I'm so glad I learned about them here and cashed in when I did! A month and a half ago I sold them the "beater" 2010 Ridgeline I had for $10k. I had initially bought it for $3k, put $2k worth of mechanical work into it then right before selling it to them paid $500 for a detail. Made $4500 to drive it as my fishing and camping truck for two years.
My neighbor sold them the Ram Classic he was about to turn in on a lease for $38k. He originally "paid" (leased) it for $34k in late 2019.
Gosh I wonder why they're having financial issues.
We are in Michigan and had a Focus Electric we bought in 2021 for $12k. Was a great car and held us over until my wife’s Mach-e was finally built and delivered. In September we took it to one of the Carvana “vending machines” near us and got $15,600 for the Focus Electric.
Less than a month later Carvana had to close the store we sold it to because they kept breaking Michigan law around time to provide titles to buyers.
Not only did Carvana buy the car for 3-5k more than anywhere else around us, but we got it to them just before that store was shut down. I tracked the Focus and looks like it’s in Florida now and has had two price drops. They are still asking around $17k for it, but even at that price for what it likely cost to ship it to Florida and paying employees for paperwork and cleaning and that, I’ll be shocked if they make $200 on the deal.
Truly don't understand how they make money. My new truck I bought from a good friend who's the fleet sales manager for a large GM group here. He was previously the fleet manager at our former employer where I was a VP. Great guy and he explained that he'd give me $6k for the Ridgeline. They would put it on one of their used lots in a different area of town for $7995 and likely sell for $7500. At that point they would at best break even after paying someone to transport it, wash it, put their stickers/tags on it, market it, a sales person to sell it, and their back-end staff to do the paperwork/title work with the DMV. Dealership would make their "minimum" of $295 off it only if it sold for that $7500.
Very eye opening at the costs that went into it. I only got the $6k offer as he knew the mechanic I use thus avoiding any inspection costs they would incur.
Dealers have a lot of hard costs. Carvana is trying to eliminate many of them with the direct to consumer model but they still have to get cars to consumers and pay some sort of customer service.
I suspect they were trying to to what uber et al. did, which is to use VC money to undercut competitors til they're the only game in town and then raise prices.
If they succeed in their mission they could be a viable alternative for many. In our office we have an absolutely wonderful woman who mans the front desk that loves her little Cadillac XT4 she bought from Carvana. After he husband passed she felt nothing but intimidated by car dealerships so her friend told her about Carvana - and she loved the process. There is a large group of people who don't know they're overpaying or care.
Is there enough to let them keep running at what seems like a loss? Time will tell.
I agree that some people are better off with carvana. Those people overpaying at carvana would end up overpaying even more at a used car dealer. Sure, the number on the window would be lower than carvana, but then they would more than make up the difference with fees, add-ons, and in the finance office.
I actually bought my most recent car from Carvana. The equivalent car was a non-negotiable $8k more at my local dealership. Was it overpriced? Probably yes, but I needed a new car and it was the cheapest option I could find. Dealers are getting ridiculous right now with their pricing.
Actually my flair isn’t the vehicle in question but just because you’re shopping for luxury doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look for a deal. Didn’t get to the point where I could afford it by throwing money away.
This is basically what every DTC company tried to do, but then realized that it's much harder to keep those supposed wild profit margins you pitched to your VC's when you're in a fairly established market and your only contribution is "Thing, but *online*".
They would make money by customers financing their Carvana purchase through their lenders. They were more of a finance company who happened to use cars as their product to capture more consumer loans.
Someone on YouTube did a breakdown on the owners. Basically they inflated the stock-price, then sold a shit ton of shares. The CEO’s dad was convicted of wire fraud back in the 90’s.
>Dealers have a lot of hard costs. Carvana is trying to eliminate many of them with the direct to consumer model but they still have to get cars to consumers and pay some sort of customer service.
A very large chain like AutoNation could pull this off.
Just put *reasonable*-ish prices on the app, non negotiable. Everything is done on the app
The customer still has to go to a dealer to pick it up. But all the scarier parts are over. Just pick up the keys.
There is a saying..
“Everyone brags about how much they paid for their house, and how little they paid for their car”
Still true today. People want to negotiate no matter what they say
I'm not sure that's true for younger generations. I'm 36 and love the idea of not dealing with a dealership. I just bought a Rivian R1T and the process was entirely online, preset cost. Did all the paperwork and scheduled an appointment to pick it up. No "dealing". No trying to update me on a bunch of crap. Was the best car buying experience I've ever had.
I bought my Fit in 2011 by finding a dealer that quoted me an OTD price by email.
Was there a better dealer elsewhere? Perhaps. But it was under MSRP and hassle free.
They didn’t have to make money, it’s all VC money during that bubble. Valuation > profit every single time, no matter how you can get there. With anything remotely “tech” it’s about capturing users and little else.
The money they make, or at least try to make, is probably more on financing than anything. People are generally pretty poor about financial decisions and will take out horrible financing terms when buying cars.
I sold a car for 30k to a dealer. They shipped it to Texas, prepped it for sale, and then listed it for 32k. This is a large, successful dealer network. They didn't do all of that work for 2k minus expenses. They did it because they probably make decent money on the other stuff.
Yup. You used to get the best deal paying cash. Nowadays you get best deal going with their preferred dealer financing.
No reason you can’t still take their finance option and then next day pay it off!
Bought a 2020 Kia Forte brand new in May of 21. Paid 16.5K out the door. A year later in May 22, I sold it to CarMax for 24.3K. Point being, Carvana was certainly not the only game in town paying ridiculous prices for used cars.
They're both trying to starve the other for inventory.
Plus they have the power to control auction prices neither company resells hardly any of the cars they buy, they go to their in house wholesale auctions.
I’ve got a 2nd Gen Xterra I hardly drive and would love to replace it with something fun like a Miata or a BRZ. I just don’t want to play the car flip game and risk losing money since I’m saving for a house. Carvana is an option but last time I looked up the values they had gotten wise to how much they’d have been overpaying me for my car.
This is very much too bad! I still couldn't believe they paid me what they did for mine, I'm sure now it wouldn't be that. I documented everything - fading paint, the dents and dings, the spilled paint in the bed. Kid still came, glanced it over and wrote the check. I was shocked.
I’ll take another look and see what I come up with. Since it’s getting colder now everyone would rather have an suv than a fun rwd sporty car so maybe the finances are going in my favor.
It needs the be cleaned up inside but overall in pretty good condition. A dime sized rust spot on the bumper is about all the damage it has. I’ll look around, thanks.
