Carmax Went to sale my car and they offered me $5000.00 dollars less than the value Hickory, North Carolina

1.  Carmax is under no obligation to pay a certain amount of money for a car.  If you don't like the offer, walk away.  All of the "other dealers offer...." blather is just that, blather.  

2.  Carmax is a great fit for people who just want to get rid of their cars fast.  I had a fully paid-off Honda Civic 2003 I wanted to get rid of simply because I didn't want to have a car anymore- I could walk or take public transportation and it was just an expensive "convenience."  I went to Carmax, was offered $2000 in about twenty minutes, and within 90 minutes I was out of there with a check in my hand.  Maybe I could have gotten more if I had shopped around, or put it on Craig's List, etc but for hassle-free "take my car, give me some money" dealing, Carmax could not be beat.

No, I do NOT work for Carmax.  

I hope you ended up just keeping your car and finding a way to make your payments, since you could not get the price you wanted. 

Your car is worth what someone will pay you for it. You expect top dollar trade in value for an 07 Vue? It matters not what others are asking, Saturn is a failed closed carmaker. Demand for that vehicle is 0. Your lucky they made you an offer at all.  At this point what are your options anyway? You cannot sell it yourself because you do not hold title. You're not going to get top dollar from any dealer unless you are trading in for a purchase, and they do not want your car anyway.

Your just not in a good position. You're only options are sell to Carmax and pay the balance to get out from under the loan or turn the car back to the bank via voluntary repossession.

I see that there are a lot of people that think 1. I am clueless and don't have any idea what I am talking about, or 2. They are adamant Carmax employees or in some way support tactics that are used by another major retail store chain that is ruining our mom and pop businesses. Well here it is, I checked several dealers out to about 100 miles from my location, and even Carmax, albeit I did not find any 2007 Saturn Vues in that search area for Carmax I ended up going out to 500 miles just to find any Saturn Vues.

I will not list the dealers by name but here is the independent dealer list. 2006 Saturn Vue 130,457 miles $6450.00 2006 Saturn Vue 133,576 miles $5995.00, 2007 Saturn Vue 119,258 miles $7400.00, 2007 Saturn Vue 102,000 miles $6995.00, 2006 Saturn Vue 145,565 miles $6995.00, 2006 Saturn Vue 119,050 miles $5975.00. Now for Carmax 2007 Saturn Vue 74,000 miles $12,500, 2007 Saturn Vue 45,000 miles $13,599, 2006 Saturn Vue 34,000 miles $12,998, 2007 Satirn Vue (Hybrid so worth more) 64,000 miles $14,998.

Is anyone seeing a trend here? My 2007 Saturn Vue has 62,549 and is in very good condition but even if they had offered me what I wanted at their prices they would have doubled that money. This is the last post that I will be putting up on this, either you support a fair market, or you don't, that is everyone's individual choice. As for me I support fair practices, and buying a car that is worth just over $8000.00 dollars for just over $6000.00 dollars is a deal when you know full well that you are going to charge at least $12,000.00 dollars for it. Good day everyone. remember this is my final post on this subject , so have at it. 

Based on your first report it seemed like you may have been happy with just the payoff, but you not only wanted the payoff amount..you wanted an extra $1000.

Them not giving you what you think you deserve, is not a RipOff.  They are taking all of the risk, and you are making several invalid comparisons.   First you keep talking about the "trade-in" value.  You are NOT trading in your car.  You are selling it to a dealer who's business is to resell that car.  As a dealer you should know that is two different things.  Next,  you are assuming is that they will be able to sell the car for $8,800.  What happened when a car you had didn't sell?  Did you keep it at the same price until it sold?   I would bet the answer to that is NO.  So, let's say that they gave you the $6,600 you wanted and by the time it sold they could only sell it for $6,000.  Would you give them back $600?  I think it is safe to figure that the answer would be a big fat NO..because you will probably say "well they took the risk and gave me that price".

But of course if you think you deserve $6,605 for your car, then take all of the risk, time, and effort and sell it yourself.   Yes you would have to have them pay you the money so you could pay off the loan before you could give them the title.  But if your car is truly worth $8,800 then selling it for your accepted value of $6,600 which is a couple thousand dollars less it should still be an easy sale.

You told me your car was a 2006 Saturn View.  We are in the 2013 model year, and that makes your car 7 years old.  Most of the major lenders however will not finance a vehicle to a private individual over 5 years old or over 75,000 miles on it. That is just a general rule of thumb.
 
