Uh… wow. I just checked CarMax for vehicles equivalent to the ones I shopped for - 2003/4 Subaru Outback, 4-cyl, auto. There are no exact equivalent, but various 2003-4 Subys run approximately double the prices I found. These are very low-mileage cars (typically 60-70k vs 100-120k), but the pricing is not “a thousand” more but literally $3-4k or up to twice as much as what I paid. Running Kelley on them shows almost exactly that.
A 2003 Legacy is listed for $9600; top KBB book for a dealer is $7800. Top dollar private sale is $6600.
I suggest that for all their advantages, people do some close comparison of prices before accepting that CM is ANYWHERE in the ballpark of reasonable.
I think the used car market has a big impact on whether or not your local CarMax is reasonable. As I said, I paid $3000 under KBB, and well under what other dealers wanted. But I’m in NoVA, with a lot of options within a reasonable drive.
My search was unlimited range, as there were no Subarus available in a 500-mile range. I found many other cases where the CarMax price was much higher than KBB dealer price. I’d simply advise all CarMax buyers to do a quick KBB check for dealer pricing (which assumes “excellent” condition, BTW) and high private-party price.
One issue with comparing CarMax to local dealers’ listed prices is that the internet (and perhaps CarMax themselves) is slowly doing away with the most egregious forms of used car pricing funny business. There’s certainly dealers who still cling to the old “price high, haggle down” ways, but these days most dealers realize that posting those goofy high prices means people aren’t even going to bother dropping by the lot and so their asking prices are usually fairly close to what they’ll actually sell the car for. Especially if they’re angling for a lot of out-of-town internet sales.
So when comparing CarMax prices to dealer prices, it’ll depend a lot on how “with it” your local dealers are. IME, though, CarMax prices are higher (and sometimes much higher) than what a local dealership will sell to you with extremely minimal to no haggling.
I had a good CarMax experience though it was years ago. Got my car for a little under Blue Book and they gave me about twice what my trade-in was listed as for BB value. The car I got operated fine through its lifetime (about five years before it was in an accident that totaled it).
My own experience with Carfax is that it’s crap. I use AutoCheck (by Experian, the credit score people) and last time I was car shopping the AutoCheck responses were always more comprehensive than Carfax reports. Including warning me of some major issues that Carfax missed. Carfax just has better marketing.
It’s been so long since I bought my car from Car Max that I can’t even remember when I bought it- maybe 1998 or 1999. It’s barely running now due to excessive age and general wear-and-tear, but we still drive it everyday. The odometer quit working years and years ago at around 150,000. It’s a Ford Explorer.
I was in dire need of a bigger car because I had a medically fragile infant with tons of equipment that needed to go with him wherever he went. I told everyone I was going to go Car Max and I was going to buy the biggest car I could find, the first car I saw, and I wasn’t even going to test drive it. I did all that except it was actually the second car I saw. Maybe I just got lucky ,but that car has been a reliable old work-horse.
The car before that I had checked by a mechanic at a garage before I bought (I know very, very little about cars) and it was a lemon- no a/c even though it was checked off as working, electrical problems that blew fuses at stop lights, windows that rolled up and down only randomly. I actually went back to the garage and complained and asked for a refund, but they wouldn’t give me my money back.
I knew it would cost a little more, but when can you ever buy a used car that has any sort of warranty? They are almost always “as is.”
I had the opposite experience; I went through the whole process a couple of months ago and I found Carfax to have more comprehensive service histories, owner records, and in one case had an accident report (it even specifically notated that it was an impact with an animal) that was nowhere to be seen on the AutoCheck.
My experience was a year or two ago but I’d look at places online that would link to a Carfax report, run the VIN through AutoCheck and find tons of crap Carfax missed. One for some severe body damage on a used Lexus I was considering. Dodged a real bullet on that one seeing as how the Carfax showed nothing about it.
Same experience here. I didn’t buy from CarMax, and wouldn’t ever bother returning, unless I just wanted to drive something around for shits and giggles.
I don’t think the no haggle thing is a joke.
I have NOT found CarMax’s prices to be absurdly high.
I am willing to believe that I can’t possibly compete at haggling the best price when I negotiate one car deal every 3 or four 4 years and your typical dealer negotiates 3 or 4 in a day.
I have never had a used dealer fulfill a 30 day guarantee on repairs like CarMax has.
I have never seen any used dealer except CarMax offer an UNCONDITIONAL 7 day return policy. (which I personally have taken advantage of)
I have had very good experiences with CarMax’s service department (post 30 day protection plan)
I have been involved in the purchase of 5 or 6 CarMax vehicles and have been very happy every time, including one I returned no questions asked within the 7 days.