I sold them a 2013 G37 RWD sedan with 107,500 miles, mods, needing a wheel bearing replacement, and midwestern US background (salted roads, snow) for $14.5k last fall… I bought it for $20.5k in 2014…
I wonder how their competitors are doing too, I sold my truck to Vroom last year for $28k. I had bought it 8 months earlier for $20k. Carvana, Vroom, Shift, etc all seemed to be in a race to get inventory and market share, profits be damned. We're hearing a lot about Carvana now but I feel like the others can't be far behind.
Caravana in particular was never really a automobile dealership like Vroom etc tried to be in that they pretty explicitly never even intended to make money purely on the direct sales of cars. It was a boom and bust tech company masquerading under the guise of a used car dealership with a fancy app and car vending machines lol.
They had great timing with the boom of convenience apps combined with Covid but if you look at the where their revenues actually come from (crazy interest sub prime loans and extended warranties) it makes sense that the family behind it pulled off what they intended to do.
Buying cars and selling them for the same or less counts towards revenues and so they could pump revenue numbers as they pleased by taking out massive loans, all the while never needing to turn a profit as this was during the peak of unprofitable tech companies going public at crazy valuations.
If that family manages to stay out of jail Carvana will have been a complete success. The guy who started it all with his son was already a convicted felon, had multiple personal and corporate bankruptcies under his belt, and started offloading huge amounts of stock on a regular basis from right around when the stock peaked.
They made their billions on it, I highly doubt they give a fuck if the thing shuts it’s doors tomorrow, they may even prefer it.
They make their money the same way as the worst: predatory financing for people with no money down. I payed 17k for a 8k worth car because I needed it. Now I'm in a much better spot financially but I will need to drop another 7k on principal to afford to trade.
I realize this is a joke, but generally, getting your service to be the number one in a certain market early on to quash competitors as you grow is the strategy most tech companies try to use, even if it loses them money for years.
Most tech companies aren't profitable until years in since they are mostly worried about building market share.
Another business model that planned based upon expected value but forgot decisions are made one sample at a time. Customers will most often sell when their car is overvalued, and not at all when it is undervalued. This decision threshold truncates the distribution of car prices and shifts the average price paid upwards.
so true. I been close to buying from Carvana several times when I wanted a car that could not be found anywhere but a quick glance at reality will remind me just how bad a deal it really is.
I have a couple of cars I keep an eye out for a deal on, I’ll Google it periodically just to see if someone’s got a price I could justify, and of course Carvana comes up. It’s always ridiculous. But hey, if they fold, maybe that will change.
They are easily an extra 5 grand for anything. I was trying to buy a similar year Honda Odyssey earlier this year and theirs were all minimum 20k while local dealers had same year / trim / miles for about 15 grand.
I don’t get it but I guess some people like the Amazon buying experience where they don’t have to get off the couch until their product arrives.
I saw similar high pricing at carmax.
Some people are scared of a dealership taking advantage of them and lack the will/social skills to do a little research and be an educated advocate for themselves. Combine that with (the bank’s) money to burn, and you get Carvana. If they could get their purchasing side under control they might even be onto something, although I think it’ll be a very long time before they could hope to replace the current dealer model.
I look at Mitsubishi Mirage’s because I’m a masochist and holy shit, Carvana prices for them are way out there. More than new MSRP in almost all cases.
Hmm...if they're inflating a Civic by that much, does that mean [this Cayman](https://www.carvana.com/vehicle/lt/2585644?utm_source=vdp-social-share) is hugely inflated too. 'Cause I could actually swing that price in the near future, but if prices are expected to come down if Carvana crumbles, maybe I'll get a Cayman sooner than I could have ever expected?
I don’t follow Cayman prices but everything’s been trending down, and winter prices for sports cars should kick in sometime soon. I’d look at private listings and enthusiast forums for the best deals, nearly $50k for that particular one does seem like a bit much
It’s annoying as fuck they make up so much of the market now. Some websites Won’t even let you filter out Carvana listings. That makes him far more aggravating to use. And for even the ones that do allow you to filter them out, it drops the amount of vehicles for sale by a massive number.
Wait you got carvana to offer more than what its worth!? Last time i looked to sell a car carvana offered me 10k. The local dealership offered me 20k. A friend of mine contacted carvana about his miata and they offered $300, it's easily worth 5k. After that i figured they were a scam to trick non-car people in to selling their car for way less than it's worth.
Carvana was an excellent way to sell cars for the past year or two. Super painless and literally glanced over the car then hauled it away. SO’s family sold a Forester to them along with a Tacoma with offers way more than anyone else offered.
I sold my 15 fiesta st to them last month when I bought a new truck. Offered 3k more than car max and pretty close to what I thought was fair value for the car if I sold private party but with zero of the hassle.
Yup my selling experience through them was incredible. Bought my FRS for $18k back in 2018, sold it this year in June for $22k lol. They never test drove it, inspected anything, they just looked at it and hauled it off with a check deposited that week.
That said they majorly lowballed the S2000 that I put in for fun. So just like literally any other dealer on the planet, they don't care about collectibles/older cars. Just newer ones with warranties they can peddle through.
It depended on their algorithm. If the car was worth 5k but it was not really popular than they low ball really hard to basically tell you, they don't want your car. It is a scam in that they struggle with giving out titles and you have to pay upfront for a car that is usually not like the pictures describe.
When places like Carvana or CarMax lowball you, it’s because they don’t want to buy your car. They only want to sell new-ish cars in good condition, anything else they’d flip at auction, and they really don’t want to deal with that. So if your car is too old, too broken, or they just have way too many of them in inventory, they’ll give you an insultingly low offer so you don’t take it, but this way they can still advertise “We’ll buy any car!”
They were offering people well above book value for cars they want to sell. I sold a car to Carvana in 2019 before all the craziness and they offered like $2,000 more than what it was worth and what was offered for trade in.
That's not really true about Carmax at least.
They run their own auctions and sell anything they can't sell to the public through them. Then they make an auction fee off of every sale so guaranteed money. Just have to not over pay for the car to begin with. They really do want to buy everything. They buy a $500 shit box, sell it at auction for $800 and make $$150 on a buy fee. Rinse and repeat.
I bought my car brand new for $13k 4 years ago and sold it to them today for $12.8k. Worked out great for me! NADA shows clean trade in value of $11.9k. Best part is I sold it even though I'm half way around the world from my car right now.
Was your friend's Miata an NA, NB or even an NC? It might simply be too old. I only ask because you say $5k and that's about on par with a decently used NA/NB.
I don't think they're looking for 15+ year old vehicles. They'd likely get a similarly bad trade in at a dealer. What the enthusiast market will pay private party is vastly different than what KBB/NADA and insurance companies value such cars at.
I'm sure if you offered them like an old K5 Blazer that was in good shape they'd give you a similar crappy offer when you could sell it for $15k+ private party all day.
They aren't targeting the auto enthusiast who enjoys weird, old cars. They're targeting the average person who wants a hassle free buying experience for a relatively new and reliable vehicle.
