I wouldn't buy a Tesla from Carmax (I wouldn't buy a Tesla from anyone), but for everything else, it's pretty great. I bought my last car from them online at an extremely sane price, and they delivered it to my door; a few weeks later a better trim of the same car popped up on their site (many hours away), and I was able to exchange without any drama.

I got pretty decent at car buying from dealerships over the years, and I kind of feel like a sucker for playing that game now.

Again: I'm sure you're right that buying a Tesla from Carmax is a terrible idea.

My personal experience was that sites like carmax and vroom had significantly higher mark ups then dealerships and lots of complaints that their “360 inspection” had terrible quality control problems and frequently shipped bad cars.

I can see these sites working for very specific models and trims but overall bad.

Honestly it’s all bad unless you get lucky it feels like.

Vroom and Carvana are shit with mechanical inspections/repairs, but CarMax should be fine; unlike Vroom/Carvana their in-house mechanics operate basically identically to the service center of other dealerships. Also they actually look and drive trade-ins before making an offer.

CarMax should be a little bit more expensive because you're paying for a 30-day return policy and 90-day warranty even if they're not itemized. But like, for the Tesla linked, nearby RWD 2022 Model 3s are priced between $55-60k from other sellers. So that's 5% over the cheapest comparable listing.

> Also they actually look and drive trade-ins before making an offer.

Do they? I brought in a prospective trade-in that had a misfiring cylinder (and thus a perpetually-blinking CEL and a very rough idle) and they were still willing to give me close to the top of the Blue Book range for it.

Recently, or years ago? The market is definitely fucky right now.

Last October, but in any case I'd expect KBB to at least try to reflect the market fuckiness.

Yeah, used cars were nosebleed expensive last October (I bought my last car used in September, and remember feeling bad about the timing, because cars had gotten so expensive that I figured I'd get a much better deal if I held out until this year --- I was wrong about that).

I recommend Manheim Auctions, if you can get access.

Yeah dealers only auction

if ya find a decent price, go for it. The convenience is worth it. Personally I found the cars I was interested in (mostly sports cars) to be incredibly overpriced. I've heard their warranty is good too.

I bought an A6, and while I didn't get the price I'd have gotten from a dealership and running the full weeks-long car-buying process, I got so close to it that running the process seemed like an enormous waste of time and energy. But then I exchanged the car, for basically frivolous reasons, and that experience was so pleasant that it feels like one of the best deals I've ever gotten on a car.