Buying a car used to be easy: You’d hand over cash, then someone would give you keys and title.
But buying our newest project car–a 2017 Volkswagen Golf GTI destined for some track fun–wasn’t so simple.
You see, we got it from Carvana.
Why a Mk7 Volkswagen GTI?…
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?
My one encounter with Carvana was when they bought my six year old Sienna minivan for almost $30k cash during the pandemic. They showed up with a rollback, I signed one form, they handed me a check and drove off with my van. It felt a little too good to be true. Apparently it was.
I could forgive everything else, but I'd be pissed about not getting the car out of the vending machine.
A recent headline was how, in roughly a year, their stock price has dropped 97% from peak. Something like $350 to around $6-7. Their flaw is having a business plan of paying more for used cars than everyone else, while using investor money to keep the doors open. With used car prices dropping, they've found themselves in a Business Garbage Compactor.
In reply to spedracer :
I know, right? I'm not saying it'd be a deal breaker for me, but it feels pretty close.
An acquaintance is on his 3rd temp tag from 3rd different state waiting on his title. That would scare me away pretty quick.
Well now. So much for progress.
Well, that was exactly the opposite of my experience with them. I found them to be pretty flawless when I bought the Touareg a month ago.
In reply to Toyman! :
I wonder how much of that comes down to training and experience. When I worked at a large used car dealership chain, the training process was very much "here's how to do everything" and then you kind of got thrown to the wolves.
I know that sort of learning process can work for some people, but it was definitely a step outside of my comfort zone.
spedracer said:I could forgive everything else, but I'd be pissed about not getting the car out of the vending machine.
I'm glad I'm not alone: I literally turned to my wife when we were in the parking lot and said "I'd be okay with the past week of being jerked around if they'd at least showed me the vending machine."
GTIs can handle being dropped out of a tree, so a vending machine shouldn't be a problem (fun fact, VW actually dropped the car from a tree for that advertisement as it was less cost prohibitive than doing the CGI would've been at the time)
buzzboy said:An acquaintance is on his 3rd temp tag from 3rd different state waiting on his title. That would scare me away pretty quick.
Sounds like my experience with Vroom, when you need to call multiple times because they don't understand why I didn't want to drive on expired temp tags.
In reply to Colin Wood :
I would bet that that enters into it. The other part is I was doing their standard purchase without any curves thrown at them. Straight-up purchase, no hurricane problems, I let them finance a small balance, and had no issues with my bank account being verified. They dropped it off within 30 minutes of the expected arrival. Communication with the delivery driver was perfect. I even had the tags within 2 weeks of purchase. It was literally the easiest car purchase I have ever had.
I'm pretty disappointed to hear that Tom's experience was so much worse. The wife is looking for a new minivan and Carvana is my first choice for dealers.
Are they going to put all those rollbacks up for sale soon?
Ramp truck!
Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:Are they going to put all those rollbacks up for sale soon?
Ramp truck!
Yeah I would love one of those , if anyone sees them up for sale please post the info,
:)
Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:GTIs can handle being dropped out of a tree, so a vending machine shouldn't be a problem (fun fact, VW actually dropped the car from a tree for that advertisement as it was less cost prohibitive than doing the CGI would've been at the time)
Well, a VW maybe, not a Citroen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t78uhwu8k9M
There goes that bubble, popping more quickly than most. When market cornering and price gouging (great financing available!) are your primary modes of business, it is just a matter of time . . .
Take it as a sign when a company is banned from doing business in multiple states.
In reply to Tom Suddard :
That kinda sucks... It has convinced me that I won't try to buy any cars from Carvana, that's for sure.
I'm taking 67 as the number of days before you get title and or permanent tags.
So dealers are impossible to interact with and think the market is still sitting enough that they can get away with $5k of markups and other bs charges, carvana will take six months to send you a title....who CAN you buy a car from these days?
My son just got a 2012-2014? mustang on CarVana maybe 6-8 weeks ago.
He said it worked great, got his title in 3 weeks.
I wonder if its an older model and there is not loan payoff if it works better ? Dont have to deal w/ banks ?
Sold my Fiesta ST to Carvana last spring, was super easy and they handed me a check on the spot (also paid me about $4k over blue book price). Figured I'd never get that kind of money out of an 8 year old car with 80k miles (only tracked twice).
In reply to Tom Suddard :
Amazingly bad ustomer service. Just bought a new Silverado 1500 diesel off the lot and the dealer had no problems accepting a personal check for the difference after our trade and a copy of the insurance card from our old truck, since State Farm automatically covers any new vehicle. And this is for a truck that stickered at $63k and was sold at $57k. Plus they gave us 80% of what we had originally paid for our 2016 Silverado. We were in and out in less than 2 hours. By the way, do you have your title yet?
I had almost the same experience. Trying to buy a Mustang GT on a Saturday. Finally got through all the website glitching to linking account for payment (I wasn't financing the purchase, either). It wouldn't link or couldn't confirm sufficient funds, I can't remember. I then tried their option for a third person to talk to my bank. By this time, I had spent so much time going through the process that my bank was closed. They wouldn't accept screenshots of my account balance, etc. Basically told me to move along if I couldn't electronically link the account, which I still couldn't for some reason.
Long story shorter, I spent 2-3 hours trying to give them $30k+ and finally just gave up. After recent reports of title problems, I'm glad I couldn't finalize the purchase.
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