Quote:
Originally Posted by M5TUDM
To date, I've purchased five vehicles discovered online, and never drove a single one prior to its final sales transaction. My 'old school' father, whom I greatly respect, thinks it's absurdly irresponsible. I respect his point; however, he refuses to adequately educate himself over the variety and volume of resources available to the 'online' consumer.
To this point, I can say with integrity that I have NO regrets; this methodology has opened up my range of available inventory to pinpoint EXACTLY what I wanted, and it's even elevated my negotiating power on occasion.
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Well, thinking about it now, I did actually buy a car on line... sort of. I found my 2008 Z4 Coupe on line at CarMax. The car was in Ohio and I'm in Virginia. So I paid CarMax to ship the car to a local CarMax so I could review it before the sale. The $350 transportation cost is non-refundable. The car looked good in the photos and on paper, 23,000 miles on a then 6-year old Z4, a Carfax report, with all three keys, and full compliment of owners manuals. When the car finally arrived, I went to look it over. Sure enough it was in as good shape as the pictures showed. But that's kinda where it stopped. I bought the car since I fell in love with the way it drove and I'd have been out $350; and it had some type of high-end amplifier/speaker upgrade professionally installed, which sounded great.
However, when I got home, in the right sunlight, I found a crease on the right front fender above the headlight. It wasn't visible in the CarMax pics. Also, there was a rippled dent in the passenger door below the mirror, also not picked up in the CarMax pics. CarMax had a PDR guy fix the body issues with absolutely no fuss. That was the cosmetics...
The mechanicals: I discovered after the car was warmed (over 20 miles or so) the throwout bearing rattled like a paint can (common for the E85/86 Z4 apparently). More, CarMax replaced the battery with the completely wrong size since it didn't fit the hold down mechanism and the vent tubing was missing. Worse, the battery revelation led me to be concerned about the freshly changed oil (CarMax changes every car's oil it sells), and I found the engine had an ill-fitting aftermarket oil filter; God only knows what oil CarMax used. The next day after I took delivery, the low coolant light came on. A few months later, I was changing the air filters. The cabin filter was completely clogged with leaf debris, and worst of all the engine air filter box was literally half-full with a mouse nest.
As a car guy and 30-year BMW aficionado I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't check such simple things as battery condition and coolant level. Also embarrassing to admit is I didn't go over the body with closer inspection to find the dents. I trusted the CarMax BS about their 100-point inspection by its "industry professionals". My point is, even a national used car sales chain like CarMax, which sells millions of used cars a year, can't be trusted.