[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by unluky

LOL - the drama............

I have bought cars from Dealers and a couple from Carmax. Why? Because they have a great car finder app and lets me find exactly what I want. You can go check the car out for 24 hours free of charge - so if you want someone to inspect it - you can do it right then.

If anyone here thinks ANY car dealer/reseller is on their side - they are smoking crack. It is 100% your responsibility to do your due diligence and check the car out. They also have the 30 day guarantee. I've had good and bad experiences with both. I do not do warranties - I think they are a complete rip off. The $ I have saved on never doing a warranty is enough to buy me a damn nice car by now - so I know I am $ ahead. I never let a car go until close to 150K and I have never ever in my 40 years of car ownership had a motor or transmission go out.

I had a car moved from CA thru Carmax once. It arrived and had a small minor ding that was not listed on the inspection. It was an expensive move to get it here and when I pointed it out to the rep I was working with - he was not happy either and they refunded my transfer money on the spot without me even committing to the car. They held it a few days while I thought about it and ultimately took it as it was a minor ding in a hard to see area and the car was still the closest thing I had found in many month of looking.

My experiences with Carmax were one when they were the new kid on the block and one many years later. They had certainly lost their "we try harder" attitude I enjoyed the first time, but I still found their super low pressure nice compared to my dealership experiences.

I don't think their is a bad place to buy a good car - you just have to do your part as well. If we are buying used - the responsibility is on us.

The only issue is they charge more for their cars than on the open market and they do not negotiate on price, but they advertise "trust us" and it is why we charge more. But as you have stated you can't trust CarMax any more than any other used car dealership. Great they offer their no-hassle return policy, but they know 95% of buyers once they've bought the used car (and possibly traded in their old car - so they'll have no car if CarMax takes it back) are just going not deal with the hassle.

In the case of my Z4, I would have still bought the car but at a lower price that I would have negotiated. The worst position to be in is bringing in the car from an out of state CarMax dealership since the transport charge is non-refundable.