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A comment on As Carvana crashes, used car dealers, not buyers, stand to win big. Parent comment

Re:As Carvana crashes, used car dealers, not buyers, stand t... by jeffbee on Sunday December 11, 2022 @11:46PM (#33950979)
The success of Carmax has long been that they are just better on the buy side than anyone else. They are just a large used car dealer with excellent auction buying strategy. It makes sense to buy from Carmax but it doesn't make a ton of sense to sell there. You know they are trying to squeeze you on that side of the deal.

Carmax never loses money. Carvana has never earned a profit. It's sort of a big difference!

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Re:As Carvana crashes, used car dealers, not buyers, stand t... by alex504 on Monday December 12, 2022 @06:33PM (#33962023)
Its funny because my experience has been the exact opposite. I have sold three cars to them in the past 2 years (long story) and all of them were several thousand above what other dealers in the area or carvana/shift/vroom were willing to pay. Every time I got one of their offers I was like, "Huh. Ok".

However in buying cars from them, everything seems a overpriced compared to the local market.

My understanding of it is that they make money by doing used car arbitrage. They knew they could make money on the cars I sold them by shipping them across the country. And I think people are willing to pay a little more to buy a car from them because of all of the guarantees and how painless it is.

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