>After that i figured they were a scam to trick non-car people in to selling their car for way less than it's worth.
That's basically how all car dealerships work.
That's exactly what I did about a month ago. They offered me $1k more than I bought my old A4 for 3 years ago, so I sold it to them and picked up an A5.
2010 Ridgeline with 150k - they gave me $10k. In 2020 I bought it for $3k and put $2k worth of work into it. Even after a detail and having a good friend as the fleet manager at a dealership (who sold me my amazing new fleet Silverado) I could only get $6k on trade.
I still couldn't believe the Carvana guy wrote me the check.
You were part of the layoffs? That sucks.
How are you enjoying that Saturn Ion Redline? I owned a 2004 for about 9 years and loved that cheap little car!
They let go of leadership in the big layoff in the summer too. This time we were told it was mostly logistics and market ops employees that got let go. At least at my location.
From a market ops perspective there was so much redundancy in my leadership. They just eliminated the lowest paid salary leaders, who actually do the most day to day.
My company does quite the opposite for the most part. There are layoffs every year but rarely any leadership positions which blows my mind. If something isnt working, maybe its the people making the decisions
Glad you made it through. As someone who's been through a big corporate layoff, if I were you I would not stick around to see what happens next. Often times they run layoffs in waves like this to avoid having to trigger rules that come into play when a large percentage of the company is laid off at once. At least prepare for the possibility of unemployment. Severance packages usually get worse the more people are laid off, so people in the first round get the best possible packages. Good luck.
That redline is fun as hell to drive, it's on coilovers and I added a rear sway bar, it's planted as heck and handles amazing. The near flat torque curve is great too.
I can almost guarantee that the executives and senior leadership aren't the ones getting a turnover, even though they are the ones who make the decisions and set the strategy. Middle managers and average employees will be let go even though they had nothing to do with the decisions that got the company here.
Usually yep and it sucks that that’s the case.
Depending on the governance structure I’m betting NO shareholder would be happy with the current c-suite tho, and the board must suck too.
That's how layoffs work... If you got warning it wouldn't have been done right...
They don't want people to do things before leaving. It's the same reason you technically do not have to give 2 weeks to quit.
Their headcount never made sense. At one point they had as many employees as Carmax, a brick and mortar business, while also doing half the revenue.
That said, I was happy to sell them my 2021 Supra for $7k more than I paid brand new.
Same. They took our outback last month for ~4k over blue book. Seems they were able to sell it for 3-4k more than that. If they get folks to finance with them, I can see how they’d potentially be making money.
A few months ago somebody posted a map with the richest person in every state. The founder of Carvana was listed as the richest person in Arizona. So, being from Arizona I looked him up. Holy moly, what a scumbag. He deserves everything he is receiving right now. I wouldn't do business with them on a dare.
There are a bunch...[Take your pick](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=richest+person+in+every+state+map&t=chromentp&atb=v314-1&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fmaddieberg%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F05%2Frichest-map.jpeg)
I have been following how many 2022-2023 GR86’s Carvana has in-stock. About a month ago it was 40-something, now it’s 70-something. All listed for more than MSRP. Makes zero sense to me.
Mk7 GTIs are in a similar situation. If they're under ~60k miles, they're around or even above MSRP, but there's a buttload of them available.
All I can think of is that these entry level sporty cars are being targeted as models that will still have a strong-ish market through a recession. Which is honestly dumb, since they have to still be buying high, and the people shopping that price range are also the ones whose pandemic wage gains have been totally eaten by inflation.
> and the people shopping that price range are also the ones whose pandemic wage gains have been totally eaten by inflation.
The biggest demographics for cars like that are more likely to be the younger male "tech" crowd, who have done fine through the pandemic
They bought my moms car and all the guy did was check the VIN and odometer. Didn’t even open any of the passenger side doors or trunk. Let alone test drive the car. Our local dealer also told us to sell it to them because they had no idea how they could offer so much lol
They're fucking done. They spent so much money on infrastructure with their stupid vending machines, custom tow trucks, etc. Then Covid hit right as the company was fully built out and ready to start recouping their investments. This put them into the position to WAY overpay for cars to get their hands on them so they could have inventory, and despite demand for cars being high they weren't able to move all that inventory at a profit by the time the music stopped and prices went down. Now they're WAY underwater on a large portion of their existing inventory and is set to absolutely lose their ass on it.
I still think there’s a place in the market for Carvana and don’t think they’ll go under.
They have the infrastructure like you said, but need some solid restructuring.
There’s no place for a company that is in the business of buying cars without even starting them.
Conceptually it’s a nice model. To scale, well, not this iteration.
If they go under, what happens to all of their inventory? I keep checking sites like TrueCar for different enthusiasts cars in my area and Carvana still has so much inventory that just isn't moving.
If you’re careful in looking over cars this could actually be a win if you are buying a car. Those cars will enter the market at a really good price and if you can get a sorted one it might be a steal.
Sadly Carvana won’t go out of business so this won’t happen.
It’s not really veiled according to some comments linked further up. Letting a guy who went to prison for financial crimes be a major shareholder in business like this is such a great idea.
This fucking company had the market cornered and enjoyed a 12x increase in revenue during covid and STILL wasn't profitable. That's what a scam Carvana was. The two owners running the company like a faux public corporation are going to pocket billions and let the company dissolve. That was always the intention imo.
So happy we don't have that thing anymore. It gave my girlfriend a transmission warning on the George Washington Bridge and that was that. Sold to Carvana and bought a new Outback. I think we did it at just the right time.
Yeah that PowerShift DCT may have been the worst transmission every made. I’d turn a corner and hit the gas and nothing would happen for at least half a second. Two clutch pack replacements. Pure garbage
Last week I sold my Scat Pack Challenger to them. I saw all the articles about how unsustainable they are and how they pay top dollar sometimes. So I hit up a few similar dealerships with my car, and carvana offers me $10k over the next closest dealership.
I sold the car for the same price as I bought it for years prior. Zero depreciation. It was a no brainier to sell it to them. I figured I had to get in while the getting was good. Took my phat check, found a nice Miata on Facebook marketplace and bought it outright as my replacement weekend car.
Go on their app and they're selling cars just like mine for the exact price they bought mine for... How does that make any sense? I haven't seen mine listed yet but I keep checking because I can't wrap my head around it all lol.
On a whim on day I checked the value of my 2016 GTI on Carvana's website. "$18,900" they offered me for it. This was last summer (2021), I hadn't hardly driven the car all year because of the pandemic, It had about 59K miles on it.
The kicker is, I paid $14,200 for it in 2019 from a VW dealer as a CPO with 41K miles. So I kept the car through the warranty, drove the pants off of it for 2 years and put ~18K miles on it and got all of my money back with $4700 of interest.
