BrianB

I may have to sell my car and was wondering if anybody has sold a car to Carmax and did you get a good price?

SunKing

Yes, about 7 years ago I traded my old '88 Firebird for a '96 300ZX TT. They will check over the car pretty good - look at title and any insurance claims against the car. ...then will give pretty close to BlueBook based on that. I was pleased - and best of all it was super easy.

ren274u

I sold my old explorer to them, gave me a fair price, better than what a dealer was going to give on a trade in.

BrianB

Thanx guys, that's good to hear. I really don't have the time nor want to deal with the hassle of for sale by owner. When I sold my '66, I had about 5 people check it out who I think just wanted to drive it and not actually buy it.

USMC0341

Thy will give you a better price if the car is stock, if it's modified they will give you low blue book. I have sold a few cars to them over the years. good luck!

BrianB

Bone stock...Haven't had the funds for any mods. Thanx

V8Mike

When I got my stang I was getting rid of my '98 MaximaSE, 101k miles. I went to carmax just for fun, and they offered me $2500. I laughed in their face and walked out. Same day listed it on Autotrader and sold it within 2 days for $6,000. I would suggest going on a site like autotrader and see what other cars like the one you are selling are going for. If carmax can't get even close to that, then forget it. All together I had to spend about 2hrs. taking pictures, making the post, and reading up on the selling process online, and I made 3500 over what carmaxcircuitcity offered. Was worth it for me.

ctrcbob

I once was going to trade a car at CarMax. I figured my trade was in very good shape. They took my trade to look it over and came back saying that they would give me $2000.00 less than book. Why? Because on the underside of the car, there was a "Dent" in the pan. (Don't know how the dent got there). Dent not seen from inside the car or even outside the car. Only from under the car. Needless to say, I did not do business with them. Have not been back to them, although if I was going to buy a used car, I would consider them, only because they look the car over so good, but you also pay well above going rate.

SonicBlue2005GT

i don't understand why people trade cars in... if you own the title, sell the **** thing yourself and you'll get twice as much.

Import-Slaya

I tried that with my WRX and after six weeks of getting lowball offers (and the D.C. metro area is a big market for imports), I took it to Carmax. 20 minutes later I had a check for $1500 OVER blue book.

BrianB

I don't own the title yet and due to finances, I need to sell it relatively quick and am not getting another car yet. Besides, like I posted earlier, you have those jackasses that aren't serious about buying the car, they just want to "test drive" it. It's hard enough already to have to give her up .

fastduo

Carmax is like every other dealer. They buy low and sell high. The only difference is they will buy your car and most others won't. Get ready for a lowball offer and they are non negotiable.
A friend took his 06 with 3000 miles on it and not a scratch.They offered him $20,000.

BrianB

"Lowball" is putting it lightly. I have 12K, all options except the comfort package and no scratches or dings and they offered me a whopping $19k. WTF? I still owe $27k on it! However, they do have a part time, evening shift position the sales person told me about which will pay enough to help me out of this rut and let me keep my car! Maybe this was a good thing.

dustindu4

I have a dealer's license and I go to the dealer auctions. Selling cars in my driveway is my side job. Easy way to make $500-$3000 a month with doing zero work.

Carmax won't pay you any more money than they would pay at the auction. In fact they are going to buy it from you for less than they would get it at the auction because that is most likely where they are going to sell your car. Expect them to pay you less than trade in value. They value cars using NADA dealer books which the public doesn't have access to.

20k for an 06 GT is the going price. I saw one 2 weeks ago, 06 with 12k miles and it went for $20,900. That's how it is.

Mustang85

Hey guys, I have worked as a Sales Consultant for Carmax for about 4 months now, so I feel like I can contribute something to this thread. I saw a few people above that said they were offered both well over and well under "book" value on different vehicles. Believe it or not, that sounds about right. Let me explain how this works.

Carmax offers their customers wholesale market value for the vehicles they appraise. This means they pay exactly what they would expect to pay for the same car with the same mileage and options at dealer auction.

While the first sentence of this paragraph is correct, the rest of it is not. Carmax will not offer you less than what they think your car will fetch at dealer auction. Carmax hopes to simply break even on customers' cars they sell at dealer auction. They do however make money on the vehicles they recondition and sell on the lot.

While Carmax does have and use the dealer "black" (used for newer vehicles) and "gray" (used for older vehicles) books when appraising vehicles, this is not solely how they value their vehicles. As a matter of fact, the NADA dealer books really don't play a big part in the offer they make their customers. The two big sources of information Carmax uses while making a customer an offer use real time data. They use data from Manheim Auto Auctions (largest dealer auction in the country) and data from Carmax Auto Auctions (3rd largest dealer auction in the country). They can pull up real time information from both servers about what specific vehicles with specific mileages and options are going for at auction at the most recent auctions that were held. I have seen this process a number of times and the information the buyers team has access to is extremely specific.

Carmax does NOT use Kelly Blue Book, or Edmunds, or any of the sources that most people keep quoting as the "book" value for their car. The wholesale market value tends to vary significantly in both the positive and negative directions from what these websites say your car should be worth. Kelly Blue Book is especially inaccurate. It is only updated quarterly, while in reality, the market value for different vehicles changes from day to day depending on supply and demand in the market, gas prices, etc. As a matter of fact, because the value for cars changes so often, Carmax gets new NADA dealer books with updated values every single week!

Anyway, this post is getting alot longer than I meant for it to be - just wanted to clear up what you can expect when trying to sell a car to Carmax.

BrianB

Hey Josh...What Carmax do you work at?

Mustang85

Hey Brian, I work at the Memphis location.

dly

Hey Brian Next time you see Elvis tell'm Howdy for me.

BrianB

I just applied for a part time position at the Oak Lawn store. The sales person I was working with when I got my car appraised said it was a great place to work.

Mark S.

They're in business like everybody else...they will give you the lowest they can give you otherwise they would be out of business. You need decide what you think your car is worth (between Blue Book and Retail) and stick to that price when selling.