Tell me about your experience selling car to CarMax or Carvana?

[Anonymous]

I have never sold a car before and have heard that's it's relatively straightforward to deal with these places. Is that true?

What kind of paperwork is needed? How does it work? How would you rate your experience?

[Anonymous]

One with Carmax and one with Nico Buys Cars.
For the most part, used cars are commodities and the price is the price. The year, model and mileage will mostly determine how much they will pay. I clean up my cars but spending $100 on getting it detailed will not pay off with more than $100 in the valuation.

https://www.carmax.com/articles/how-to-sell-your-car-to-carmax
This covers most of it. Bring all the keys/fobs.
Remember details like every person on the title needs to be present.

[Anonymous]

CarMax is super smooth but you don't get a great price.

I sold a car from $5000 they flipped and sold for $9000

For most people it's worth it than trying to negotiate with a criminal at a common dealership.

(For buying, dealerships are fine for new cars, when you negotiate only via email/text)

[Anonymous]

Sold my X3 to CarMax maybe a year ago. Got a quote online, sent in, they spent 20 minutes inspecting it and offered me that quote minus $500. I said okay, filled out some paperwork, and it took about 30 more minutes.

[Anonymous]

I sold a 20 year old Honda to Carmax a while back. I had to bring: a photo ID, title and registration, all the keys, and have everyone listed on the title present.

It was entirely straightforward, and I got very little money for it, but again, it was a 20 year old Honda with a ton of miles on it.

[Anonymous]

Carmax is super easy but they lowball you. That’s the price you pay for convenience though—it was an old car that had served me well but I needed it gone.

[Anonymous]

I sold a car in 2021 (pandemic) to Carvana. It was easy. It was a 4 year old Mercedes that was popular at the time so I got a decent price. Probably could have made 2 or 3 thousand more if I listed it and sold it privately but the car was out of state and I didn't want to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Dealer offered me $100 for a 17 year old car . CarMax offered me $1000. Very quick and easy.

[Anonymous]

Get more $ selling it yourself online.
It's not difficult.

[Anonymous]

Sold a Tesla to Carvana a few months ago as their offer was higher than Carmax or other services. They came to my house exactly on time, spent about 30 seconds inspecting the car, mostly to make sure the VIN matched, and handed me a check for the amount above what was still owed on an outstanding loan. Entire process was less than 5 minutes and couldn’t be smoother.

My understanding is that Carmax inspects a car much more closely than Carvana if that’s any concern based on vehicle condition.

[Anonymous]

Get the online quotes first, which will give you a range without having to take the car anywhere. For our 2014 Honda Odyssey, we were offered:
$14,000 by Carmax (both online and after 20 minute physical appraisal)
$13,500 by two Honda dealerships, as a trade in
$12,000 by Carvana (online)

We took the dealership offer for convenience, since we were buying a new Honda.

[Anonymous]

Carmax will give you a better price than any dealership. The process is very smooth and quick.
The appraiser would walk around your car and check it for less than 5 minutes. They will make you an offer a give you a check.
They don’t test drive the car. They don’t check for mechanical failures. If it has mechanical failures, your gain, their loss.

[Anonymous]

As others said re Carmax - really easy, lowballed. Tried to negotiate with them, ha - that didn’t work at all. We have gotten better values for cars when we trade them in when we are buying another. I would only use Carmax if we were just selling and no plans to replace. That was the scenario we sold at Carmax earlier and it met our needs.

[Anonymous]

Use CARMAX in two ways: 1) get a quote - that becomes the minimum you can sell the car for; 2) get the retail price they are selling a very similar car for - that is your top, no-haggle retail price. Then, you just need to decide if the difference is worth your time and aggravation to sell it yourself.

As others have said, CARMAX’s price will always beat a dealer price, and their process is extremely convenient. Any dealer that beats CARMAX’s price is doing so on a trade-in and “giving you more” on the trade-in and screwing you elsewhere in the deal. To get a dealer’s straightforward price, ask for the quote without any obligation to buy another car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get the online quotes first, which will give you a range without having to take the car anywhere. For our 2014 Honda Odyssey, we were offered:
$14,000 by Carmax (both online and after 20 minute physical appraisal)
$13,500 by two Honda dealerships, as a trade in
$12,000 by Carvana (online)

We took the dealership offer for convenience, since we were buying a new Honda.

What I generally do is get a Carmax offer and if it’s more than the dealer trade-in I use it to negotiate. I’ve been able to get the dealer to match the Carmax price most of the time. If they won’t I just sell to Carmax; super easy.