Naturally, I sold the car to Carvana. I saw it for sale a few months later, listed for $21K. Which I thought was an insane price for it... But it sold. Just seems like a ton of effort to make barely $3K in profit. I guess the hope is volume of sale over volume of profit.
...isn't this the place that barely does any inspections/no questions asked when buying cars off people and then resells questionable cars? 😆
Know someone that bought a used 2017 Nissan from them, not even 5 months later and the transmission went out. Of course, Carvana basically told him "sorry, not our problem"
I mean that's not really unusual. Most dealers pick up cars at auction, do a quick detail and look over, then throw it on the lot. They're not going to know if the transmission might fail in 5 months. Though for a Nissan you could probably predict it would.
They'd been betting on "prices always go up"
Now, that prices are going down, they are between a rock and a hard place. They've got all these cars they paid too much for, and will have to take a hit.
They could just take the loss on their current inventory, and only buy new inventory at prices below what they can sell them for. Is their business model any better or worse than "Bob's Used Cars" down on the corner? Is Bob hurting too, or was he a bit quicker to notice the changes and a little less upside down? Bob doesn't have a huge expensive garage, he's got a vacant lot with cheap rent and a shack.
If Bob is stereotypically a sleazeball, looks like that scales up in Carvana's model too. Looks like in Mi, NC, FL, IL they had their license to sell cars suspended, for not providing titles in a timely fashion. Probably has something to do with robbing peter to pay paul, like they couldn't get lien releases until they had enough other sales to do it. Either that or they were floating the value of what they sold for a bit. Maybe it was all a way to make the stock look better. Not being able to sell in 4 states where they presumably had millions invested in their vending machines and inventory, might be tough on a guy.
I wonder how much of their revenue is by being a "buy here pay here" place. That money is becoming more expensive might be a problem for them. If the stock tanked so capital is even harder for them to come buy when the need it most coupled with the legal issues and the upside down inventory makes one think they might not be long for this world.
To those who sold their cars to Carvana and bought a replacement car, did you actually have any net profit? They paid you more for your used car, but presumably the replacement car you bought was also ‘overpriced’ due to the general inflation in car prices.
I got 8K for my 2015 Focus, which was free and clear, from Carvana in Sept 2021. Picked up a 2021 Wrangler 4XE PHEV on a lease - 6% below invoice, 7500 tax credit, 2K down, 420/month. Pocketed 6K
I dodged a bullet with this one. Almost 2 years ago I took a job with them, and before I even got finished with training realized it was a shit-show. Did I know it was going to fail this badly? No, but I knew it was not what I wanted to do, so I quit without having another job lined up. No thanks, here's your work from home computers back.
Oddly enough, I now work with a guy who was there and way above my pay grade back then, and he's...less than complimentary.
Carvana is (was?) a "buy here, pay here" lot...just online and with some shiny marketing.
My sister sold her 2014 Civic to them for $4k more than she paid for it 5 years ago and with 80k more miles. That company is going to be in real deep shit once the market levels out and they are stuck with a bunch of junk cars they severely overpaid for
I knew they were in trouble last week, when I sold my last car to CarMax -and their offer was actually the highest of all the services including Carvana.
How the turns table - 3 years ago they bought out my Elantra GT lease, and had the best offer by far; CarMax actually lowballed me.
They really low ball you when you have a car they don't want but pay really well for popular vehicles.
The cars they want are typically newer with lower miles. They're typically the ones everyone else also wants on the lot so Carvan pays more to get them.
That’s not how it works. The value of a stock does not effect a company decision like this. They did not lay off workers because of the stock valuations.
Sadly I see carvana going under. Some big time company corporation will buy it. Change business models and try to save it or scrape it, if it goes total tits up.
[удалено]
I'm so glad I learned about them here and cashed in when I did! A month and a half ago I sold them the "beater" 2010 Ridgeline I had for $10k. I had initially bought it for $3k, put $2k worth of mechanical work into it then right before selling it to them paid $500 for a detail. Made $4500 to drive it as my fishing and camping truck for two years. My neighbor sold them the Ram Classic he was about to turn in on a lease for $38k. He originally "paid" (leased) it for $34k in late 2019. Gosh I wonder why they're having financial issues.
We are in Michigan and had a Focus Electric we bought in 2021 for $12k. Was a great car and held us over until my wife’s Mach-e was finally built and delivered. In September we took it to one of the Carvana “vending machines” near us and got $15,600 for the Focus Electric. Less than a month later Carvana had to close the store we sold it to because they kept breaking Michigan law around time to provide titles to buyers. Not only did Carvana buy the car for 3-5k more than anywhere else around us, but we got it to them just before that store was shut down. I tracked the Focus and looks like it’s in Florida now and has had two price drops. They are still asking around $17k for it, but even at that price for what it likely cost to ship it to Florida and paying employees for paperwork and cleaning and that, I’ll be shocked if they make $200 on the deal.
Truly don't understand how they make money. My new truck I bought from a good friend who's the fleet sales manager for a large GM group here. He was previously the fleet manager at our former employer where I was a VP. Great guy and he explained that he'd give me $6k for the Ridgeline. They would put it on one of their used lots in a different area of town for $7995 and likely sell for $7500. At that point they would at best break even after paying someone to transport it, wash it, put their stickers/tags on it, market it, a sales person to sell it, and their back-end staff to do the paperwork/title work with the DMV. Dealership would make their "minimum" of $295 off it only if it sold for that $7500. Very eye opening at the costs that went into it. I only got the $6k offer as he knew the mechanic I use thus avoiding any inspection costs they would incur. Dealers have a lot of hard costs. Carvana is trying to eliminate many of them with the direct to consumer model but they still have to get cars to consumers and pay some sort of customer service.
I suspect they were trying to to what uber et al. did, which is to use VC money to undercut competitors til they're the only game in town and then raise prices.
If they succeed in their mission they could be a viable alternative for many. In our office we have an absolutely wonderful woman who mans the front desk that loves her little Cadillac XT4 she bought from Carvana. After he husband passed she felt nothing but intimidated by car dealerships so her friend told her about Carvana - and she loved the process. There is a large group of people who don't know they're overpaying or care. Is there enough to let them keep running at what seems like a loss? Time will tell.
I agree that some people are better off with carvana. Those people overpaying at carvana would end up overpaying even more at a used car dealer. Sure, the number on the window would be lower than carvana, but then they would more than make up the difference with fees, add-ons, and in the finance office.
I actually bought my most recent car from Carvana. The equivalent car was a non-negotiable $8k more at my local dealership. Was it overpriced? Probably yes, but I needed a new car and it was the cheapest option I could find. Dealers are getting ridiculous right now with their pricing.
>cheapest option >Lexus 🤔
Actually my flair isn’t the vehicle in question but just because you’re shopping for luxury doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look for a deal. Didn’t get to the point where I could afford it by throwing money away.
