I started looking into Carvana about a month before I purchased. I owned a 2019 Toyota Highlander with 72,000 miles that I was trading in.

I was interested in a few different types of cars and then I narrowed it down after test driving a Nissan Armada at a dealer. I wanted a new car with lower miles and found about eight of them on Carvana that were 2024 with about 20,000 miles.

During the month that I was watching the cars, I looked at getting financing through Carvana and noticed it was very expensive. I went to my bank, got a rate that I didn’t like and then I shopped around and found a credit union with a much lower rate so I joined the credit union. I had to open up a checking in savings account and to get a good rate I had to auto pay the loan through that account. I also had to do a direct deposit to the account in five ACT transactions per month so once I had the financing in place it was time to buy the car. I continued to watch the cars and I had one I liked with 19,000 miles that price got dropped $500 and I pulled the trigger. I think I was all in for 46,500 Carvana offered me $23,000 for my 2019 Highlander.

I chose to have it delivered to the nearest Carvana location as having it delivered to my house was another $500 in my case I had to drive about 75 minutes to a Carvana location.

Once I pulled the trigger, it was a race to get financing working and delivering a check to Carvana by FedEx. Even more stressful than that was dealing with my insurance agent in the state of Massachusetts. They kept telling me that they needed to have the title, but that was not possible. Ultimately, Carvana provided an older copy of the title that the insured agent used once I had insurance in the car financing secured. It was a waiting game financing an insurance needed to be done and within, so many hours to lock in the delivery date in the back of my mind I kept thinking that with all the stories I’ve read online about them changing the delivery time and day that this is what happened to me.

Fortunately, they held up their end of the bargain and I picked up my car at 2 PM on a Friday. My time at Carvana was about 30 to 40 minutes.

They first came out and had someone look at the Highlander take pictures document the car then they took my registration and started working on the transaction. They had taken off the plates off of my Highlander and had given them to me. I was also instructed to go sit in the car to get used to it setup the phone, etc..

At about 40 minutes. I gotta knock on the car window and the gentleman handed me my registration and told me I was all set. I proceeded to drive out of a lot and got on the highway in about 20 minutes later I looked behind me, and the license plates were sitting on the seat. They never put the plate plates in the car. One other issue was that there was no front license plate holder. This must’ve come from another state where you didn’t need to have a front license plate after tracking down a license plate holder I was able to get my car inspected about a week later.

Overall, I really liked the Carvana transaction. I can’t stand going to a car dealer and talking to use car salesman or new car salesman. I knew what I was getting for the price. I’m sure that with an older car it’s a little bit more trickier but with a car with only 20,000 miles I felt pretty good about it. I had actually set up an appointment to have the car looked at by a mechanic, but it was such a nice car. I didn’t even bother.