I sent these comments to CARMAX in the hopes that they will re-evaluate there policies and procedures and return to the practices that once made dealing with CARMAX a quality experience.
My first experience with CARMAX (in 2002) was the purchase of our Nissan Quest Van in Roseville, CA. We walked around the lot with only an occasional "May I help you" and when we said were only looking the response was, "If you do need help just grab anyone in a blue shirt". When we did ask for assistance they were very helpful and informative.
We left the lot and came back a few days later. We purchased the Van (with a clean carfax) at a fair price and it has been a great car. It was a great experience.
Forward to 2006 and the purchase of my daughters Honda Civic. With our previous experience in mind we went back to CARMAX for our daughters car (Kansas City, KS). We purchased the car with a supposedly clean carfax.
Within a few weeks we noticed the drivers door having problems, sounded hollow (echo), missing seals, not aligning properly. We went back to CARMAX to have it fixed (twice).
Finally, we went to Honda they told us the car had been in an accident. They fixed the door (foam inserts, seals, realignment, and locking mechanism). We've since had to replace the alternator, and will need to soon replace the front rotors as they are at minimum and can't be turned (although the car only has 50,000 miles on it).
The only good part of this experience was that CARMAX had a better rating on financing than our bank or credit union. The salesperson (no longer worthy of the 'assistant' description) was pushy although we were eager buyers based on our past experiences. And finally, we later found out that we overpaid for the car by 2-3k.
We will share the blame here as we should have been more thorough in our inspection and value of the car since CARMAX did not.
We gave CARMAX the benefit of the doubt as we returned in 2006 while looking for our sons first vehicle. Unfortunately what we found was the following during several trips to the Independence, MO and Kansas City, KS lots:
- Several vehicles we were interested in had either carfax histories with accidents (some with multiple)
- Vehicles with obvious problems (body or mechanical due to accidents) with clean car fax reports
- Unreasonable pricing (during one trip the salesperson allowed us to use an in-house computer to look up pricing via KBB). Even when we showed them the pricing they still wondered why we were not interested in buying the car.
- Extremely pushy salespeople (gathered in groups by the front door, followed us all over the lot, and during consultation salesperson went to get help from manager)
- Forced to enter and exit the lot through the front door (Probably for security reasons, but in 2002 we could walk straight on to the Roseville, CA lot.
In summary, CARFAX has lost what could have been a life long customer.in addition every conversation that we have with family or friends gets a "stay clear of CARMAX' recommendation and our story. I'm sorry that your practices have turned to those of the used car dealership stereotype. You had a wonderful idea and it will be sad to see these types of issues be the demise of your success.
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