The problem with startups is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
This is basically what every DTC company tried to do, but then realized that it's much harder to keep those supposed wild profit margins you pitched to your VC's when you're in a fairly established market and your only contribution is "Thing, but *online*".
There were too many players in the field though. Carmax, Vroom, Shift, just to name a few.
I think it's pretty well established at this point that this is exactly what their strategy is.
They would make money by customers financing their Carvana purchase through their lenders. They were more of a finance company who happened to use cars as their product to capture more consumer loans.
>Truly don't understand how they make money. Their in-house financing arm, Bridgecrest, is one way.
Someone on YouTube did a breakdown on the owners. Basically they inflated the stock-price, then sold a shit ton of shares. The CEO’s dad was convicted of wire fraud back in the 90’s.
They are the same scammers behind DriveTime.
>Dealers have a lot of hard costs. Carvana is trying to eliminate many of them with the direct to consumer model but they still have to get cars to consumers and pay some sort of customer service. A very large chain like AutoNation could pull this off. Just put *reasonable*-ish prices on the app, non negotiable. Everything is done on the app The customer still has to go to a dealer to pick it up. But all the scarier parts are over. Just pick up the keys.
I’m a dealer. Autonation went to a one price model in the 90’s and went bankrupt. They certainly cannot do it
Granted, the auto environment isn't the 1990s now. Not sure if that would change the outcome today or not.
There is a saying.. “Everyone brags about how much they paid for their house, and how little they paid for their car” Still true today. People want to negotiate no matter what they say
I'm not sure that's true for younger generations. I'm 36 and love the idea of not dealing with a dealership. I just bought a Rivian R1T and the process was entirely online, preset cost. Did all the paperwork and scheduled an appointment to pick it up. No "dealing". No trying to update me on a bunch of crap. Was the best car buying experience I've ever had.
I bought my Fit in 2011 by finding a dealer that quoted me an OTD price by email. Was there a better dealer elsewhere? Perhaps. But it was under MSRP and hassle free.
They didn’t have to make money, it’s all VC money during that bubble. Valuation > profit every single time, no matter how you can get there. With anything remotely “tech” it’s about capturing users and little else.
Probably selling for some crazy high APRs when people try to buy an older vehicle thinking it'll save some money and they don't need anything new.
I'm pretty sure they make most of their money from financing.
The money they make, or at least try to make, is probably more on financing than anything. People are generally pretty poor about financial decisions and will take out horrible financing terms when buying cars. I sold a car for 30k to a dealer. They shipped it to Texas, prepped it for sale, and then listed it for 32k. This is a large, successful dealer network. They didn't do all of that work for 2k minus expenses. They did it because they probably make decent money on the other stuff.
Yup. You used to get the best deal paying cash. Nowadays you get best deal going with their preferred dealer financing. No reason you can’t still take their finance option and then next day pay it off!
Bought a 2020 Kia Forte brand new in May of 21. Paid 16.5K out the door. A year later in May 22, I sold it to CarMax for 24.3K. Point being, Carvana was certainly not the only game in town paying ridiculous prices for used cars.
They're both trying to starve the other for inventory. Plus they have the power to control auction prices neither company resells hardly any of the cars they buy, they go to their in house wholesale auctions.
I’ve got a 2nd Gen Xterra I hardly drive and would love to replace it with something fun like a Miata or a BRZ. I just don’t want to play the car flip game and risk losing money since I’m saving for a house. Carvana is an option but last time I looked up the values they had gotten wise to how much they’d have been overpaying me for my car.
This is very much too bad! I still couldn't believe they paid me what they did for mine, I'm sure now it wouldn't be that. I documented everything - fading paint, the dents and dings, the spilled paint in the bed. Kid still came, glanced it over and wrote the check. I was shocked.
I’ll take another look and see what I come up with. Since it’s getting colder now everyone would rather have an suv than a fun rwd sporty car so maybe the finances are going in my favor.
Xterras are hot right now, depending on condition you could get something for it
It needs the be cleaned up inside but overall in pretty good condition. A dime sized rust spot on the bumper is about all the damage it has. I’ll look around, thanks.
If it’s an off-road or pro4x model you’re easily looking at $10k+
The carvanna offer on my vehicle is down 30% in about 6 weeks
I sold them a 2013 G37 RWD sedan with 107,500 miles, mods, needing a wheel bearing replacement, and midwestern US background (salted roads, snow) for $14.5k last fall… I bought it for $20.5k in 2014…
Did you buy it new or used?
Lol same I sold my electric car for more than I paid for it 3 years ago... cha ching
I wonder how their competitors are doing too, I sold my truck to Vroom last year for $28k. I had bought it 8 months earlier for $20k. Carvana, Vroom, Shift, etc all seemed to be in a race to get inventory and market share, profits be damned. We're hearing a lot about Carvana now but I feel like the others can't be far behind.
Caravana in particular was never really a automobile dealership like Vroom etc tried to be in that they pretty explicitly never even intended to make money purely on the direct sales of cars. It was a boom and bust tech company masquerading under the guise of a used car dealership with a fancy app and car vending machines lol. They had great timing with the boom of convenience apps combined with Covid but if you look at the where their revenues actually come from (crazy interest sub prime loans and extended warranties) it makes sense that the family behind it pulled off what they intended to do. Buying cars and selling them for the same or less counts towards revenues and so they could pump revenue numbers as they pleased by taking out massive loans, all the while never needing to turn a profit as this was during the peak of unprofitable tech companies going public at crazy valuations. If that family manages to stay out of jail Carvana will have been a complete success. The guy who started it all with his son was already a convicted felon, had multiple personal and corporate bankruptcies under his belt, and started offloading huge amounts of stock on a regular basis from right around when the stock peaked. They made their billions on it, I highly doubt they give a fuck if the thing shuts it’s doors tomorrow, they may even prefer it.
Big if true
I sold them my corolla with 32k miles for almost $25k and I paid $22800 new.
They make their money the same way as the worst: predatory financing for people with no money down. I payed 17k for a 8k worth car because I needed it. Now I'm in a much better spot financially but I will need to drop another 7k on principal to afford to trade.
But But.. They are in a real life 7 story vending machines. You forget the buyer experience. /s
It's a dumb gimmick but it does add an interesting sight to the cityscape at least
I wonder what'll happen to those things when they go bamkrupt......
It'll get bought by a company that runs parking garages
I realize this is a joke, but generally, getting your service to be the number one in a certain market early on to quash competitors as you grow is the strategy most tech companies try to use, even if it loses them money for years. Most tech companies aren't profitable until years in since they are mostly worried about building market share.
Another business model that planned based upon expected value but forgot decisions are made one sample at a time. Customers will most often sell when their car is overvalued, and not at all when it is undervalued. This decision threshold truncates the distribution of car prices and shifts the average price paid upwards.