So this means that Car Max would have to sell your car at auction, which means 2 middle men would be involved... Car Max, then the sale from the auction to a tote your note dealer, and then the sale to a private individual.

Each group of people would want to make a profit on the sale.  Car Max is not going to give you money for your car, and not make a profit.

Neither is the Auction going to sell the car to a tote your note dealership with out making a fee, and then finally the Tote your note Dealership will have to finance the car to someone with less than perfect credit.

Now you were asking 6605.00 from Car Max for the car, and the wholesale value was 7319.00
So with that in mind CarMax would only make a profit of  700.00 on the car.  This does not count the fees that they would have to pay to have the car transported to the auction, and the fees that the auction would charge carmax to sell the car.

I would guesstimate that carmax's walk away profit for all that work would be about 300-400.  That is not worth their time.

Most likely carmax would have been lucky to get about 5000.00 for the car at auction.

So they were not cheating you.  Sorry, you must have been out of the business for a long time

I am aware of how Kelley Blue Book works, I held my car dealers licsence for more than 6 years, and gave it up when I left the industry. The offer from Carmax was $3000.00 the price of my particular car a 2007 Saturn Vue with 62549 miles on it in very good condition, as per the standards of the Kelley Blue book was $7319.00 the low end in fair condition which it is not in was $6044.00, do you now see my point? I have taken excellent care of my car, I have all of the mainteance records, 4 matched tires with more than 75% of the tread left, with a clean engine compartment and no oil leaks, and no major defects to the interior or the exterior. Now mind you the wholesale value of a car in the normal industry is somewhere close to the trade in value as listed on Kelley Blue Book, the numbers that I have posted above are the trade in values. The personal sale numbers are even higher with the car in the condition that it is in and the mileage. I told the guys at carmax I know how it works and I am aware that they need to make money too, that is how business works, I was prepared to take payoff plus $1000.00 and the pay off is 5605.22, they could have gotten the car for way less than the actual value and made a killing with the resale price at somewhere around $8800.00. I am no idiot, I do not make charges such as mine lightly, and I do not care that Carmax has 141 locations across the country and their own auction, that's right they don't even buy cars outside their auction. I do care that they believe that they can take advantage of people the way that they do, and tried to do with me. The sad thing is that there are many, many people that are ignorant of the processes of some of these predatory companies, that is how they get away with it.  

If you go to Kelly Blue Book on the internet, One is the Trade In value, and the other is a Private Party Value.

The private Party Value is what you could expect to get for your car if you sold it yourself. 
The Trade In Value is what you could expect to get for your car if you traded it into a Dealership, AND BOUGHT ANOTHER CAR FROM THEM.

Now, I went out to the KBB website, (http://www.kbb.com/whats-my-car-worth/)
and I entered in the data for my car.  It asked for the following
1  Year
2  Make
3  Model
4 Mileage
5 Zip Code

After I filled in that information, it asked me to choose the specific body style.
A screen came up that asked me to choose specific equipment that was on the car.  No where on this page did it ask me for the overall condition of the car.

After I filled in the information I submitted every thing by clicking the See Blue book Value Button.

Two buttons appeared.  
Trade In Value
Here it gives you 4 different prices
1.  Execellent Only 3 pct of all the cars fall into this category
2.  Very Good  Only 23 pct of all cars fall into this category.
3.  Good  About 54 pct of all cars fall into this category
4.  Fair. About 18 pct of all cars fall into this Value
5.  Poor.  KBB doesnt even value cars that are poor.

So when you say the car was less th an perfect, but no major mech. defects.
you were not specific, so I have no Idea what category you used.

Now remember if you used the trade in value, and you are not trading in a car, expect them to give you less, because some of their profits would have come from selling you a new car, but since you are not buying a new car , they low balled you on the trade because they had no idea how long your car would be on the lot.

Now if you used the Private Party Sale, you would NEVER, NEVER, NEVER get that value from car max, as a private party sale is to a individual, not a dealership.

So why dont you give us all the data that KBB asked you to provide, and tell us if you went to the Trade In Value, or the Private Party Sale, and we can see for our selves.

Calling them borderline criminals is not correct,  So if you choose to respond to this request for information and let us judge for ourselves, or are you just complaining, and going to ignore this request for more information, as someone being nosy.  Remember you are the one who came out to a national forum, and complained, and slandered a car dealership .