Buying A Car Online – Carvana Style

Since 2012, Carvana has made it its mission to simplify and eliminate the stress that has traditionally come with buying a car. For many people, the idea of making a trip to the dealership and spending untold hours wrangling with a salesperson has made car buying feel more akin to getting your teeth pulled than treating yourself.

The truth is, car buying should be fun! Moreover, Carvana believes that the process of buying a car should be streamlined, saving you both time and money, enabling customers to complete their purchases from A to Z online and from anywhere. Below, we’ve provided a guide to help you navigate the process of buying a car online with Carvana, with the hope that you’ll feel right at home with the new way to buy a car!

Using Carvana To Find The Right Car Or Sell Your Existing One

An ocean of certified pre-owned vehicles are at your fingertips when you begin your search for your next car with Carvana. With thousands of vehicles available in our online inventory, we’re confident you will find the right car for you. Already have that perfect car in mind? Simply visit carvana.com/search to find the vehicle you’ve long had an eye on. Want to search by price, make/model, body type, year and mileage, features, and more? Utilize our easy-to-use filters on the search page to help pinpoint the vehicle that checks all the boxes for you personally.

For those who know they need to make a new vehicle purchase, but don’t know where to begin their search, we’ve got you covered too! By visiting the Carvana Car Finder, customers can choose the most desirable attributes they’re seeking in their next vehicle, list their target price, select their preferred body type, and choose their preferred number of seats before being matched with a set of vehicles that best fit your personal parameters.

If you’re someone looking to sell your vehicle or trade it in for something a little newer, Carvana can help there as well! Similar to the ease and transparency of buying a vehicle online with Carvana, the process of selling your vehicle online with Carvana can take place in as little as 15 minutes. 

By visiting carvana.com/trades, a person can easily input their vehicle’s information before receiving a unique and accurate value in seconds. Once you receive your value and decide to sell your vehicle to Carvana, you would then upload a few documents from Carvana depending on how your vehicle is currently paid for. After your documents are uploaded to Carvana, you will be kept up-to-date via email, prepping them for the steps leading up to the moment a Carvana Field Advocate arrives in a hauler ready to take your old car away!

Regardless of the stage you’re in as you look to purchase your next vehicle, Carvana is well-equipped to help you find a vehicle that fits your needs and lifestyle!

Researching Vehicle History With Carvana

With Carvana, it’s easy to uncover the history of your next vehicle while browsing our expansive vehicle inventory. Each Carvana vehicle details page enables customers to examine a vehicle’s history through a free Carfax report. Additionally, Carvana takes things a step further by highlighting key attributes about that vehicle, letting you know that it’s accident-free (every vehicle in our inventory has a clean history of reported accidents), is a lower mileage vehicle, has had a single owner, etc.

Customers can also take comfort in knowing that every vehicle in Carvana’s inventory comes with a 100-day/4,189-mile Limited Warranty, while also providing information specific to every vehicle as to how much time and miles are left on that specific vehicle’s Manufacturer’s Basic Warranty.

Want to extend coverage on the Carvana vehicle you’re looking to purchase? With CarvanaCare, customers have the option of purchasing a 24-month (or 70,000-mile) protection plan or a 48-month (100,000-mile) protection plan. These CarvanaCare plans cover almost everything a vehicle’s manufacturer’s warranty covers (click here for a full list of vehicle protection items), while also providing customers with flexible options for finding a repair facility of their choice. Feel like you don’t need CarvanaCare after purchase? No problem! Cancel anytime for a prorated refund.

Our goal is to provide you with as much information and as much security as possible on your day of purchase, because at the end of the day, no one wants to walk away from their vehicle with a gnawing feeling of buyer’s remorse.

Navigating Your Carvana 7-Day Test Drive

Once you’ve done your research, found your vehicle, and completed the purchase process online with Carvana, the most exciting part of the process comes next: your 7-day test-own period!

Though each and every vehicle that appears in Carvana’s inventory has passed a rigorous and uncompromising 150-point inspection, we do encourage our customers to feel free to take their new purchase to a mechanic they trust to further secure that peace of mind.

Additionally, there are a handful of simple “do-it-yourself” checklist items that customers can conduct on their own to ensure their newly purchased vehicle is up to snuff. They include:

  • Climbing inside the vehicle to test all the different switches and knobs that you and your passengers will be utilizing
  • Stretching your vehicle’s figurative legs on local streets and freeways in order to get a sense of how your vehicle handles itself at different speeds
  • Taking advantage of a clear, dry day to look over the vehicle and take note of any unforeseen paint or body imperfections that weren’t already notated when browsing your vehicle on Carvana.com
  • Double-checking to make sure that the vehicle comes with all the options and accessories that were featured on the vehicle’s details page on Carvana.com

At Carvana, transparency is everything. It’s important to us that you not only feel secure and protected in your purchase, but also satisfied that the vehicle you bought comes exactly as you anticipated.

Finance Your Next Vehicle With Carvana

At Carvana, the approach to financing is one where efforts are made and systems are put in place to reduce, if not completely eliminate, incidents where price discrimination could come into play for our customers. To receive financing terms from Carvana, minimal information is required, making the process simple for the customer while still enabling Carvana to go to the credit bureaus and retrieve credit information about the customer.

Instead of just looking at a customer’s FICO score, Carvana goes further to get a more complete picture of a customer’s credit history and incorporate as much relevant information as possible. With that, Carvana can come back to the customer with a fair interest rate and down payment that we agree to extend to the customer without playing back room games.

Helpful online tools, like our Auto Loan Calculator, put this promise into practice, as the calculator helps individuals determine just how much they need to budget for the car they want. All a customer needs to do is enter the cost of the vehicle they want, their credit score, the preferred terms of their loan, and their desired down payment. From there, Carvana personalizes your financing terms in seconds, without impacting your credit score!

In addition to attempts to bring more fairness and honesty to the fold when it comes to financing, Carvana works hard to provide customers with not only a comprehensive understanding of their financing terms, but also full visibility with regard to how their terms are applied to vehicles in Carvana’s online inventory. When a customer receives financing terms with Carvana, they are able to see those terms applied to every vehicle on the website. 

Simply put, that’s a luxury that is difficult to find when shopping for a vehicle online or at a brick and mortar dealership.