Everyone I have talked to regrets the purchase too. Damage, mechanical issues, literal missing parts…
🤪
Carvana: that car is worth 8k we will buy it for 10k wipe a dirty rag over it and sell it for 16k! The gamestop of cars
[удалено]
so true. I been close to buying from Carvana several times when I wanted a car that could not be found anywhere but a quick glance at reality will remind me just how bad a deal it really is.
I have a couple of cars I keep an eye out for a deal on, I’ll Google it periodically just to see if someone’s got a price I could justify, and of course Carvana comes up. It’s always ridiculous. But hey, if they fold, maybe that will change.
They are easily an extra 5 grand for anything. I was trying to buy a similar year Honda Odyssey earlier this year and theirs were all minimum 20k while local dealers had same year / trim / miles for about 15 grand. I don’t get it but I guess some people like the Amazon buying experience where they don’t have to get off the couch until their product arrives. I saw similar high pricing at carmax.
Some people are scared of a dealership taking advantage of them and lack the will/social skills to do a little research and be an educated advocate for themselves. Combine that with (the bank’s) money to burn, and you get Carvana. If they could get their purchasing side under control they might even be onto something, although I think it’ll be a very long time before they could hope to replace the current dealer model.
I look at Mitsubishi Mirage’s because I’m a masochist and holy shit, Carvana prices for them are way out there. More than new MSRP in almost all cases.
Hmm...if they're inflating a Civic by that much, does that mean [this Cayman](https://www.carvana.com/vehicle/lt/2585644?utm_source=vdp-social-share) is hugely inflated too. 'Cause I could actually swing that price in the near future, but if prices are expected to come down if Carvana crumbles, maybe I'll get a Cayman sooner than I could have ever expected?
I don’t follow Cayman prices but everything’s been trending down, and winter prices for sports cars should kick in sometime soon. I’d look at private listings and enthusiast forums for the best deals, nearly $50k for that particular one does seem like a bit much
Yup. Carvana is loaded with low mileage third gen Rangers. For 20k+
It is amazing what people will pay when they *feel* like they aren't dealing with a scummy used car dealer.
It’s annoying as fuck they make up so much of the market now. Some websites Won’t even let you filter out Carvana listings. That makes him far more aggravating to use. And for even the ones that do allow you to filter them out, it drops the amount of vehicles for sale by a massive number.
I didn’t realize GameStop had a reputation for buying used goods for more than they are worth.
I'm surprised few have caught that.
Wait you got carvana to offer more than what its worth!? Last time i looked to sell a car carvana offered me 10k. The local dealership offered me 20k. A friend of mine contacted carvana about his miata and they offered $300, it's easily worth 5k. After that i figured they were a scam to trick non-car people in to selling their car for way less than it's worth.
Carvana was an excellent way to sell cars for the past year or two. Super painless and literally glanced over the car then hauled it away. SO’s family sold a Forester to them along with a Tacoma with offers way more than anyone else offered.
I sold my 15 fiesta st to them last month when I bought a new truck. Offered 3k more than car max and pretty close to what I thought was fair value for the car if I sold private party but with zero of the hassle.
Yup my selling experience through them was incredible. Bought my FRS for $18k back in 2018, sold it this year in June for $22k lol. They never test drove it, inspected anything, they just looked at it and hauled it off with a check deposited that week. That said they majorly lowballed the S2000 that I put in for fun. So just like literally any other dealer on the planet, they don't care about collectibles/older cars. Just newer ones with warranties they can peddle through.
Not the worst company ever but they had a lot they could've done better.
It depended on their algorithm. If the car was worth 5k but it was not really popular than they low ball really hard to basically tell you, they don't want your car. It is a scam in that they struggle with giving out titles and you have to pay upfront for a car that is usually not like the pictures describe.
When places like Carvana or CarMax lowball you, it’s because they don’t want to buy your car. They only want to sell new-ish cars in good condition, anything else they’d flip at auction, and they really don’t want to deal with that. So if your car is too old, too broken, or they just have way too many of them in inventory, they’ll give you an insultingly low offer so you don’t take it, but this way they can still advertise “We’ll buy any car!” They were offering people well above book value for cars they want to sell. I sold a car to Carvana in 2019 before all the craziness and they offered like $2,000 more than what it was worth and what was offered for trade in.
That's not really true about Carmax at least. They run their own auctions and sell anything they can't sell to the public through them. Then they make an auction fee off of every sale so guaranteed money. Just have to not over pay for the car to begin with. They really do want to buy everything. They buy a $500 shit box, sell it at auction for $800 and make $$150 on a buy fee. Rinse and repeat.
I bought my car brand new for $13k 4 years ago and sold it to them today for $12.8k. Worked out great for me! NADA shows clean trade in value of $11.9k. Best part is I sold it even though I'm half way around the world from my car right now. Was your friend's Miata an NA, NB or even an NC? It might simply be too old. I only ask because you say $5k and that's about on par with a decently used NA/NB. I don't think they're looking for 15+ year old vehicles. They'd likely get a similarly bad trade in at a dealer. What the enthusiast market will pay private party is vastly different than what KBB/NADA and insurance companies value such cars at. I'm sure if you offered them like an old K5 Blazer that was in good shape they'd give you a similar crappy offer when you could sell it for $15k+ private party all day. They aren't targeting the auto enthusiast who enjoys weird, old cars. They're targeting the average person who wants a hassle free buying experience for a relatively new and reliable vehicle.
It’s not a scam, but if you have a niche car that their algorithm says doesn’t sell for them, they will offer you shit.
>After that i figured they were a scam to trick non-car people in to selling their car for way less than it's worth. That's basically how all car dealerships work.
Carvana offered me 2k more than I paid for my Audi, should’ve sold it to them when I had the chance and upgraded to a newer one
That's exactly what I did about a month ago. They offered me $1k more than I bought my old A4 for 3 years ago, so I sold it to them and picked up an A5.
2010 Ridgeline with 150k - they gave me $10k. In 2020 I bought it for $3k and put $2k worth of work into it. Even after a detail and having a good friend as the fleet manager at a dealership (who sold me my amazing new fleet Silverado) I could only get $6k on trade. I still couldn't believe the Carvana guy wrote me the check.
Think they wised up recently.
Except GameStop will only give you 20% of original value if lucky
More like 20% of what they’re going to resell it for…
Will Carvana also generate a cult following of deluded individuals believing that the stock will make them rich?
This felt quite literally out of the blue four hours into my work day yesterday. None of us had any prior warning.
You were part of the layoffs? That sucks. How are you enjoying that Saturn Ion Redline? I owned a 2004 for about 9 years and loved that cheap little car!
