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I have heard from a number of people who have used Carmax as an alternative to dealers or Craigslist for selling their cars. I am curious how fair their offer is? Do they lowball you or do they pay "book value", whatever that means these days?
We had a bad experience trying to sell a used CLK...they claimed some small noise was indicative of some major problem and gave us a lowball offer....went to a used car dealer that only deals in luxury cars and got 20% more with no hassle
I have sold two cars to Carmax and got really good prices for them. I sold a 2010 Honda Civic and a 2009 Honda Pilot. You will do better with late model, good condition cars that they can retail on their own lot. If they are going to send it to auction then they will give you what any other dealer would.
We had a bad experience trying to sell a used CLK...they claimed some small noise was indicative of some major problem and gave us a lowball offer....went to a used car dealer that only deals in luxury cars and got 20% more with no hassle
What is the process like? Do they drive it? How long does it take? Trade in practices have changed over the years. We were at a BMW dealership the other day and the subject of trade in came up. Apparently, they call three brokers on the spot and ask them to bid on the car right there and then. He said they no longer buy a car and put it on the lot for months hoping to sell it. They take your trade in only if someone has already committed to buy it.
I would never sell/trade in a car to a dealership. Their job is to lowball you so that they can turn a nice profit. My opinion?....Take some pics of the car accompanied by a detailed description and post it for sale online yourself. Go online and find the private party book value and price it just beneath to attract buyers. You'll still make off better than selling it to Carmax.
You can get more money selling a car yourself if you're willing to do the work, but trading in saves a lot of time and hassle of dealing with buyers.
With trading in, you're always better off with the more options you can open up. It doesn't cost anything to get a CarMax offer and they are good for seven days, so it can be worth spending the time to get a value and then be able to barter with that at another dealer or just sell the car to CarMax.
They offered me $3k for a 2003 Audi that I sold to an individual for $7,500 a week later. I had been given trade in offers of $5,500 the same day. I don't typically take anything else to them.
Take it there regardless, as their estimates are free!
I priced selling my great-condition 4-yo Toyota and they gave me about $2k less than KBB-retail, so I went old-school and put an ad in the paper, (and Craig's List). 2 weeks and maybe 15 nibbles later, it was sold right at KBB-retail, (which was a good number, considering age, condition etc).
As said before, you're most likely to get a good price if your car is one they will want to wash and then re-sell.
I've found Carmax to be pretty fair for pricing of something they would keep on their lot (newer, good condition vehicle). As mentioned, you can almost always do better in a private sale if you are willing to put in the time, and deal with scammers and joy riders.
They do take the car into their inspection bays and spend some time looking it over. I think both times I spent 30-45 minutes there getting my offer.
I ended up having the dealer match the offer in both cases as well (but both dealer's initial offers were lower).
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