Here’s What It Was Like Buying Two Cars From Carvana

Online car dealerships like Carvana often have a bad reputation. In theory, these companies allow you to buy a car entirely online without ever talking to a salesman. Yet, they have also caused all sorts of headaches for drivers across America. I was either brave enough or stupid enough to chance Carvana not just once, but twice. I had such a great time that I don’t think I’ll ever go to a used car dealership again.

Back in January, I did something out of the ordinary for me and got a car that wasn’t at the bottom of its depreciation curve. I picked up a 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata, finally fulfilling a goal I’ve had since driving a Miata ND for the first time at the Chicago Auto Show. To date, it remains one of my favorite cars, and while I was reluctant to get it at first, I’m so happy I did. My wife is, too, as she also now has a flashy car to ride around in.

You might have noticed that, when I wrote my story about the Miata in February, I didn’t mention where I got the car or how much I paid for it. This Miata was one of the rare instances where I got a car from a dealership. But I didn’t choose any random dealership. Instead, it was Carvana. The Miata is now the second car we’ve purchased from Carvana, and I’m convinced I’ll never go to a regular used car dealer again. A lot of it is because Carvana, and companies like it, have strategically eliminated the worst part about buying a used car: the dealership experience.

Buying A Used Car Is Like Pulling Teeth

Being the car writer in my family and friend circle means I’m almost always the first call that a non-car person makes when purchasing a vehicle. I have lost count of how many car dealerships I’ve been in, how many spiels I’ve heard from salesmen, and how many bad deals I’ve seen people willingly sign on the dotted line for. Honestly, I’m so done with it.

My parents usually start their search by calling up some dealers. My parents are usually told what they want to hear, so we pile into a vehicle and drive out. What then occurs is a painful process that takes all day. We find out that the person on the phone wasn’t in the sales department, and the vehicle they said existed had just been “sold.” Then, my parents are offered a list of vehicles that do exist, none of which can tow 7,000 pounds. Sometimes, a dealer just doesn’t have a tow vehicle, even though the person on the phone said there were plenty in stock. So we leave after burning a few hours of time.

In one instance, a salesman insisted with a totally straight face that a new Chevrolet Equinox could tow a 7,000-pound trailer. My parents didn’t know any better, so they didn’t question it. I did know better, and I called the salesman out. For the record, an Equinox tows 1,500 pounds.

Typically, we spend all day at a few dealers just to walk out with nothing. It doesn’t get better when my parents find a suitable vehicle. Now it’s time to negotiate, and remember, they have to negotiate with someone who negotiates for a living. Oh, then there’s the fun of all of the dealer add-ons.

When all is said and done, both my parents and I feel like we’ve fought a long battle, and somehow it feels like we’ve still lost in the end.

I’ve had terrible dealer experiences entirely on my own. In 2012, I saved up enough money to buy my first Smart Fortwo. At first, I tried to get a cheap used one. Every dealer I went to offered me $200 on my trade, a 2001 Kia Rio, and tried marking up the Smart with “necessary” add-ons. The last straw was when I went to a certain dealer and, as I was working out the deal on the Smart, I turned my head and saw a dealer employee doing handbrake drifts in my Kia.

[Ed Note: For the record, I bought my 2021 BMW i3S from a car dealer, and it was easy as pie. I found the car online, I paid the advertised price, and the dealer shipped it across the country to me in California. I also work with Galpin here in LA, and Galpin has a great reputation. But obviously, mileage varies. -DT]

I ended up driving my Kia straight to CarMax, which offered me $750. I then went to Loeber Motors Lincolnwood and drove home a brand-new Smart that night.

Really, the only two pleasant times I’ve had buying a car for myself in a physical dealer were when I bought two of my Smarts new. The only other positive experience I can think of was when Sheryl bought her Scion iQ, but even that wasn’t entirely kosher. If you remember the post I wrote on that experience, I praised the dealership for “fixing” the rusty fender. They actually covered it in Bondo and paint. The repair didn’t even last a year before rust started appearing on the surface again.

So, this is a very long way of saying that I’m so done with buying used cars from dealerships. I don’t enjoy negotiating, I hate hidden fees, and I don’t like burning a whole day just to buy a car. What has worked for me is getting cars from an unexpected source, Carvana.

Carvana Sucks Sometimes

I say “unexpected” because Carvana has an absolutely dreadful reputation. A few years ago, I wrote a dive into all of the ways that Carvana sucks. Carvana’s issues go far back, too. Here’s what I wrote in 2022:

In 2018, Carvana caught the attention of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, specifically the state’s Department of Banking and Securities, Compliance Office. The state says it found that Carvana failed to operate within the state’s Consumer Credit Code. Pennsylvania said Carvana had entered into installment sales contracts with customers since 2014 without having a license to do so. From Pennsylvania’s filing:

The Office contends that Carvana entered into installment sale contracts with Pennsylvania consumers while not licensed as an installment seller in Pennsylvania from January 2014 to present.

