In July of I purchased a 2005 Mini Cooper S from Carmax, Dulles. This car was advertised on their website and on the window sticker as having leather seats and cruise control. According to the MINI dealership, these items added $1450 to the value of the car when it was new. The car had 7k miles on it when I got it.
On February 7th, I had my car appraised for trade in at the MINI dealership and learned at that time that the seats were not real leather. I was very surprised. On February 8th, I had the same car reappraised at CarMax and the report issued did not incorrectly identify the seats as leather. So, now I have the window sticker from the appraisal report from both with the same VIN on them, and seemingly describing two different cars.
I saw on this website where another buyer had purchased the same year/make/model of car six months earlier with the same issue, and after a lot of runaround, CarMax did cut him a check for the difference in value.
/Auto-Dealers/CarMax-Inc-Aka-CarMa/carmax-inc-aka-carmax-auto-P7DD9.htm
CarMax representatives gave me a lot of different answers (hassle) to my question about this, none of them involved a refund. I am in the process of trying to recover via my state's office of consumer affairs, and will hire an attorney if that does not bring satisfaction.
It is a shame that consumers with similar complaints against the same company on this site can not identify themselves to each other somehow. There are 2 other complaints on this site with misrepresentation of leather seats by CarMax. We would have a great case to argue fraud and receive putative damages in addition to the overcharges and attorney's fees if we could get in touch with each other.
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