PSA: Carvana's Bureaucracy Does Not Make Me Happy

RIP #Five

 If you follow my Facebook, you'd know on June 10th I was in a fairly bad car accident.  I mean, bad for me.  My car was totaled and while nothing was broken or anything, I had a lot of bruises and cuts and soreness that lasted for weeks.  The other guy and his golf clubs were fine and I'm sure his Lexus crossover only had to spend a week or so in the body shop.  (At least he got the ticket so maybe his insurance will go up slightly.  Take that!)

I had seen the big Carvana vending machine in Novi and seen the ads promising that they would make me happy.  But really I went looking for a car there because I was all busted up and thus between that and Covid and everything I really didn't want to go around to dealers looking for a car and then go to a bank to get a loan and all that bullshit.  And I didn't really have the money to rent a car for weeks while I shopped around.  If I could get it all done online from my apartment in a day or two that would be easier.

The process to actually find a car isn't that bad.  You can kind of look at the vehicle with your mouse and see the Carfax report and stuff like that so it's not exactly buying it blind.  The first one I looked at was a Chrysler 200 that was only like $10,000 with not a lot of miles, but by the time I went to put it in my cart or whatever it had disappeared.  After looking around at various vehicles I got a dark red 2014 Focus that didn't have a lot of miles and only one owner who seemed to take it for regular maintenance, so even without a test drive, I figured it would probably be better than a newer car that's been used a lot more.  Maybe I'll turn out to be wrong about that.  Probably.

It's the bureaucracy after you decide to buy that really sucks.  The first thing is you have to load a copy of your driver's license and proof of insurance.  The website says they prefer a PDF of your license so I scan my license and load it as a PDF.  The next day I get an urgent call saying I have to take a picture of the license with my phone and load it to the site.  And basically if I don't do it in the next 2-3 hours the delivery of the vehicle will be delayed.

In the commercials there's a lady who keeps going on about how "Susan from Carvana" kept checking in with her to make sure she was happy.  Guess what?  There was no "Susan from Carvana" for me, just that one phone call about "fixing" something I did the way their site says to.

On top of that they kept nagging me about loading the proof of insurance despite that I loaded it a couple of times already.  I even pushed the button on their site to have Progressive (their "preferred" agency) notify them.  Still I kept getting these emails about making sure I loaded the proof of insurance.

The car did come on the right date--though it was a half-hour late.  I suppose I can forgive that because with all the construction and shit, traffic probably wasn't great.

There was no license plate because their "third party vendor" was working on that.  It should be there within 3 months.  Maybe.

A few weeks later I still couldn't make a payment for the car through their app.  And then they send me an email saying there was a "slight discrepancy" with the price and so I had to sign all of the contracts online a second time.  And then another email about loading the proof of insurance. [eye roll]

A couple weeks later I realized I could finally make a payment for the car.  They never actually told me so the payment might have been late.  You'd think they might actually email you about paying for the vehicle, right?  Maybe they don't like money?  I guess I'm lucky they didn't send someone to repo it right away when really I was just waiting for their stupid app to let me make a payment.

Then a week or so later the license plate comes from the Secretary of State so I put that on and take the temp sticker out of the window.  So now I've paid for the car, signed the contracts (twice), and got the plate.  We're all done, right?

Nope.  A few days later, on a Sunday, a second license plate and registration come via FedEx.  It's a different plate number too. WTF?  I do an online chat with a "real life human" who didn't give a real name.  I tell it my problem and it says to call my DMV because their system doesn't show anything.  And it probably figured that was it.  But I'm like, WTF?  You guys make this mess of things and tell me to clean it up for you?  I'm supposed to call the Secretary of State (what we actually call it here, not the DMV) and wait on hold forever to figure out the problem you idiots created?  I said that was unacceptable and they lied and said their "registration team" wasn't there.

So I call and I think the guy on the phone realized that I was really agitated because he didn't try to fuck around and pass the buck.  Instead he contacted the "registration team" or at least said he did and told me that the second one was the one I should put on.  Which made sense because looking at the registration it said it was replacing the other one.

The car itself to this point has been fine.  And like I said, actually picking out a vehicle was fine.  It's just their shitty bureaucracy.  I mean I had a much easier time with actual car dealers every time I bought a used car--and the one time I bought a new one.  I never had to sign the contracts a second time or got a second registration and plate.

Car dealers are worse at the actual finding the vehicle.  I mean if you just go to the lot they'll try to press you into buying something you don't really want.  So Carvana and similar sites are nice that you can look at different vehicles without some jerk working for commission standing too close and trying to fast talk you into something.

But once you decide on the vehicle, the rest, in my experience, isn't that hard.  You just tell them you don't want any extras like extended warranties or rustproofing or whatever other crap they might want to throw in.  Then you just sign everything and get the keys.  Woo hoo.  It's a lot less hassle than Carvana was for that part of the transaction.

So, no, from my experience they do not make me happy.  Be wary.

UPDATE:  Apparently they didn't make a lot of people happy as the state of Michigan shut down the Novi location at least temporarily.