You might be right.
With that said, I would go to as many places as possible to gather appraisals. Because at the end of the day, the highest amount will probably be a lot more than the lowest amount.
there is absolutely no way to know ahead of time how much Carmax will offer you. Sometimes you get “lucky” because they know they can sell the car easily based on what their market is which you won’t know until you do it.
To state that Carmax overpays for lots of options and underpays for bare bones cars is complete speculation. I can almost guarantee you that if you take a bare bones Wrangler vs a fully loaded CC, relatively speaking the Wrangler offer will be a lot better even though it’s less equipped.
@CarPhan also wrongly stated (he since corrected it when i pointed it out) that you get different quotes from different Carmax dealers which is not true because they will just pull up your recent appraisal because they’re all connected. I think a lot of bad information is given in this thread.
I do however share his opinion to get Carmax quote because it gives you a baseline idea of what you can expect to get.
Taking a car to several dealerships to get appraisals is also meaningless because if they give you a strong trade-in value, they will just hose you on the new car and vice versa. Most dealerships won’t just “buy” your car if you don’t get a new one from them so thinking you can just go around and get a bunch of offers is also not correct. The correct way to approach a trade-in is to make a deal on a new car and not mention the trade-in until the end. Because then they can’t play with both numbers only the trade-in and they’re more likely to give you a decent price because they already invested time and are eager to move a unit.
To add to this, even if CarMax were to give him a good offer to buy his CC, does he have the cash to pay the negative equity to unload the car to CarMax? If not, there might be no point in all getting so many appraisals since he will HAVE to sell it to the dealership where he wants to roll over the negative equity.
Yes, Carmax will give sh*t for a 2010 VW CC. in 2012 I apprised my leased 2010 CC that was way under mileage and in excellent condition, and Carmax did not come even close to my payoff. I got $500 over my payoff from a Volvo dealer. I also tried to apprise a hot Forester and got the same quote that Subaru dealer gave me and $500 lower than Volvo dealer. It’s probably also regional demand that affects quotes.
Just my experience - get a written carmax quote and bring that to a dealer if its good, they might match it to get a deal done. Ive done it twice, once with a MB GLK early this year (carmax offered nearly 6k more than the best dealer trade in quote i got from 3 dealers) and once with an rx350 (about 2k more around 3 years ago). Not saying its a guarantee but if it makes the deal at the right time they seem to go with it.
Also, there is a “sell your car here” place that has a dude that sits in front of carmax with a sign pointing to their store front across the street from our carmax and they always will give you at least a few hundred more than carmax if you bring them the written quote. I have a friend who did that with no issues (they quickly paid the leasing company in that case) so look for carmax alternatives in your area
So, I went on the Carmax website and looked up 2010 CCs (with the 4-cylinder). They range in retail price from $12k-$14k. Baking in at least $2k of profit and $1.5k in reconditioning, that is at most a $10k offer from Carmax, but still probably better than the dealer $6.7k offer. Worth a shot!
That said, clean trade-in for a high-mileage CC is listed on nada for $7k.
If you’re 5-7.5k underwater, what about going into a plugin hybrid vehicle or electric vehicle? The 4.5-7.5k in discounts should help soften the blow of the negative equity.
I just did this last weekend. Had $6500 in neg equity on my Sentra. Traded on a new Q50 w/ premium plus package. Ended up with $560 per month with first payment out of pocket. It’s hard to bite it off, but Infiniti’s MF is basically 0 so we looked at it as financing our neg equity at zero percent over 39 months.
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I’ve seen those guys, but that whole operation sounds shady to me. So I’ve never explored getting a quote from them.
Absolutely seems shady. I went in once and got a bad vibe from it, but he had no problems with it and they have been there for years at this point. An option, but definitely research on your local place before committing!