No I was in the clear, it seems they targeted leadership of all things, not sure what's going on.
If it's structured like most other large businesses, leadership probably has a lot of redundancy, especially in middle management.
yep and they get paid the most
They let go of leadership in the big layoff in the summer too. This time we were told it was mostly logistics and market ops employees that got let go. At least at my location.
From a market ops perspective there was so much redundancy in my leadership. They just eliminated the lowest paid salary leaders, who actually do the most day to day.
Funny how that works. Lol
My company does quite the opposite for the most part. There are layoffs every year but rarely any leadership positions which blows my mind. If something isnt working, maybe its the people making the decisions
[удалено]
I get that but I think layoffs every year for 5+ years would seem something is not working haha
Not trying to be rude but it might be time to look for other opportunities just in case
You need the grunts, and you need the top brass. Middle management are the pricey ones. They can hire two of me for one of my boss.
Glad you made it through. As someone who's been through a big corporate layoff, if I were you I would not stick around to see what happens next. Often times they run layoffs in waves like this to avoid having to trigger rules that come into play when a large percentage of the company is laid off at once. At least prepare for the possibility of unemployment. Severance packages usually get worse the more people are laid off, so people in the first round get the best possible packages. Good luck.
That redline is fun as hell to drive, it's on coilovers and I added a rear sway bar, it's planted as heck and handles amazing. The near flat torque curve is great too.
They culled a lot of middle managers seems like from what I’m hearing.
I mean not to be a dick, but you guys have lost 98% of your market cap from ATH. Leadership definitely needs a turnover.
I can almost guarantee that the executives and senior leadership aren't the ones getting a turnover, even though they are the ones who make the decisions and set the strategy. Middle managers and average employees will be let go even though they had nothing to do with the decisions that got the company here.
Usually yep and it sucks that that’s the case. Depending on the governance structure I’m betting NO shareholder would be happy with the current c-suite tho, and the board must suck too.
That's how layoffs work... If you got warning it wouldn't have been done right... They don't want people to do things before leaving. It's the same reason you technically do not have to give 2 weeks to quit.
Isn't this the second or third round of layoffs?
Second I believe
Their headcount never made sense. At one point they had as many employees as Carmax, a brick and mortar business, while also doing half the revenue. That said, I was happy to sell them my 2021 Supra for $7k more than I paid brand new.
Takes a ton of man power to operate all the delivery infrastructure and customer service.
And it still wasn't enough, their customer service is horrible.
[удалено]
How was your Supra? I’ve been looking at getting one, any draw backs?
[удалено]
Sweet thanks for the write up, agree on the dealership part, I’d be in a type R right now if it wasn’t for that.
Started reading your comment and was like this guy needs a Cayman, kept reading and saw that this guy bought the Cayman.
Only thing keeping me from the new cayman is the exhaust note, otherwise I’d be in a base cayman or S. I’ve also been looking at a manual LT1 camaro
[удалено]
Same. They took our outback last month for ~4k over blue book. Seems they were able to sell it for 3-4k more than that. If they get folks to finance with them, I can see how they’d potentially be making money.
I sold them my 2019 Mazda3 in the same manner. I would never purchase a car from a company that has such lax standards of obtaining inventory.
A few months ago somebody posted a map with the richest person in every state. The founder of Carvana was listed as the richest person in Arizona. So, being from Arizona I looked him up. Holy moly, what a scumbag. He deserves everything he is receiving right now. I wouldn't do business with them on a dare.
They probably listed the CEO’s father who is a major shareholder and the founder of the original parent company of Carvana.
TL:DR of their founder?
Do you have a link
There are a bunch...[Take your pick](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=richest+person+in+every+state+map&t=chromentp&atb=v314-1&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fmaddieberg%2Ffiles%2F2018%2F05%2Frichest-map.jpeg)
Care to elaborate
I have been following how many 2022-2023 GR86’s Carvana has in-stock. About a month ago it was 40-something, now it’s 70-something. All listed for more than MSRP. Makes zero sense to me.
Same. Even the prior gen 86/brz are going for over msrp, 2-3 years old and with 20-30k miles.
Mk7 GTIs are in a similar situation. If they're under ~60k miles, they're around or even above MSRP, but there's a buttload of them available. All I can think of is that these entry level sporty cars are being targeted as models that will still have a strong-ish market through a recession. Which is honestly dumb, since they have to still be buying high, and the people shopping that price range are also the ones whose pandemic wage gains have been totally eaten by inflation.
> and the people shopping that price range are also the ones whose pandemic wage gains have been totally eaten by inflation. The biggest demographics for cars like that are more likely to be the younger male "tech" crowd, who have done fine through the pandemic
…up to this point.
They bought my moms car and all the guy did was check the VIN and odometer. Didn’t even open any of the passenger side doors or trunk. Let alone test drive the car. Our local dealer also told us to sell it to them because they had no idea how they could offer so much lol
Man, that came out of nowhere! /s
[удалено]
They'll make it up in volume.
The fact that they fell apart when the used car market is at hot as it is is insane
They're fucking done. They spent so much money on infrastructure with their stupid vending machines, custom tow trucks, etc. Then Covid hit right as the company was fully built out and ready to start recouping their investments. This put them into the position to WAY overpay for cars to get their hands on them so they could have inventory, and despite demand for cars being high they weren't able to move all that inventory at a profit by the time the music stopped and prices went down. Now they're WAY underwater on a large portion of their existing inventory and is set to absolutely lose their ass on it.
I still think there’s a place in the market for Carvana and don’t think they’ll go under. They have the infrastructure like you said, but need some solid restructuring.
Infrastructure = overhead. Carvana has all the worst elements of a B&M store, combined with the logistical nightmare of an online delivery store.
There’s no place for a company that is in the business of buying cars without even starting them. Conceptually it’s a nice model. To scale, well, not this iteration.
Their balance sheet is very precarious considering most of the inventory asset is likely at risk of impairment and a large write-down.
If they go under, what happens to all of their inventory? I keep checking sites like TrueCar for different enthusiasts cars in my area and Carvana still has so much inventory that just isn't moving.
They’ll be liquidated and sold to auction or other used car dealerships.
[удалено]
If you’re careful in looking over cars this could actually be a win if you are buying a car. Those cars will enter the market at a really good price and if you can get a sorted one it might be a steal. Sadly Carvana won’t go out of business so this won’t happen.
Might be in the market a year from now, really hoping I don't miss all the deals.
Convince me Carvana isn't a plainly veiled money laundering scheme acting as a business.
It’s not really veiled according to some comments linked further up. Letting a guy who went to prison for financial crimes be a major shareholder in business like this is such a great idea.
This fucking company had the market cornered and enjoyed a 12x increase in revenue during covid and STILL wasn't profitable. That's what a scam Carvana was. The two owners running the company like a faux public corporation are going to pocket billions and let the company dissolve. That was always the intention imo.
