On October 12th, my fiancee and I decided to buy a used van. We searched online for various models and searched various vendors. One of them was carmax.com. Carmax was offering a 2001 Durango for 12,998. For the mileage, it seemed like a fair price so we decided to call carmax to set things up.
After receiving approval for a loan, which we were excited about, we thought safety might be an issue and decided to go with the Honda Odyssey (At about 4K more).
The salesman said he would run our credit again to see if we were to be approved. I called back after about half an hour and much to our happiness, we were. The Oddysey was in Atlanta and I paid the $400.00 fee to get it up to Maryland.
We wanted to trade in our van. During the appraisal, I asked the salesman to provide me with numbers. I asked directly as to how much I was approved for, and he said "About $17,500." I was disappointed as to no hard number given. I then asked for a price breakdown which he readily gave me.
Price of car: $17,000
Taxes/Title/Registrations/Fees: $1141.85
Which would bring it to $18,141.85
Plus the warranty ($1599): $19,741.00
After the downpayment of 20% of $18,141.85 (About $3600): $16141.00
I'm very wary of being under, then over then back under the supposed loan amount. I asked him as to why that was and he just re-explained the breakdown.
Needless to say, the carmax buyer came back w / a quote of $900.00 to trade-in. I told them I expected about $2800 - $3000 and they explained to me about how they could not make money off of the car. Granted, I really don't care about that part of the business.
Carmax had put the Kelly Blue Book reference on their website as to what we can expect on our trade-in value. Carmax did not follow through.
We tried to see if they could do better, but they refused to budge, stressing that they'd have a hard time selling the car. I was not impressed and very agitated.
A few calls were made to corporate by my fiancee and I ended up talking to the buyer manager at the White Marsh branch. He re-explained the whole process of not making a profit on the car if they bought it and that $900 was a fair price. I told him that the website provides a Kelley Blue Book reference. He said that corporate put it out there because consumers asked for it.
Is that the only reason? I think this is misleading if carmax says to go to Kelley and then come in severely under, and then try to excuse it saying that they have databases running wholesale prices. Then why refer me to Kelley? Why not give me access to carmax's database so I can see how much they're going to screw me over?
In any case, he challenged me to sell the van for about $3000, in a short tone. I asked him to have the selling manager call me.
The selling manager called me a few hours later (this was all on October 26th. I told him of the situation and he couldn't find me in the database until he searched back on October 12th. I asked him what my approval amount was. $12032 was the number approved for the Durango. The credit was never run for the Odyssey.
Why was I told it was run? Why was I told I was approved for the Odyssey? He said because if I was approved for the Durango, then more than likely I would be approved for the Odyssey. So I had paid a transfer fee for a car I wanted to buy but was not approved for. He said he couldn't approve it until the Odyssey was in the lot. This I don't understand.
During this whole course, I did have my $400 transfer fee refunded but there are still unanswered questions. For instance, with the price breakdown, how do I end up way under the supposed approval amount? Why did the salesman just tell me some arbitrary number I was approved for?
If Carmax says to refer to Kelley for a trade-in value, can I not expect that dollar amount from carmax? And what is the deal with pumping the total price of the car PAST the supposed approval amount and then diminishing it with the down payment?
Shouldn't the final price be the amount of the loan approved? Not, here it is then we'll add on some and then subtract the down payment? I will be talking to the sales manager shortly. And keep everyone updated.
Joseph
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