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Sold Car to Carvana Experience + Used Tesla Purchase Experience
- Thread starter pl8dlikafiddle
- Start date
Recently sold my old car (XC40) to Carvana, they offer 7k more than tesla and 4K more than Carmax. It’s was a bit of a pain to get the deal done as carvana needed a dealer payoff form, which Volvo would only give to Carvana directly, but Carvana wanted me to upload it... spent days and hour on the phone trying to get a 3way call going. Very frustrating but once it was taken car off the drop off was super simple.
For that all you have to do is call the bank that is doing the Financing for your car. They have to give it to you. you can ask for a 7 or 10 day pay off.
Interesting. Never heard of a dealer having to handle payoff letter. That’s typically coming from your lender and can be had via a quick phone call or email. Not Carvana’s fault.
... and I’ve never heard of a dealer/lender withholding information from the owner but only allowing to give it to another entity directly. So what would happen if you wanted to pay the vehicle off early yourself?
G26okie
2020 P3D-
There seems to be a bug with carvana right now, in another thread (and my car included) they are offering $38k for every model 3 regardless of trim level.
I could download the private party payoff form from Volvo financial services, but carvana needed a dealer payoff, the difference is about a tiny amount of tax, the difference was like $17. Volvo would not give me a copy, they said carvana would have to call so they could fax it to them, well trying to get carvana on the phone is next to impossible, my wife spent literally hours on the phone trying to reach carvana, it took 3 days to get them on the line and then do a 3 way cal with Volvo. It all worked out in the end, Volvo was a pain because they wouldn’t give me the form and carvana was a pain because if you need to reach them on the phone your in for a surprise...
Ah gotcha. Just a future reference - I found cold calling Carvana was a lost cause. I was able to get a call back immediately when I used the chat function.
dropping my SR+ off at Carvana tomorrow and ordered a Model 3 Performance. Sold the SR+ to Carvana for just $2150 less than I purchased the SR+ for 26k miles ago.
You didn't wanna wait until battery day? I'm doing the same with my SR+ but just matter of when. What color did you get this time? Thinking of going black instead of white.
Sunshine State
Automotive Enthusiast
Carvana offered $46,000 for my 11,000 mile Red/White 2019 Performance 3+ but the sales tax advantages of trading it to Tesla puts Tesla $1,500 better.
My SR+ was black but I went with white exterior/black interior for the M3P. I chose to order now so I can take delivery shortly after battery day and be locked in at the $54,990 price ($5k state rebate under 55k MSRP and no sales tax on EV's in NJ)
Some states subtract the value of the trade in from the purchased vehicle to calculate the sales tax due. With Carvana, there isn't a tax advantage unless you purchase a replacement vehicle from them. Essentially it is this:
(New Vehicle Price - Tradein Vehicle Price)*(Tax Rate) = Tax Due.
In the case of Sunshine State, the tax savings outweighed the higher Carvana offer.
Sunshine State
Automotive Enthusiast
In most states the sales tax only applies to the difference paid between the two cars. Trading a $50,000 car on a $70,000 new car purchase results in only the tax being due on the $20k actually spent not on the full $70k, so a $3,500 tax savings with a $50k trade in in a 7% sales tax area. That seems to be the reason Tesla low balls by about that same 7% and the reason I’ve traded my last 4 Teslas in on new ones because it has been a wash and not worth any extra effort. I’d sell my cars outright but in the past people typically seem to want to pay less than Teslas offer after figuring the tax incentive. The funny part is Tesla has quickly sold all of my exceptional trades in about a week for between $7k to $10k more than they have paid.
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I’d wager your experience is more of the exception than the norm.
In my case, Tesla offered $27,000. $8,500 less than what Carvana bought the car for.
Sunshine State
Automotive Enthusiast
It may be that most of my trades were very late model Teslas so because of the higher value the tax incentive was higher thus putting Carvana at a disadvantage. Was the $27,000 offer on a Tesla? Tesla does come in lower on other brands because they just wholesale those cars rather than retailing. Tesla offered me significantly less on a 2017 Infiniti QX30S that I considered trading. Tesla had offered about wholesale for the QX30S and just a few days before picking up a new Performance S they revised their offer by cutting it in half. We opted to keep the Infiniti and still have it.
Lexdysic
Member
I had 4 offers on my current vehicle (2019 Toyota Avalon Hybrid) and here's how they came in:
Tesla - $23,900
Give Me the Vin.com- $25,385
Carmax- $25,000
Carvana- $25,900 (above KBB)
This morning I saw an ad for Vroom. Never heard of them, but thought I'd give them a shot. They blew everyone away.
Vroom- $26,598 (way above KBB)
That is for a sale, not trade. I'd suggest anyone looking for the highest offer check out Vroom.com. It's possible they just currently need more Avalons and are willing to pay a premium. But, they're also battling with Carvana and trying to build an inventory of late model used cars in great condition.
Tesla - $23,900
Give Me the Vin.com- $25,385
Carmax- $25,000
Carvana- $25,900 (above KBB)
This morning I saw an ad for Vroom. Never heard of them, but thought I'd give them a shot. They blew everyone away.
Vroom- $26,598 (way above KBB)
That is for a sale, not trade. I'd suggest anyone looking for the highest offer check out Vroom.com. It's possible they just currently need more Avalons and are willing to pay a premium. But, they're also battling with Carvana and trying to build an inventory of late model used cars in great condition.
Roaddkill
Roadkill
Left an important detail out of post from last weekend. Car has 25k miles.
Offer 39k for 2018 Model 3 Stealth with autopilot and FSD. Washington DC. Seems pretty low. White interior.
Offer 39k for 2018 Model 3 Stealth with autopilot and FSD. Washington DC. Seems pretty low. White interior.
