Buying a car with Carvana

Recently our old car finally went down. Years ago the trade was worth $500 so I was happy to get $500 for it now. Though what a terrible time to buy a car with dealerships having low inventory.

We ended up going with Carvana because we could see what the actual price of the car, plus taxes, title, etc was going to cost us. Have you tried looking online at a dealership to see if they have a car you want? We were looking at some base models that had an MSRP in the range we were comfortable. When we browsed a few of the local dealerships they all had “MSRP: xx,xxx” but no actual price. When I reached out, with a link, even a VIN of a car I wanted they still couldn’t tell me the price they were selling it at. I had to drive there to see the actual car, as they may be reusing a listing with the same make, model, trim. With one dealer I did get them to tell me they were doing ‘market adjustments’ between $3,000 to $7,000 on top of the MSRP. The same dealer had a ‘dealer fee’ of $899 hidden in small text on their website.

The Buying Process

We had already been looking at EVs on Carvana to get an idea of those prices and alerts if one popped up so I already had an account. We didn’t end up getting an EV. Once my wife and I settled on a car, and played with the down payment to monthly slider we hit the buy now button. We started through the process which included filling out the typical name, address, drivers license stuff. It did have us move to their mobile application to make it easier taking pictures of my drivers license and uploading it. It was probably 20 minutes of my time spent. Like all dealerships they offered a handful of warranty options and even mentioned the current powertrain warranty and the one Carvana comes with. There wasn’t really any pushiness to pick one of the additional ones. We completed the electronic paperwork and went to bed.

The car we picked was to be delivered in 3 days time. So there were a few other tasks we had to complete. The first thing was Carvana wanted to verify we actually had the funds we were committing to the downpayment. They offer Plaid which can work with some banks to instantly verify, unfortunately it did not work for my bank. I called, got a Carvana person on the line pretty quick and we did a 3 way call with the bank. “Can you confirm that Jeff has at least $[downpayment] in the account ending in [last 4 digits of the account number]”. The bank said yes and that was it. The other task was to provide proof of insurance. The have some sort of affiliate insurance company they offer, but the prices were not competitive with my current insurance. I uploaded the proof of insurance and they were accepted.

Delivery Day

Next up was delivery day. The Carvana delivery driver showed up a few minutes early to our scheduled time. He unloaded the car, asked for my drivers license and proof of insurance. While he was completing paperwork on his end, I looked over the car and took it for a test drive. The car was great. Once I got back, we looked it over much closer, made sure we knew how to open the gas cover (is there a button? do you push it in and it pops out?, etc) and anything else. We agreed that we will take possession of the car. After that, I went inside and electronically signed the title paperwork.

7 Days

We had 7 days to return the car. Once the days were up, they filed the paperwork with the state we live in for the title and registration. Today the registration and license plate showed up and we are all good.

There are news stories in Florida, and other states about title and registration issues when buying a car with Carvana. I was a bit worried we would be one of those people, but it doesn’t look like thats the case. I was able to verify with the state the title and the names on the registration are good.

Improvements Carvana Could Make

There were only a couple of things I found confusing during the time we were buying the car.

1. Once we got a quote from the insurance company they offer, and declined, a second ‘verify insurance’ task popped up. One was ‘Insurance verification’ and the other was ‘Insurance Verification’. Notice the capital ‘V’ on the second one. I uploaded the same document to both, so maybe it was just an edge case. See the screenshot below.
2. On delivery day, hours before the delivery, I received the title documents to e-sign with instructions ‘sign these and we will tell you the next steps’. a. I am not going to sign the paperwork for a car before I accept it. b. Part of it was verifying under the penalty of perjury the mileage was accurate. Waiting to sign the document didn’t cause any issues, it was just confusing.
3. When we were originally looking at EVs before seriously considering buying a car. I went through the pre-approval process that doesn’t hit your credit. Even after we bought the car, I still get their marketing emails for that pre-approval. Its like when you view a product on a big box website and ads for that product follow you around the internet after you went and bought it in store. Except here, I still purchased it online so they should know to stop emailing me.

Finishing Up

Overall I am very happy we went with Carvana. The process was quite smooth. There weren’t any pushy sales people trying to close the deal, we knew how much we were paying for the car and the monthly payment before we even started the process to buy the car. The total time I spent dealing with the ‘buying process’ was probably a little over an hour. No sitting around waiting for the finance guy to finish up with the person before us.