Since I’ve been going through a spree of purchases lately, I thought I’d let you in on the experience a bit and ‘review’ if that’s the only word for it, some of my experiences. And since today was all about the car finishing up, lets start there.

So I bought my car recently from carmax as it was recommended to me by a good friend out here as a decent place to try. So I started by doing my online research, and honestly, everything online feels expensive, and since I’m used to the ole town country style of barter and haggle to get the price down to what we’d think is reasonable, carmax’s one price policy made me a bit apprehensive about the experience. I searched online and found a car that looked good, had a decent asking price, and low miles. The deal looked really good, and carmax has this great policy that says if you don’t like the car for any reason, you can return it within 5 days and the deal is dissolved, no questions asked, you get out of the sale quick. Which in California is very generous because the state has dissolved the 3 day cold feet law that most states still have in place. So with plans to take a monster road trip back to Missouri and back, I figured I would go get the car if I liked it, and take it through the mountains, through the desert, through the hills and back again, and try and load test it, cause if something were going to break I wanted it to break within that 5 day window.

So I went in and the guys there were great. No pressure, a couple of “have you been helped yet”s that stopped with a “yup” and away they went. I test drove the car, liked it, wanted to take it home. I’d lived here for 22 hours, and hadn’t yet started the job that was promising to provide money to make the payments, but they ran a credit check, pulled some strings to get me through the residence drama, and I signed away. They took care of all the checks and registration stuff for me, and I was outta there with plates on the car and then drove it 4000 miles in a week. The car was great, I really like it, a few quirks that I would do differently, but I wanted something modest and comfortable that didn’t run 20k+ to get. This was it.

Knowing that I was going to keep the car, I let the 5 day window close, and fell back on the 30 day “we’ll fix anything” warranty that came stock with the purchase. So after 4,000 miles, and a few potholes, the alignment was off, not bad, but it pulled to the right a bit, and my passenger side window wasn’t going up and down like it should. So I called them and they said they could fix it, just bring it in sometime before 6pm, well I countered with I work all day every day, what else you got, to which they countered bring it in anytime before 9pm, get a loaner, and we’ll fix it and get it back to you. Sweet! I cruised in, picked up a granny impala on saturday morning with the promise that my car would be taken care of first thing Monday morning. Monday came and I got about 4 calls from Ephraim, the mechanic, letting me know how the car was doing, that they ran into a bad part, and were reordering, but Tuesday it’d be ready he guessed. Well, it wasn’t fixed till today (wednesday) but it wasn’t too big of a deal, I had a car still, and they gave it to me with a full tank of gas and no obligation to refill it before I returned it, but it was a bit of an inconvenience.

So I went in today, returned the loaner, again with no questions or problems, and picked up my car. The window worked perfect, they balanced and rotated the tires and fixed the alignment. Great. They also refilled my gas tank (which was on empty) and washed the car (which after the road trip was noticable) and I drove outta there a day later than I wanted, but a huge fan of carmax. Seriously, with the extra 60 bones to fill the gas tank and 30 minutes to wash the outside and vacuum the inside of my car, they bought me for good. Best experience buying a car ever. It’s nice to buy something of that magnitude and be worry free. If somethings wrong, they’ll fix it, if somethings not just there, they take care of it. I love it. So sorry if this sounds testimonial ish, but the experience of buying has made the car. wtg carmax.