CarMax question

Every few years I seem to have one of these questions...

Has anyone here ever traded a car in at CarMax?

I get the whole "no haggle" pricing deal, but I was wondering if there's any room to negotiate the price of your trade upward from their original offer. And what about warranty pricing? All fixed prices?

Everything was fixed when I bought a car there 3 years ago. I had a better buy offer from another dealership and the salesman just shrugged and said sell it to them.

Warranties were fixed as well but there were several options for mileage/years/deductible. It was all priced pretty reasonably as I remember.

As I understand, all fixed prices. Doug DeMuro (Jalopnik and YouTube) has done a number of articles and videos on his CarMax experiences. He likes going there for unreliable near exotics because of their warranty. They've seriously low balled him on some of his odd cars, but they always make an offer.

Mike wrote: As I understand, all fixed prices. Doug DeMuro (Jalopnik and YouTube) has done a number of articles and videos on his CarMax experiences. He likes going there for unreliable near exotics because of their warranty. They've seriously low balled him on some of his odd cars, but they always make an offer.

The Doug DeMuro Factor is playing heavily into this one...

they plug the details into a computer and it spits an offer. this means something w/ some cosmetic issues but low miles will likely net you an above your local market offer. This happened to us w/ my wife's old g35 sedan. would have likely been 3.5k on the local market sold by us, but had really low miles (like sub 60k on an '03), and we had to resist literally grabbing the check and running out when they offered 5k.

I sold 3 cars to them. Each time I got good overall offers for them. The first was my MSM that I had listed on CL and other places for months at $11K without a single bite. Only had 1 test drive during the time. Took it to Carmax and had a check for $10.5K in my pocket 30 minutes later.

I can tell you if the car was wrecked at any point, they really are not interested from what I've seen.

Honestly, My take on it is you have nothing to lose. I spend as much time doing the dog and pony show with a CL buyer as I spent at Carmax. It gives you an idea of the value and if you like it great and if not oh well, keep going elsewhere.

If nothing else it is a great starting point. I take all my cars there before listing them on AutoTrader or CL (or trading in at a dealership) just to see about where I can price it.

As said above, they prefer newer, lower mileage, clean Carfax cars and will pay pretty well for those. If your car is older, higher mileage, or has a rough Carfax history then expect to get around wholesale (which, if you need to unload it, can still work out well for you).

I'm not 100% sure, but I think they practically run their own auctions of cars they have so much inventory, so they definitely have a lot of pricing power and influence on the market.

But, their price is their price, no negotiating with them. It's kinda refreshing actually to know the number they are buying/selling at is what it is and you can't haggle.

I sold 2 cars to them. The prices they give are decent but not great, but the convenience of not having to deal with Craigslist or whatever was worth it for me.