When I decided it was finally time to replace my 15-year-old car, I hadn't even heard of Carvana or the car I ended up buying. I was intrigued by EVs and considering getting a new Nissan Leaf, but the dealer experience was terrible when trying to get a straight answer about the out-the-door price. Plus, while the MSRP was in my price range, destination fees, dealer fees, and actually adding a charger added almost $4000 to the price. Teslas and Bolts were way out of my price range, and used Leafs suffered from terrible battery degradation so it didn't seem worth it.
Eventually after enough research, I came across the Chevy Spark EV. It was a "compliance car" only available in California, Oregon, and Maryland that isn't being made anymore, but it has very dependable batteries and sells for under $11k. Unfortunately, I live in Florida, so it didn't seem possible to actually get one until I came across Carvana.
Carvana made it really easy to shop for this obscure car that only sold 7500 units ever, as I was able to get the color I wanted in great condition with around 15,000 miles. I put my reservation in before the preview was available, and within the same day they already had the virtual tour ready. They were flexible with a pickup day (I decided to use the newly built vending machine in Orlando) and they were always helpful with answering all my questions before picking up the car.
When it came time to actually pick up the car, that's when a few problems began, but they ultimately owned up to all of them. The car shipped without a charger, but luckily I had already installed a level 2 charger in my garage so it wasn't a huge deal. It also came with an uncharged battery, which was a bigger deal since I had to drive it to the dealer to get it inspected and then drive it home. They ultimately had to push back my pickup time by an hour or so and I got a little money back for the hassle. They also mailed me a car charger about a week later. At least trading in my old car went without any issues.
Throughout the trial week, I noticed that two of the tires were missing valve caps and the windshield wipers were bad, so I was able to buy new ones and get reimbursed. Once the trial week was over, they sent me a code for $20 to spend in the Carvana merch store, so that was a cool surprise.
Here's some quick pros/cons:
Pros: Really easy to use and pick out cars, great customer service, vending machine is a lot of fun, get to tell people that you bought a car on the internet and picked it up from a vending machine
Cons: Hit a few snags on pickup day, pictures in virtual tour could be higher definition to better see some of the more minor cosmetic flaws, sometimes takes a few calls to get issues sorted out properly (they always really try to help but sometimes seem to annotate issues wrong or something)
Overall, my car is great and I couldn't have gotten it any other way, so I'd definitely recommend Carvana.
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