Carvana believes it was not required to be licensed pursuant to the CCC for financing vehicle sales if it did not have a dealership in Pennsylvania.

Carvana entered into a settlement agreement with Pennsylvania, where it paid $117,375 in fines in exchange for a Pennsylvania dealer license.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. From my report:

In 2019 and 2020, Carvana customers on Reddit began reporting title delays and sometimes just not receiving a title at all. This apparently escalated to the point when in 2021, Carvana’s handling of vehicle documents became national news. In December 2021, News 4 JAX reported that the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles was suing Carvana because the company allegedly took too long to issue titles and other documents. Florida law requires dealers to turn over title and registration documents to buyers within 30 days, and Carvana was allegedly failing to do that, WFLA reports. According to WFLA, Florida state regulators claim that Carvana’s document issues in Florida went back to February 2020 and even though the state issued titles on time, Carvana took up to eight months to deliver them.

[…]

This meant that customers couldn’t even drive the cars that they purchased. That Florida report mentions similar title issues reported in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In Texas reports look awfully familiar, with customers purchasing vehicles from Carvana in 2020 and apparently only sometimes receiving documents. KPRC Houston profiled a Texas Carvana customer who purchased a 2018 Hyundai Elantra. They were reportedly forced to drive on numerous temporary license plates while waiting for documents from Carvana.

[…]

The Illinois Secretary of State was next to take aim at Carvana. Here in Illinois, dealerships have 20 days to provide customers titles. Like in the aforementioned states, Fox Business reports, Carvana allegedly failed to do that.

On May 10, 2022, the state of Illinois banned Carvana from operating in the state due to the above, in addition to issuing out-of-state temporary plates to Illinois residents, failing to process title paperwork, and failing to use a licensed remitter for temporary plates.

If you thought all of that was bad, there’s also the fact that, as my report pointed out, Carvana has also allegedly sold stolen cars to multiple customers. Don’t think it was just Carvana, either, as the once popular online car dealer, Vroom, also found itself in hot water for the allegedly illegal handling of vehicle title paperwork. Update: Vroom also shut down operations in 2024.

All of that ignores the fact that the car you get might not be in the condition that the website said it was in. Carvana proudly proclaims that it performs a 150-point inspection on every car it sells. Yet, in my experience, Carvana sells cars that clearly fail parts of that inspection. So, at best, the inspection isn’t always as thorough as advertised. There are countless threads on the Internet of people getting broken cars from Carvana.

We Bought A Car From Carvana

To its credit, Carvana did clean up some of its practices. It settled lawsuits, got state bans lifted, and is seemingly doing better about getting drivers their documents. It’s not perfect. Carvana still appears in the news every now and then for title issues or selling an allegedly stolen vehicle, but conditions don’t seem to be as bad as they were in 2022 and 2023.

I’ve also noticed that Carvana has corrected some of its pricing. I track values for Smarts, and for years, Carvana had the worst deals I had ever seen. It was only a couple of years ago when Carvana would seriously try to sell you a 2015 Smart Fortwo Pure with over 50,000 miles for $15,000. That was especially insane when you remember that a new Smart Pure had a price of $13,270 in 2015. Nowadays, the Smarts sold by Carvana are still overpriced, but at least they’re a bit closer to reality.

So then, why the heck are Sheryl and I two-time customers? I just spent so many words talking about why Carvana sucks. As I’ve found out over the years, it is possible to get a decent experience from Carvana; you just have to do some research.

Our first Carvana purchase was in 2021 after my wife had gone through five cars that failed her in a row. Like me, Sheryl quickly grew tired of the used car dealership runaround, so she logged onto Vroom and Carvana and started shopping. Eventually, we landed on a 2010 Toyota Prius from Carvana. We liked this car because it had a great service history, no reported crashes, and had lived its entire life down south.

The Carvana experience was a breath of fresh air. There was no haggling, no high-pressure sales environment, no games, no hidden fees, no etched glass, no TruCoat, or none of that nonsense. The price she saw was the price she paid, plus interest, of course.

Carvana didn’t patent this experience. Saturn was the pioneer of the “no-haggle” dealership experience, and it was continued by the likes of CarMax. Carvana only took the experience online. In doing so, Carvana made buying a car alarmingly easy. The Prius was even delivered to our door for free.

