Is Carmax generally higher, lower, or the same when it comes to appraising your car for versus a traditional dealership? Any experience with Carmax offers vs traditional dealers?

Same or lower. They suck IMHO.

Carmax will ding you more for wrecks.

I'm going to Carmax then Fred Haas Toyota tomorrow. We'll see.

Depends. I actually had a really good experience with Carmax. I had a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee back in 2005. It was a piece of crap, lots of things in need of repair with only 30,000 miles on it. I bought it used from a Chevy dealer with only 12,000 miles on it and it was three years old. So out of warranty. Long story short, I wanted to replace the piece of crap jeep with a Nissan Xterra and Nissan wasn't willing to give me much for my trade in on the Jeep. So they suggested I go to Carmax, sell the Jeep, and come back and buy the Xterra.

While waiting for the offer for the jeep, that was about $1,000 better than Nissan, the sales guy at Carmax found almost the exact Xterra on their lot for about $5,000 less than what the new one would have cost me. It was a year old with 10,000 miles.

I've had nothing but great luck with the Xterra and coming up on 120,000 miles. So I saved at least $6,000 by going to Carmax.

I'm just curious because my 2010 Titan is in great mechanical condition and the interior is like new, but I have a pretty big ding on the passenger rear door. Ok, it's a little more than a ding.

Got a carmax qoute on our old suv and iq autobuyers beat it by 200 then dealer matched with the tax savings. Worked out bout 1k more than dealers were offering on trade

I've had 4 cars appraised there.

2 were a tad low per KBB, but not insulting. Certainly close enough to make me consider.

One was way low.

The other was $700 more than I wanted.

I traded in a car there. It was 3 years old and had 10k miles, and other than a minor scratch on the interior plastic hatch lid the car was in perfect condition,no accidents..etc. The offer was kinda on the lowball side imho, but the transaction went very smooth,handled in just a few hours. It worked for me as all I was getting previously was a bunch of tire kickers not serious about buying the car.

my experience has been they have been about $1,000 more than a dealer trade. Some dealers will match it dollar for dollar, but those are hard to find.

Had a car appraised by them last year for $18,000. Took it to a dealer and they offered $13,000. I was ready to buy a $45,000 truck from that dealer and walked out. They would only budge $500 more from $13k.

Dealers love the "Tax Savings" line, saying your trade is actually worth more. While, yes, the savings is there and benefits the buyer, the dealer is still getting the car for $1k less, just more profit for them. But they make it sound like THEY are giving you this great deal on it. In their defense, I think some salesman actually believe it, like they control taxes.

Henna Chevrolet in Austin will give a guaranteed $500 over any carmaax trade. I did it in June and it was very easy.

Dealer offered $11,500 on my trade in. Carmax offered me $13,200. Dealer came up to Carmax and took the car on trade.

OP,

What are you buying?

I sold a truck to them last summer. KBB was around $24k and the offered me $28k. They even showed me the blue book they looked up. I'm stil not sure why but needless to say I took the offer and walked away.

I'm looking for a CRV or Rav4..a light SUV.

New or used?

I've got a hookup on both in the 'Tine if you want a new one.

username at gmail if you're interested.

[This message has been edited by jh0400 (edited 11/11/2011 9:12a).]

Used, looking to downsize debt.