My only complaint is that I could not take it to my mechanic before I bought it. However that didn’t really matter. I took all the cars to a mechanic after purchase. One time a mechanic found more than I was willing to deal with. I took it box and said I wanted to look for something else.
I’ve bought used cars from CarMax twice, most recently this year. In both cases I was happy with the price, the overall sales experience and the cars themselves. They offered the lowest rate on financing (lower than the banks and much lower than my own credit union), and the trade-in offers were fair. Last month my wife bought a new car, and we sold her old car to CarMax after they offered more to buy it outright than the Toyota dealer was willing to give for trade-in (which I thought odd, but whatever).
I’ve never used their service department or had to deal with a problem post-sale, so I can’t speak to that, but based on my experiences I’d shop there again. I used their website to pick out my current car, they had it transferred to the location nearest me, and I test drove and bought it during my lunch break. Pretty much painless.
Thanks for all the feedback. I had a busy weekend and wasn’t able to get back to post about my experience, although I was checking this thread on my phone frequently for comments.
We did wind up buying a vehicle for my stepdaughter from CarMax on Saturday. Overall I found the experience very positive. They had a large selection of vehicles to choose from, the salesman was very helpful in getting my stepdaughter to narrow down what exactly she was looking for, their financing was about 3% better than what we could have got from our bank, and she drove away in a fully loaded Hyundai Santa Fe that she is (so far) absolutely thrilled with.
One thing I haven’t had a chance to do yet is compare their price to KBB but I plan on doing that as soon as I can get a copy of the window sticker that lists all the details.
I have shopped but not bought at Carmax. I think Carmax is good in most every way, their prices just seemed high to me. If they really do thoroughly inspect every car that’s great, but it’s still not a guarantee something big won’t go wrong 6 months down the road. Same with a new car really, cars are complicated.
And IIRC if you didn’t have at least $8,000 or so to spend there was little point in going to Carmax.
I think what Rick said is correct. You can probably do better if you can find an honest, quality dealership, but that said, the used car dealers in my area are the best salespeople for Carmax. We got so frustrated with the haggling, lying, and lack of information that we went with Carmax and had decent results. The main issues I had with them was they did not allow you to hold a car, you either bought it or took the chance of losing it. The other was their total reliance on the CarFax report.
I was there a few years ago looking at a car and they kept bringing up the clean CarFax report like it was gospel. I had them looking over my car as a possible trade-in, and the mechanic said it looked like it was in an accident and had some frame damage (possibly true, it was a beater and I was like the 20th owner). When the salesperson brought up the CarFax again, I had him look up my car. He was a little stuck when it didn’t show any listed accidents, contradicting his own mechanic. Not a huge deal, and I would probably buy from them again.
I’d be very interested. FWIW, the options don’t change the price much. You have to get the right model (standard, luxe, sport, LTD, LL Bean etc.) but whether or not it has a premium stereo or a roof rack doesn’t change the KBB price much.
I bought my '13 Corolla ***from ***my mechanic. He goes to the used car auctions on a regular basis. I told him: I want a blue Corolla, AT, power windows, don’t care about other options. Less than 30,000 miles, don’t want to pay over $10K.
A few days later, he called and said, look out your front window in five minutes. He drove by with my new car on the back of his flatbed. I was driving it home within an hour. No traipsing off to dealers and worrying about the car’s history. If this option is available to you, I highly recommend it.
While that is for sure true for almost everyone, it’s the wrong comparison to make.
You don’t have to be better at haggling than the car salesman to get a better-than-average price. You have to be better at haggling than the average car buyer to get a better-than-average price.
CarMax’s no-haggle policy means that, on average, their labor cost for salesmen is going to be slightly lower (it takes more time to haggle than not to). That might translate to a lower average price, or it might not. They might spend the extra money on other things, or they might make higher profits. One way to think about it is that having a no-haggle policy is going to segment the market. People who know they’re not good hagglers are going to go to Carmax, so Carmax can still be successful with higher-than-average prices because they just need to beat the price that their bad-haggling buyers would pay elsewhere.
But it also means that if you’re a better-than-average haggler, you can likely haggle for a better price elsewhere.
CarMax will discount cars that haven been on their lots for too long. The discount will already be in the price; it’s not something that you have to ask for. For example, say they acquire a Hyundai Santa Fe at auction in December of 2013, and it sits on the lot until today, March 2018. In a lot of respects, CarMax management is going to consider that vehicle a zombie, and want to get rid of it as soon as possible. One way of dispatching zombies is taking an axe to them, but presumably the dealership will want to recoup some of its costs, and so a lower price is a good way to prevent an older, decaying car from turning completely into a zombie.
