KBB is garbage. Sets you up with a price dealers are supposed to meet. Then the dealership finds a scratch or a scuff on the seats and they're right back to what they would have offered, which is crap and insulting. It's a literal bait and switch, and empty promises to get people to start the process they otherwise likely wouldn't have.
That said, I recently used it with my bmw. The participating dealerships basically ignored the number sent to them and all wanted me to take the car it so they can "verify" the vehicle. Most pretty much said I could bring it in and they can look it over, which means deduct thousands off of that number because it was misrepresented (which is bs, I was very open about issues on a 14 year old car, which were all cosmetic except for the tires). I said no to all of them, but one said they'd send someone out to my house to look at it. He actually gave me a reasonable offer even though he completely ignored the number that he was supposed to honor, and I almost took it. But then I resubmitted the KBB offer on a whim and my valuation went up somehow only a week later. Since it sent it automatically to 3 local dealerships, they all reached out like before, but now I had an offer to work with. I sent it to one of the others and they said they'd beat it and I got another $700 out of it without them even looking at it first since they "guaranteed" they'd buy it out from under the other guys. It was ironic because they actually ended up pretty close to what KBB said dealerships would pay me, but I had to work the system on my own to get to that point that had nothing to do with KBB in the end.
So it's not entirely useless, but it is garbage in terms of anyone actually honoring the price they throw at you.
That said, even though the price I got was reasonably fair, I miss that car and regret selling...
