Selling my car in 2024

The last time I sold my car was in 2013.  I had an old 1999 minivan with 130k miles and there was no way it would be accepted in a trade.  I posted it on Craigslist asking $1,000 and ended up selling it for $900 and thinking I was still ahead just having someone take it off my hands. 

Now in 2024 it was time to sell my car once again.  The entire landscape for selling used cars has changed in the 11 years that have passed.  Facebook Marketplace seems to have totally crushed Craigslist for “classified ads” type postings, and Carvana and Carmax have also become huge players in this space as well (sorry if I left anybody out, I had to become an “expert” in car selling in the span of a week).  

I started out by getting a preliminary quote for a trade-in on my current car from the dealer (Tesla).  I filled out the requested info and they gave me a preliminary quote of $5,500 for my car, which seemed ok for a 2012.  I placed the lease order for a Tesla Model Y and in the app it asked for more details and photos of the car.  I provided all the relevant info and they gave a final trade-in quote of $3,400.  I was not pleased!  I rejected the offer and decided to sell the car on my own.

My first stop was Facebook Marketplace.  I reinstalled Facebook (it’s 2024 and I now only use FB to sell stuff), uploaded 30 pics and a short video of my car and filled out all the info.  I created the post and Facebook prompted me to share the post in a bunch of local buy/sell groups, so I did that.  I was immediately informed that I was now banned from one of the groups because they have a rule against posting vehicles.  Oops!  Within 10 minutes I was messaged by 3 people who were all clearly scammers (their FB accounts had been created in the last 30 days and were basically blank, they said they were very interest in “the item,” and they asked if I took PayPal.  

I figured I’d try posting the car on Craigslist only to learn that Craigslist now charges $5 to post vehicles.  This seemed fair if it prevented spam posts so I paid it and uploaded all my photos again.  However, Craigslist doesn’t have a messaging feature and I didn’t want to post my cell phone number so the only way for people to reach me was email, and nobody emailed me.

This left Carvana and Carmax.  I went through both of their “sell your car” pipelines and I was amazed.  This is how selling a car should be.  With Carvana, everything is handled online.  Upload your documents (title, lien release, etc), photos of the car interior and exterior, and then link your bank account with Plaid so they can ACH the money to your account.  Then you just bring the car to one of their locations for dropoff.  CarMax had a very similar flow, but seemed like more actual paper was required, and they only paid via paper check.  Carvana offered $7,100 and CarMax offered $8,000, both way over what Tesla offered for trade, but under what KBB said the car was worth.  However, factoring in the convenience of not having to deal with scammers and meeting strangers in a parking lot and letting them test drive my car, and asking them to come back with a cashier’s check, it was worth it.

Carvana was able to schedule an appointment the same night so even though their offer was lower I decided to go with them and the procedure was great… up until the actual dropoff.  I got to their location at 5:50pm for a 6:00 PM appointment and nobody was there.  The entire facility was empty.  I checked the restroom, poked my head into the office, but there was nobody home at all.  I called customer support and explained the situation and the rep was shocked but tried to get in touch with someone who could show up and complete the sale for me.  After half an hour on the phone she still couldn’t reach anybody and I ended up rescheduling for the next day.  However, while I was standing around waiting for the Carvana rep to show up, I scheduled my dropoff with CarMax for the next day as well.  

My appointment with CarMax was at 5:30pm today and it went flawlessly.  I got there, checked in to let them know I was there and they sat me down around 5:30 pm.  By 6:30 PM I was done and walked out with my $8,000 check.  No scams, no weirdos, overall a great experience.  I should mention that I did try TrueCar, which forwarded my car’s info to several local used dealerships, but TrueCar’s offer was $6,200, so Carvana and CarMax were significantly better.

As someone who just went through it, it was interesting to see how much the car-selling experience has changed in the past 10+ years.  I’d chalk my Carvana issue to a mistake and would definitely consider them and of course CarMax for selling my cars in the future.  It’s nice to see a generally crappy process improved so much.