I purchased a BMW 535i from Carvana. Why? A few reasons:
1) I didn't want to visit one of 20 dealerships near me with a similar car. I don't have time for that.
2) Carvana makes a lot of big promises about being accident free and going the extra mile.
3) Great car photography.
4) Purchasing a vehicle from a website sight-unseen seemed like fun.
Overall Experience: B-/C+. Car worked out, but they're still not ready to be a prime time public company.
The UGLY
THE CAR WAS IN AN ACCIDENT. Now, Carvana claims they sell only accident free cars, but 1) CarFax report and 2) My independent mechanic inspection confirmed the same thing. The car had been hit, and the bumper had been repainted and repaired.
Dirty Car — The car was very dirty upon delivery. I mean, just straight dirty. Wheels were dirty, front mirror had a bunch of grime on it. Interior hadn't been vacuumed and crevices dusted. There was what looked like sand everywhere, and it required an expensive detail to get things semi-satisfactory. Carvana paid for part of it, but it did not cover the full cost of the issues.
The BAD
Shipping Delays — My car was rescheduled for delivery 4 times over 3 days. At a certain point, I wasn't sure it was coming. Multiple people who didn't work with each other at Carvana called, which added to the confusion. One would schedule, then another one would call trying to reschedule clearly not having spoken to the first. All because they discovered a "cracked passenger mirror." One would have thought that after this 150-point inspection and a purchase of $30,000+ car, that this would have been fixed earlier. It was very disruptive for someone who had to reschedule and re-adjust meetings multiple times.
Mediocre Service — Carvana service was…OK. Not great. But OK. They asked for me to send them information by email due to some of the issues (dirty car images, receipts for cleaning, etc.), and I would not receive a response for 3 or 4 days until I followed-up with a phone call.
No Service Manual — On the website Carvana promises that cars come with a User Manual. Mine did not.
More mileage than advertised — the car had about 150 more miles than on the website. Normally, that would not be much of an issue, but there is a difference between 35,000+ miles and 34,900.
No 7-Day Return Guarantee Call — I was told they would call on day 6 to see if I wanted to keep the car. No one contacted me. Not to check in, not for anything. Now, I am going to keep the call, but a courtesy call, as promised multiple times, would be nice.
The Good
Car Looks Great — I was pleasantly surprised in that the car looks better in person than in the pictures (once cleaned and such).
Easy Purchase Process — Yeah, they do make it pretty dang simple to buy a car. It will be the future of car-buying.
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