Complaint Rating:

Company information:
Carmax
1300 NW 98th Court
Miami, Florida
United States
Phone: 305-436-5494‎
carmax.com

I purchased a 2005 Chevy Silverado 1500 (55, 000 miles) from Carmax on May 5, 2009. Between that day and June 15, 2009 I have taken the car back to carmax 6 times (11 days total without a car) It took them 6 attempts to fix my steering and it was not until the 6th attempt that they finally decided to replace my rack and pinion along with a broken tierod end. My A/C makes a horrible hissing sound after it being on for more then 5 minutes to witch Carmax states its perfectly normal although a professional A/C mechanic explained to me that it was a bad expansion valve. My vehicle is covered with Maroone Collision Stickers on all the door panels. I noticed these when I first purchased the vehilce but I assumed they were there because the vehicle was originally sold by a Maroone dealership. After dealing with the faulty steering, bad brakes, and various instrument panel lights going out (headlamp switch, foglamp switch, radio power button) I began to wonder if this vehicle was in an accident originally. I called the Maroone collision center and sure enough they told me it was in deed in a crash but would not give me further details on it seeing as I was not the original owner of the vehicle at the time of repair. I had the vehicle expected by a friend who is an ex-employee from Kendall Collision and was a quality control manager (he would inspect cars after they were repaired to make sure they were up to industry standards) and he confirmed that the vehicle was crashed. My driver door was misaligned, the driver fender was misaligned. The driver side headlamp was misaligned, the driver side fog light was misaligned, the hood release cable was mis routed and binding, different bolts that hold the fender in place were in use vs the passenger side. Along with all the issues I have had earlier with the steering, brakes, and lights he said he was 110% confident it was in a crash. But the carfax report said it was clean and no accidents. I took it to carmax today because there I was tired of dealing with this nightmare and explained to them that I wanted a full refund or to swap out my car because of the fact that it was crashed. I spoke to Steven Wheeler (Operations Manager) and he told be flat out "We sell crashed cars here at carmax, but we dont sell cars with frame damage. Your car is a used car and you should expect it to have problems" I was astonished at this comment but more outraged at the fact that Steven just admited that carmax sales crashed vehicles. I told him that this was a deceptive sales tactic as they had a ford sedan parked in the showroom with a sign on it that says "we would never sell you a car like this, because it use to look like this" and under that it had a picture of the same vehicle crashed. I assumed that carmax does NOT sell crashed cars. In fact the entire reason I went and purchased a vehicle at carmax (for an outrageous price tag as well) was for the guarantee that these vehicles are not crashed and had a 125 point inspection. If I knew the vehicle was going to have so many problems and was crashed I wouldve paid thousands less then what I did for it. I might as well have just gone to any other dealership to purchase a vehicle. Mr. Wheeler explained to me that I should be grateful for the repairs they have made on my USED vehicle because its a USED vehilce and it will have its problems. I then told Mr. Wheeler that this company lacks proper business ethics practices deceptive sales tactics. They will be hearing from my attorney.