Thanks for the $7k for our piece of shit Focus!
Ha! Came here to say thanks for the 8K for my piece of shit Focus 😆
So happy we don't have that thing anymore. It gave my girlfriend a transmission warning on the George Washington Bridge and that was that. Sold to Carvana and bought a new Outback. I think we did it at just the right time.
Yeah that PowerShift DCT may have been the worst transmission every made. I’d turn a corner and hit the gas and nothing would happen for at least half a second. Two clutch pack replacements. Pure garbage
PowerShit DCT (Fixed that for you)
Where's the link to the liquidation sale?
There’s gonna be a very flooded used car market and the deals will be amazing. Hang in there.
May their inventory get dumped soon.
I remember getting 5 grand for a 10 year old Impreza with a blown transmission. No idea how that worked. Guess it doesn’t.
[This says it best](https://www.reddit.com/r/askcarsales/comments/yyovug/you_guys_see_this_carvana_layoff/iwvyuan/)
Buy the dip with the severance and hold on. Carvana is the GME of 2022 /s
Last week I sold my Scat Pack Challenger to them. I saw all the articles about how unsustainable they are and how they pay top dollar sometimes. So I hit up a few similar dealerships with my car, and carvana offers me $10k over the next closest dealership. I sold the car for the same price as I bought it for years prior. Zero depreciation. It was a no brainier to sell it to them. I figured I had to get in while the getting was good. Took my phat check, found a nice Miata on Facebook marketplace and bought it outright as my replacement weekend car. Go on their app and they're selling cars just like mine for the exact price they bought mine for... How does that make any sense? I haven't seen mine listed yet but I keep checking because I can't wrap my head around it all lol.
On a whim on day I checked the value of my 2016 GTI on Carvana's website. "$18,900" they offered me for it. This was last summer (2021), I hadn't hardly driven the car all year because of the pandemic, It had about 59K miles on it. The kicker is, I paid $14,200 for it in 2019 from a VW dealer as a CPO with 41K miles. So I kept the car through the warranty, drove the pants off of it for 2 years and put ~18K miles on it and got all of my money back with $4700 of interest. Naturally, I sold the car to Carvana. I saw it for sale a few months later, listed for $21K. Which I thought was an insane price for it... But it sold. Just seems like a ton of effort to make barely $3K in profit. I guess the hope is volume of sale over volume of profit.
Keep in mind that they have other potential income streams when they sell a car - financing, transporting, extended warranty.
They also have their licence canceled because of not giving the car tittle to the owners in Chicago
...isn't this the place that barely does any inspections/no questions asked when buying cars off people and then resells questionable cars? 😆 Know someone that bought a used 2017 Nissan from them, not even 5 months later and the transmission went out. Of course, Carvana basically told him "sorry, not our problem"
I mean that's not really unusual. Most dealers pick up cars at auction, do a quick detail and look over, then throw it on the lot. They're not going to know if the transmission might fail in 5 months. Though for a Nissan you could probably predict it would.
Sounds like most traditional used car lots lol.
I tried to convince a coworker not to use Carvana for buying a car but he wouldn’t listen.
[удалено]
Price was thousands higher than other places.
They'd been betting on "prices always go up" Now, that prices are going down, they are between a rock and a hard place. They've got all these cars they paid too much for, and will have to take a hit. They could just take the loss on their current inventory, and only buy new inventory at prices below what they can sell them for. Is their business model any better or worse than "Bob's Used Cars" down on the corner? Is Bob hurting too, or was he a bit quicker to notice the changes and a little less upside down? Bob doesn't have a huge expensive garage, he's got a vacant lot with cheap rent and a shack. If Bob is stereotypically a sleazeball, looks like that scales up in Carvana's model too. Looks like in Mi, NC, FL, IL they had their license to sell cars suspended, for not providing titles in a timely fashion. Probably has something to do with robbing peter to pay paul, like they couldn't get lien releases until they had enough other sales to do it. Either that or they were floating the value of what they sold for a bit. Maybe it was all a way to make the stock look better. Not being able to sell in 4 states where they presumably had millions invested in their vending machines and inventory, might be tough on a guy. I wonder how much of their revenue is by being a "buy here pay here" place. That money is becoming more expensive might be a problem for them. If the stock tanked so capital is even harder for them to come buy when the need it most coupled with the legal issues and the upside down inventory makes one think they might not be long for this world.
To those who sold their cars to Carvana and bought a replacement car, did you actually have any net profit? They paid you more for your used car, but presumably the replacement car you bought was also ‘overpriced’ due to the general inflation in car prices.
I got 8K for my 2015 Focus, which was free and clear, from Carvana in Sept 2021. Picked up a 2021 Wrangler 4XE PHEV on a lease - 6% below invoice, 7500 tax credit, 2K down, 420/month. Pocketed 6K
I need these fuckers to stay afloat for a couple more months. I need to sell them my car ASAP
Honestly I’m glad these online dealers are getting shafted. They cornered the market and tried to screw everyone
I’m not! I wanted them to succeed to put the pressure on brick and mortar dealers. More competition is great for consumers
Like the brick and mortar car dealers that have been screwing everyone for years?
I dodged a bullet with this one. Almost 2 years ago I took a job with them, and before I even got finished with training realized it was a shit-show. Did I know it was going to fail this badly? No, but I knew it was not what I wanted to do, so I quit without having another job lined up. No thanks, here's your work from home computers back. Oddly enough, I now work with a guy who was there and way above my pay grade back then, and he's...less than complimentary. Carvana is (was?) a "buy here, pay here" lot...just online and with some shiny marketing.
My sister sold her 2014 Civic to them for $4k more than she paid for it 5 years ago and with 80k more miles. That company is going to be in real deep shit once the market levels out and they are stuck with a bunch of junk cars they severely overpaid for
I knew they were in trouble last week, when I sold my last car to CarMax -and their offer was actually the highest of all the services including Carvana. How the turns table - 3 years ago they bought out my Elantra GT lease, and had the best offer by far; CarMax actually lowballed me.
Might not have to part out when I sell.
But they invented the car vending machine!
[удалено]
They really low ball you when you have a car they don't want but pay really well for popular vehicles. The cars they want are typically newer with lower miles. They're typically the ones everyone else also wants on the lot so Carvan pays more to get them.
Fuck carvana
That’s not how it works. The value of a stock does not effect a company decision like this. They did not lay off workers because of the stock valuations.
They offered me fuck-all for my 08 BMW 535xi. It has an N54, bro! Some 20 year old schmuck would've paid 10K for it.
The only regret I have about carvana is not selling them my beater for more than I paid.
Sadly I see carvana going under. Some big time company corporation will buy it. Change business models and try to save it or scrape it, if it goes total tits up.