Ollie Carman

Review of Carmax, Sterling VA

CARMAX is known for their "No-Haggle" Price and th...

CARMAX is known for their "No-Haggle" Price and they have proved that over and over to me. What you see on the web is the price and that is it. I do have to say that it does eliminate "the dance" of haggling on the price and expedites the process. But that is it.

They are more than willing to take your car off your hands but don't be surprised that your trade gets the low end of the KBB price that you may have looked up online before entering. Once again, there is no haggling there either.

Getting me into a car that I wanted and out of the car that I wanted to trade in was the easy part. However... This is where the negatives start to show themselves.

The cars that they have on the lot, in appearance, look absolutely great. They look and drive well and in the short amount of time that you have to look the car over, you may think that you have a wonderful vehicle right here within reach. But when you do take it how you realize that you did buy a "Used" Car.

In CARMAX' defense they do offer you a 30 Warranty if you do not buy their extended warranty. But you better be ready to go through each and everything that the vehicle has to offer to make sure they make good on the 30 day warranty. But if they actually took the time to run the car throught the paces that they told me that they did with every car that they put on the lot, and the reason why my trade in was so low is because of that additional cost to prove that they are putting good cars on the lot. Well that was not true on the purchase of my new Vehicle.

Within the first three days I found, one recall, a failed Water Pump that I actually smelled antifreeze on the test drive, a missing headrest, interior lights not working, Passenger side Mirror not working.

OK I will give you the water pump, and the recall, because they both fell under the Drive train warranty from the dealership, but a missing head rest? Lights not working?, a Mirror that does n't work? Once again... These are obvious things that could have been corrected before the vehicle went on the lot.

So the end all of this. My excitement of my new vehicle was tempered by the fact that after five days of owning the vehicle it spent the next 10 days at CARMAX getting all of these things fixed.

I do have to commend the Service Department that they called me each and everyday to give me an update on the status of my vehicle. I was not happy about not having my new vehicle and being put in a loaner, but at least I was not forgotten. So that ups the value of CARMAX for me as well.

Overall I would recommend CARMAX to buy or sell a vehicle as a whole, but buyer beware... Make sure you go through the car and make sure everything works. Make sure they are going to fix it for you. After all, a car purchase is probably the second biggest purchase a person makes after a house. You want to know you can depend on the car after all the money that you pay for it.