Purchasing my GSW from Carvana

Backstory for why I decided to give Carvana a try:
1. I knew what car and what options I wanted. After doing several searches in the 50 miles around me, then 100 miles and even 200 miles around me I realized that there just weren’t that many cars that fit my preferences available.
2. I had a bad experience buying a certified pre-owned Subaru from a dealer outside my area. I did my research, studied the CPO inspection checklist, asked for photos and asked questions about the specific car and checked the Carfax. I put a $1000 deposit down over the phone, made travel arrangements and made my way to the dealer to pick up the Forester XT and drive it home. When I arrived I immediately noticed that something wasn’t right about the front end of the car. It had been hit moderately in the front and the bumper was filled and painted poorly to hide the scrapes and Camry dent, and photos were taken at angles that didn’t show how badly panel and headlight alignment was. This forester also had the common leak between the CVT and the engine. I didn’t even get into the car or take it for a test drive, none of those problems can exist on a car being sold as Subaru Certified Pre Owned.
3. I wanted to find a car that wasn’t from the rust belt – where I currently live. I personally apply rust preventative annually to my cars and ideally didn’t want to get one that already had the startings of corrosion. Checking a few local cars some were worse than others.

My experience so far with Carvana has been pretty good. Their website isn’t that great but I was able to use a search word on their desktop site that returned only the model and year I wanted. Some time had passed from my initial dealership experience and I realized that buyback TDI’s were showing up regularly. For whatever reason the search results on mobile site were not the same and didn’t work well for me, searching TDI would come back with all sorts of not TDI’s. I kept my eye out for the trim package I wanted and then checked to see if the specific option was there. Carvana does have filtering for specific options but I didn’t find it to be very accurate.

After a few weeks, a car matching what I was looking for came up as coming soon or on demand. This meant the car was in line for prep and Carvana listed it as 12 days out from being ready. Coming soon cars don’t have photo’s posted but do list options and miles. As a buyer you can reserve or hold the car to get first dibs when photos are available, they ask for $100 down and give you a 48-hour window to check the photos when they are available before releasing the car to others. I did that and was happy with the photos – one paint chip was pointed out on the rear bumper. Since I decided to move forward the next few days were uploading the standard stuff to arrange for the sale.

Carvana was actually able to get through the 12 days faster and it was more like 9 to the earliest available delivery date. I selected a date – this past Monday – and waited. Carvana takes payment only after the car is delivered, not even that first $100 deposit was pulled from my account.

The car showed up pretty much exactly on time, I got a call at 9:45 from the driver and I had a 10 am appointment. The driver arrived at 10:15 just like he said. The car looked and smelled good and I did a quick walk around with the driver there. I did spot a few cosmetic imperfections that were not in the photos and the driver told me to email Carvana about it, so I did. I also had made a pre-delivery inspection appointment – I highly recommend this to anyone buying a used car! Carvana had contacted me a couple of times between the initial reservation and the delivery, on some of these calls I was able to get some details about their inspection that they don’t share on the site, like some of the repairs they made. I’m happy to share all the details of what I found but am saving the wall-o-text for another post if anyone wants to hear.

Tuesday morning I dropped the car off for its inspection. On the way there the tire pressure light illuminated and the sun showed that the windshield was scratched up badly from the wiper arms. I emailed the inspection report with those details to Carvana and now I am waiting for their 24-48-72? Hour response time.

All Carvana cars come with a 7 day / 400-mile test drive where you can send the car back for a full refund if you don’t want to keep it.

Here it is waiting!

Tdi


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how'd they do price wise?

Price wise Carvana isn't awesome compared some of the deals I've heard about on this forum, and some GSW's I've seen in person for cars at dealers that turned out to be cars I didn't want to buy.

This car has 30k and was $18k before taxes. I was able to get a referral discount for an additional $500 off from someone like me that had them to share - I'll have a couple to share after my 7 day test drive.

Locally to me, the car is a good deal, in a 250 mile radius there were 2 similar cars, one was asking $20500 and another was $23000. I almost drove 100 miles one way to check out a used car dealer that listed having one for $16900, luckily I was able to notice in their fuzzy photos that it was an SE listed as an SEL and while the dealer swore up and down over the phone that it was an SEL with possibly the wrong wheels. When I had more free time I was all about the thrill of the hunt, spontaneous road trips and test drives, so far I've enjoyed having the car brought to me.

It really comes down to how the TDI's are priced in your area.

I bought a MK7 GTI through Carvana a couple of years ago. The sales experience itself was positive. Clearly that used car market needs a breath of fresh air. However, after having issues with the title post-sale and having paid off the car, Carvana was dazzlingly incompetent. It probably took 50 phone calls and 2-3 batches of paperwork to get the problem with the title resolved. I think the problem is that they sell into so many different regions that their title team doesn't have any idea how to deal with issues that come up because they don't know the specific states' laws. It was an extremely painful 3 month process to sort this out. Hope everything goes smoothly for you. No more Carvana for me!

I've never heard of Carvana. Thanks for sharing. I assume this is a car buying service kind of like Vroom.

@dasjefe I did do some research about Carvana before pressing buy, and I came across a few instances where they had a title issue, so you are not alone. This car came with a GA temp tag, I don't know if Carvana operates in all states or not but its true that they are all different rules. I made sure to double check all the generated bill of sales to make sure they didn't start out with an error. I will post back how that process progresses.

One of the experiences I had with their customer service department was during a phone call they made to me during my 48-hour preview, they asked if I had any questions about the car, and of course, I was prepared with a list of things they really couldn't answer - and I would have been impressed if they did.

I had checked out the photos of the car the night before, one paint chip was noted and there was a standard disclaimer about used cars have wear and tear and it is to be expected. I asked if the tires were all a matching set and the rep wasn't able to answer as it wasn't in their system. She was able to see that Carvana did install only 2 new tires, and through zooming in at each different wheel we were able to conclude that the two new tires didn't match the old ones. Worse off they were an off brand, and worse yet they were not all season like the old ones. The rep was also able to tell me what the measured tread depth was during their inspection and that one of the two rear was more worn. I think it was 5/32 in on that one.

I did my own tire inspection when the car arrived and I need to admit that I am a tire nerd. All tires were the correct size, the front two were the new 'Sailon' brand tires carvana installed. The rear 2 tires were the original Pirelli P7's. The right rear tire was the more worn one and it was unevenly worn, tapering to below 4/32 on the outside edge. The left rear had a slight bit of feathering on the inside edge and was obviously plugged.

The 1st day I only took the car on a 2 mile quick test during delivery. On the 2nd day I drove the car to a local shop and on the drive there the TMPS warning came on in the first mile. There was a nail in the left rear.

Please resize these photos.

I changed the images to be sized friendlier for those on mobile or low resolution

mopower said:

I changed the images to be sized friendlier for those on mobile or low resolution

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Thank you!

Quick update. I got a response back from Carvana and they have agreed to mitigate all the suggested items including replacing both rear tires as the inspection requested.