Carmax no haggle?

clinehall · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 6:44 pm

Has anybody traded at Carmax? Do they really not haggle? Do they haggle on the trade. How good are they on the trades? I am thinking of going up there to see if I can trade my 2009 Mini away, I bought it for my daughter's company car and she has moved to Wisconsin and it didn't go with here![/b]

Gwen Habenicht · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 6:46 pm

Cline, I might know someone who's interested. What kind of $ are we talking about here? Is it a Cooper or an S?

clinehall · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 7:04 pm

Gwen Baake wrote:

Cline, I might know someone who's interested. What kind of $ are we talking about here? Is it a Cooper or an S?

no NA with an Automatic (hate to admit it is fun with paddle shifters) has dual sun roof and convience/comfort package I think. has about 10k miles. I don't know what its worth 18 t0 20k I would guess.

Gwen Habenicht · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 7:18 pm

clinehall wrote:

no NA with an Automatic (hate to admit it is fun with paddle shifters) has dual sun roof and convience/comfort package I think. has about 10k miles. I don't know what its worth 18 t0 20k I would guess.

Probably lost him @ Automatic, but I'll PM him. He's in NCR, wants a Mini, but needs to get his wife on board to owning one. She'd probably like the automatic, but I'm guessing he'd not be too happy. He won't want to retire his current car until he replaces it with exactly what he wants.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 7:20 pm

Cline,

When my wife's 2005 V70R was 11 months old, and we wanted to get out of it (due to so many problems with it), I took it to Carmax for their trade-in evaluation. The car had 16k miles, was essentially brand new inside and out, and had 2k mile old PS2s. No dents or scratches, garaged since new, essentially perfect. It listed for about $46k.

Their offer was $25k. I literally laughed in this guy's face. He tried to convince me of all "the work" he had done researching the car's price, called other stores, district manager, etc, since it was such a rare car, etc. Perhaps a 6spd manual in such a car freaked them out.

I said thanks, no thanks. Retail it could have probably sold in the mid-30's at the time. I called a friend up in PA who has been buying cars at Manheim auction there for many years. He said he could easily get $29k minimum for it if I sent it to him.

I put an ad up in a Volvo forum saying I was selling the car wholesale at $30k firm. Within two hours I had a reply from a dealer in Rock Hill who was worried he was too late to get it. Sold...in two hours for $5k more than Carmax's "great deal" offer. :wink:

FWIW, that was my only experience with them. I think they price cars well below what I'd call real wholesale value -- at least they did with mine.

Dustin Fredrickson · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:12 pm

clinehall wrote:

Has anybody traded at Carmax? Do they really not haggle? Do they haggle on the trade. How good are they on the trades? I am thinking of going up there to see if I can trade my 2009 Mini away, I bought it for my daughter's company car and she has moved to Wisconsin and it didn't go with here![/b]

They bought our last new car. It was a Saturn coupe, so at the other end of the spectrum from Chuck's. Their offer was a bit lower than I wanted (this was many years ago so don't recall numbers), but I seem to recollect it being ~ 2 months worth of payments, which I was willing to take a hit for, for the simplicity of not having to try to sell (a crappy Saturn coupe) outright.

Aaron Buckley · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 10:23 pm

When Bryan got rid of the Crossfire, he sold it to Carmax. While he only got $13k for it, the KBB on it was $14k (yes, a $30,500 MSRP, two year old car with 40k on it lost more than 50% of it's value).

He sold it to them to get rid of it, and was glad he did. Most of those cars since then have sold for a little over $10k, if they sold at all.

If you really want to get rid of a car quickly and price isn't a huge issue, then they are great, but generally, they low ball you. - AB

Kevin Hoff · **Posted:** Sun Nov 01, 2009 10:28 pm

My experience with Carmax was similar to Chuck's. I had the first WRX with high-ish miles but obviously super clean. They offered me about $6k less than what I eventually got in trade-in for my wife's current Outback...

A friend had a completely different experience - she bought a 3-yr old Boxster then Carmax bought it back about 10 months later for a very fair price.

--Kevin H.

Chris Brown · **Posted:** Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:59 am

haggle??? my dad bought and sold a couple of cars there and he tried to haggle and they would have none of it...he did however get a better warranty out of it, which i guess you can call haggling.

selling - don't go there expecting to get what you would get selling to an individual. remember, they still have to take the car from you, clean it, inspect it, fix anything that's wrong, transport it and sell it...and still try and make money. so if they offer you $25k on a $30k, don't be surprised. consider it a convenience fee.

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:10 pm

Aaron Buckley wrote:

When Bryan got rid of the Crossfire, he sold it to Carmax. While he only got $13k for it, the KBB on it was $14k (yes, a $30,500 MSRP, two year old car with 40k on it lost more than 50% of it's value).

Wait, didn't he pay like $19k for it new, though? So it lost 35% of it's value just for being a Crossfire.

--Donnie

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:13 pm

Kevin Hoff wrote:

My experience with Carmax was similar to Chuck's. I had the first WRX with high-ish miles but obviously super clean. They offered me about $6k less than what I eventually got in trade-in for my wife's current Outback...

Is that really a fair comparison, though? Certainly some of that $6k was really a discount off MSRP, wouldn't you think?

I'm no Carmax lover, don't get me wrong. Just wondering if we're comparing apples to apples when you start talking about "trade-in" numbers versus "buy your car" numbers.

I've had a few cars appraised there and never sold them a single one. It's always been JUST low enough that it was worth it to me to sell it on my own. And I did better on the money, but not a ton and it was probably barely worth it. So if your threshold for pain is low, then they can be a reasonable option. I'm betting the more valuable the car, the worse the deal gets, though, and it's probably exponential. Why? Because few people go to Carmax looking for $25k+ vehicles. I'm betting a HUGE percentage of their sales are under that amount.

--Donnie

steve remchak · **Posted:** Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:45 pm

http://www.chevrolet.com/tools/windowst ... esults_rat

it even has paddle shifters.

Aaron Buckley · **Posted:** Mon Nov 02, 2009 6:23 pm

Donnie Barnes wrote:

Wait, didn't he pay like $19k for it new, though? So it lost 35% of it's value just for being a Crossfire.

--Donnie

He paid $18.5k for it brand new, including all dealer fees. No wonder Chrysler is going out of business

BTW, return my call you fool. - AB

Sean O'Connell · **Posted:** Mon Nov 02, 2009 6:46 pm

rather than selling the mini, i would be generous enough to drive the car around Greenville through my daily travels for you. you know for the added publicity to CHA and such.

Stacy King · **Posted:** Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:01 pm

Donnie Barnes wrote:

Kevin Hoff wrote:

My experience with Carmax was similar to Chuck's. I had the first WRX with high-ish miles but obviously super clean. They offered me about $6k less than what I eventually got in trade-in for my wife's current Outback...

Is that really a fair comparison, though? Certainly some of that $6k was really a discount off MSRP, wouldn't you think?

It's been a looooong time since I've done anything with Carmax, but I always thought that's exactly what Carmax did... didn't matter at all what you were buying, they would pay a certain amount for your car... whether you were buying something or not.

Thing is... it's a "sure thing" deal... they WILL buy your car, no matter what... but the price they give you is it.

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Carmax no haggle?

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