have got my business and I doubt they will in the future.

Yeah I'd have to agree with this. If you don't care about the best deal then go there. But you will pay more for the same car there.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2004 3:14 pm

One of my former coworkers (engineering manager type in his 50's) started working at CarMax last November as a salesman. He had never been in sales before. He was impressed by their operation and their "systems" and training. Sales people get a fixed amount (i.e. not percentage) for each car sale, each extended warranty sale, and each used car "buy" whether it is a trade or a purchase. One of CarMax's biggest challenges is obtaining enough of the high quality cars they sell. That is why they are willing to buy outright. Any trade they take in that doesn't meet their sales criteria gets auctioned at a nearby auction lot owned by CarMax. Pricing for trade ins and buys is done by experienced buyers.

Kevin Hoff · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2004 3:39 pm

A few years back I tried to sell my green Jetta to CarMax and they offered an insultingly low price. Are they offering better trade-in prices now?

My perception then was that while they were "no haggle" on sales/financing/warranties that they would deal hard on trade-in. Basically, it seemed that you could buy one of their overpriced cars and get a _great_ price on your trade but simply selling a car to them without a purchase got you 25% or more below wholesale. (Of course this is what I'd do if I was them too!)

--Kevin H.

Michael Westerfield · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2004 3:49 pm

Adam Ligon wrote:

Stephen Westerfield wrote:

I bought my Maxima from there and I will say them being able to handle the DMV stuff on site was a huge plus. However....don't go in there expecting to haggle....they won't do it. The price you see is the price you pay. When I was there...pretty much everything I looked at was priced a good $500-$1500 over what you find listed on Edmunds or KBB. If you don't want to pay it....they will let you walk right out the door. I suppose if you are ok paying it...no biggie. If it wasn't for the difficulty of finding my car in good shape with a manual transmission, they wouldn't have got my business and I doubt they will in the future.

Yeah I'd have to agree with this. If you don't care about the best deal then go there. But you will pay more for the same car there.

I also agree with this. I recently negotiated the purchase of a 2000 TL for my wife and the end price was about 2000 below what carmax would have charged. The dealership also let met me at my mechanic's so he could inspect it. Something about the "art of negotiation" makes carmax not fun. I personally like going into the dealership at the end of the month,trying to work my magic.

David Teague · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2004 4:29 pm

While I had good Experieces with carmax... I even took a car (240SX) back and they took it back with very quetsions once my wife stated she was not comfortable with it...
However both of the cars we bought from there had been in fender benders One showed up on carfax as having been in a sideswipe accident and the sweet 91 240 we had bought there 5 years ago with 52000 miles did not show up on carfax at all excpet when that it was bought at auction, when we took the car to nissian to get it checked out they notied that all the front part were reliativly new and there were some marks on the frame that indicated the car had been in a heavy front end collision. IT was repaired correclty with nissian parts however know that and the fact it needed a complete tune up we did not think it justified the cost.

Just something to keep in mind.

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2004 1:37 am

Stephen: their prices are labeled as "No Haggle Price." Perhaps if you were trading something in, you could effectively haggle, but otherwise no go. In my case the price was quite fair.

As luck would have it I drank beers tonight with a guy who is a technician at our local Carmax. His words:

"They're a little more expensive, but we might have spent 3 grand reconditioning the car."

Basically this inspection thing they do is no joke. They apparently partially tear the car down and if they find *anything* dented or scratched or broken, it gets replaced. If they find evidence of crash damage, they auction it off. If the tires are no good...or even brand new, just wrong sized...into the trash pile they go. Does that chrome bumper on your Excursion have a little dent in it? Off it comes, replaced with new.

Then there's the detail guys, who thoroughly wash, wax, steam clean, and do whatever else to recondition the car. Trust me...I washed the truck today. For about 3 hours. And I found nothing dirty. Everything was showroom spotless.

David, that's strange that the car you got from them had been in an accident. I had a buddy with me when I first looked at this car. He thought he'd spotted evidence of accident repair, and immediately, we had an army of very concerned looking people looking over the truck to make sure it hadn't been hit. Sure enough the Carfax report came back clean.

To hear this guy, who works there, describe the operation over beers on a Saturday night, made me very happy I bought my truck at Carmax. Personally I'm willing to spend the extra grand or so to get a car I know has been gone over well, and to have the whole process be easy.

Todd Breakey · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2004 7:35 am

Kevin Hoff wrote:

A few years back I tried to sell my green Jetta to CarMax and they offered an insultingly low price. Are they offering better trade-in prices now?
--Kevin H.

They still try to low ball you on your car. I tried to sell back my 96 Caravan that I bought at Carmax in 99. The offer was about $1000 below the lowest category on KBB.com. Needless to say I didn't sell it to them. Anybody want to buy a slightly used 96 Caravan?

Dustin Fredrickson · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2004 2:42 pm

Malia and I just sold our '02 Saturn to carmax last month. We also test drove a "ValueMax" '99 Miata they had. Supposedly the "ValueMax" line allows somewhat higher mileage, slightly less perfect cars. Unfortunately, their price wasn't justified to the visible condition and options the car had. The car did drive GREAT though - felt like they had gone through the mechanicals thoroughly. The price we got for the Saturn was about par with KBB "good". I had been offered $700 more than KBB good for the Saturn at Al Smith (as part of the negotiation - they didn't move much on the car price) for a trade on another Miata, but we decided that Miata wasn't what we wanted either. So, in the end, we sold to CarMax simply for the option to buy Private Seller. The $700 extra we MAY have been able to make selling outright would have been wiped out if we would have had to hold the car payment for 2 more months while we were trying to sell the car. BTW, selling to CarMax is a VERY easy process. We had had the car appraised on a Saturday, and they guaranteed the buy-price for 5 days. We went back later that week and dropped them the keys, went to dinner while they prepared the paperwork, came back an hour later, signed 5 pieces of paper, gave them $150 to cover our loan buyout and walked out the door. Except for the dinner part, the whole thing took <15 minutes.

David Teague · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2004 10:25 pm

Carfax is only reliable if they report it to agency, the 240 had come from new hampsire, and the only report on carfax in the last 10 years was when it was bought at auction, and as I said they still treated us well and took the car back without questions, and probably sold it the next day, I was just posting that as an info thing. When ever I buy a car, I always have it checked out by someone I trust before making a final decision, and I think that is a pretty good practice.

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Carmax - quite impressive

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