There was no way the Prius actually passed Carvana’s inspection. Carvana said that the Prius had only a few scratches. In reality, the right headlight was a fishbowl of water, one of the 12V sockets did not work, the rear window defroster killed the radio’s antenna when turned on, and the urethane steering wheel had light peeling.

Carvana’s cars ship with a seven-day, no-questions-asked return policy and a 100-day limited warranty. The warranty is administered through SilverRock, and the twist is that SilverRock doesn’t want to pay dealership prices for repairs. So, your warranty is honored only at some car repair chains and some independent mechanics. Also, SilverRock might fight the shop over covering the repair. As one shop owner who wishes to remain anonymous recently told me, SilverRock didn’t cover a CV joint replacement until the joint was actively clicking.

In our case, none of the shops that were approved by SilverRock worked on hybrids. Ultimately, we had the issues repaired by a Toyota dealership, and SilverRock reluctantly agreed to reimburse us. Apparently, SilverRock does fix some things. If your Carvana car has issues that you can’t live with, just use that seven-day return window.

Aside from that hiccup, the Prius was a great car. Sheryl drove that car something like 50,000 miles, and the only issue we ever had with it was a bad 12-volt battery. Otherwise, it always worked without failure. That experience with Carvana turned Sheryl into a fan.

If anything, Carvana makes it too easy to lock yourself into a terrible financial decision by having so few barriers.

Then I Got Another Carvana Car

When I started shopping for the Miata, I visited the normal places like Facebook and used car dealer websites. But the longer I stared at over a dozen listings at dealers across the country, the more I dreaded even picking up the phone. All of those memories of dealing with used car dealers welled up, and I didn’t want any part of it.

So, just like Sheryl did in 2021, I logged onto Carvana. I was in love the second I found the Miata that’s now parked in front of my apartment. It was a one-owner car with fantastic documented history. I even found the original owner of the car on a Miata forum. The price, $18,000, also appeared to be fair, too. I checked as many car value tools as I could find, and pretty much all of them said that Carvana’s asking price was slightly high, but within my car’s private party value range, assuming the condition was as good as advertised

That was good enough for me, so I paid off half the car immediately and threw the other half into financing from my bank. Carvana’s in-house financing had worse terms. Anyway, once again, all of it was entirely seamless. I bought the car online, signed the paperwork online, didn’t have to negotiate, and didn’t have to worry about silly add-ons. I didn’t even speak with a human. It was so good. Could I have gotten a better deal by negotiating? Absolutely, but also, keeping my sanity was worth it.

Carvana was even kind enough to tell me that the Miata was so low to the ground that they weren’t going to attempt putting it on one of its nifty rollback trucks for fear of scraping the bumper. They asked me to pick it up at a nearby Carvana “vending machine.” Amusingly, the Carvana people were also too scared to put it in the vending machine, too. So they parked it in a space outside. You know what? That was cool.

Picking up the car was just as painless as buying it. I flashed my insurance to a Carvana employee, and then he gave me the keys to the car and took my picture. I didn’t get to use the gimmicky vending machine, but I got to keep the giant coin, and I did get to watch a couple literally jump with joy as their Nissan Rogue descended down the tower.

As far as my Miata goes? I wrote about it already, and it’s still just as awesome as the day I got it. Carvana’s condition description was on point, and I’ve needed nothing fixed on the vehicle.

While I’m sure there are enough negative Carvana experiences out there to fill multiple articles, getting two cars from Carvana has gone so well that I don’t think I’m even going to consider a regular used car dealer for pre-owned purchases anymore. That’s how much I’ve been turned off from regular car dealerships.

Do Your Homework

To be clear, the cars from Carvana are not any better or worse than the cars found at typical used car dealerships. Assume your car did not get the 150-point inspection that Carvana advertises. Check the Carfax, Google the car’s VIN, and study the photos very carefully. When you get the car, get it inspected right away. Don’t be afraid to use the return policy and unravel the purchase.

Also, be sure to check the values for the car you want to buy. Carvana still has a problem with overpricing some cars. The risk here is that you don’t want to be so deeply underwater that you’re in the Mariana Trench the second you sign the dotted line. Also be sure to shop around for financing, as you might be able to get a better deal than what Carvana offers. Your bank or credit union might have a decent car financing offer!

If you do your homework, take your time, and shop around, I think it’s possible to have a good Carvana experience. Is this the future of car buying? Honestly, I have no idea. But I know where I’m shopping the next time I want a car that’s not a $3,000 hooptie from Facebook.

To be clear, this isn’t at all an endorsement of Carvana itself. As I detailed above, the company sort of sucks. But the model of selling cars entirely online, no dealership or salespeople needed? Oh, I love that.