My Internet Car

I did something weird, I just bought a nice car.  I have often mentioned my daily driver is a 2008 Infiniti sports car that I paid $7,000 cash for a couple of years ago.  That makes me officially eccentric in the world of financially independent people with multiple millions of dollars invested.   But I’m into bargains and the EX35 I was driving was a BMW level performance car at the price of a very old Prius, which is my kind of a deal.  That car, my second EX35 just rolled over 200,000 miles on the odometer a couple of weeks ago and my wife and I began to be a little concerned about reliability.  

We do take said vehicle on road trips of over 2,000 miles on regular occasions, even during covid pandemics, so I was getting concerned that we might break down in the middle of nowhere, since we frequent remote hiking trailheads.  My sweet and brilliant wife suggested I upgrade to a newer, but not new, model with low mileage and so I did what I always do, and went to the internet.  Like you I had seen Carvana and Vroom and Shift discount car shopping sites and as someone who hates the car dealer experience I thought perhaps I could get a car and a deal without actually having to talk to another human?  

One of the problems with buying a car is figuring out which car you want.  There are hundreds of models of cars, each with dozens of available optional upgrades and they come in a rainbow of colors.  But being the crafty engineer I was I had already solved that problem.  Three cars ago I had found what felt like the perfect car for me.  First built in 2008 and then produced virtually unchanged for the next nine years INFINITI had produced, in my opinion, this perfect car, the EX35, which later became the EX37 and then later still the QX50.  I bought a slightly used 2008 model six years ago, then replaced it with another same year version  two years ago.  Since they made the same car up until 2017 I decided to look for that model with every bell and whistle possible.  

Why this particular, and somewhat funny looking, car?  Several reasons, first in the sport compact SUV space there are only three cars that have big engines with lots of horsepower and tight sports car handling.  One is an Audi, another is a BMW model and then there is the INFINITI QX50.  It has 325 horsepower on a platform that is closely related to the Nissan 370Z sports car.  And the INFINITI sold for ten to fifteen thousand dollars less than the European models it competes with.  I like fast small cars that also have the ability to carry a good bit of stuff for our road trips.  The QX50 checks all the boxes and does it at the lowest price.  Just as a note, INFINITI still sells a vehicle called the QX50 today in 2020, but it is not the same car.  They made it bigger and boxier, put a smaller engine in it and dampened down the suspension to make it a friendly family car, instead of the road beast I wanted.

I researched the car and the option packages it was sold with, and in 2017 the loaded version of the QX50  sold for right at $50,000!  A little rich for this value buyer but I went ahead and did a web search to see how much of a discount I could get now that those 2017 models were three or four years old.  I wanted all the cool safety features, blind spot detection, automatic braking to avoid collision, lane departure warning and assistance, intelligent cruise control that will follow the car in front of you.  Also a  360 degree camera for parking and a host of other cool stuff.  And it had to be white, that was the only color I would consider.  After a lot of searching it appeared there was only one car for sale in the entire country that met my criteria and it was on Vroom. 

I do not monetize my blog so I get nothing from Vroom for telling this story.  This is just my car story.  Vroom quoted me a price for the car just over $21,000.  There is no haggling, ever.  What they show you the first time you see the car on their website is the final price.  NADA said the car should retail for nearly $28,000.  It appeared to me that Vroom might not have added in the value of all the upgrades on the vehicle because it had every single available option and upgrade but their written description failed to list some of them.  I could tell from the photos they were there, but maybe Vroom did not include them in its pricing.   It was almost too good to be true but I took the chance and wired them the money and sat back and waited to see if what I got matched what they said I’d get.  And to be honest my net worth sometimes changes by a lot more than  $21,000 on a daily basis as the stock market climbs and falls so even if I lost the money it would only be an aggravation, not a real problem.  

  I felt there was a chance I’d end up with a bad deal, a car that just didn’t match the description.  Or that some of the options that were deal breakers for me would either not be on this particular car or might not be working properly, especially the safety driver assistance features.  Vroom had provided many photos of the vehicle including close ups of a couple of imperfections but that didn’t mean it would not show up with additional blemishes.  I awaited delivery with a mixture of anticipation and fear of disappointment.  And while they have a seven day return policy I’m not sure how easy that is to execute.  Plus the delivery fee of $600 wasn’t included in the return policy. 

Delivery was quite an adventure.  One of the things about dealing with Vroom is they move with lightning speed right up to the point where you either wire them the money or mail them a cashier’s check.  After that they kind of ghost you.  You will get an occasional form letter email about the process being underway, but a little delayed by Covid.  I also got one or two phone calls but usually those went to voice mail, because I have a life.  And you can’t call them back without getting put on endless hold.  So mostly I just waited for two weeks.  But I knew that was how it worked from reading reviews, so it did not phase me much.  Two or three days before the actual delivery you start getting calls from the driver of the car carrier semi on which your vehicle will arrive.  The “window” for delivery of my car was “probably sometime after 9 PM on Saturday night”.  I did get his cell number so I could stay in touch if needed.  Saturday was two days earlier than the previous official delivery date and as my wife and I were in another city a hundred miles away that weekend playing in the state tennis championships I ended up having to make a two hundred mile round trip that could have been avoided. 

Around 7PM the driver called me and said he would be there at 8:30PM.  He was concerned about tree limbs scratching the cars he was carrying if he had to drive his big rig on the rural road I lived on so we agreed to meet at a Walmart a few miles from my home.  Closer to 9 PM the driver pulled his six car carrier semi trailer into the parking lot.  My car was on the bottom under a couple of Ford pickup trucks and had a ton of grime on the hood but other than that, it looked good.  I held my breath as he unloaded a couple of cars to get to mine, especially as he backed mine off the trailer with very little clearances on the sides. Other than being dirty from drips and road film the car looked great!

I drove it back to the tennis tournament and played my last match.  My team did not win but my wife is now a state champion along with the rest of her team.  She’d be on her way to sectionals in Louisville and then the national championships (perhaps) in Palm Springs, except Covid cancelled all that.  My team got thrashed, although my partner and I did beat the guys that eventually won, a moral victory at best.   I finally got the car home and gave it a hand wash and wax and detailed the interior, which was already pristine.  I was pleasantly surprised that the car had every feature advertised and that everything worked.  The leather interior was even better than in the photos, because a bad place on a headrest had been repaired and a small scratch on one door had been fixed as well.  

How do I rate the performance of Vroom?  Well on this one experience I’d say they are awesome.  Cars do depreciate a lot in the first three years, but they don’t  drop over 50% in value that fast.  I can only assume Vroom has such a low overhead and efficient structure that they can thrive with a very low margin per sale.  They aren’t huge on customer service.   I went for quite a few days not having a clue when my car would show up, but because there wasn’t that much money at stake I didn’t sweat it.  I figured they would come through, and they did. And the car itself was not only portrayed accurately but the minor defects they had shown in detailed photos they repaired, at their cost, before car arrived!  And that was never part of the deal we agreed to, that was an extra they threw in for free.  

  So I guess I need to retract what I said about customer service. Perhaps what I should say is they are not big on communication, but they come through where it matters.  As I said before, Vroom has no idea who I am, writing this blog, and I simply do not collect any money for advertising or linking from my site.  I  just do this for fun.  But I suspect many of you have thought about buying a car over the internet but had some worries about whether it really was safe or not.  I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience but I’m telling you, from now on this is how I do car buying!

I think used car dealers all over the country should be feeling some fear.  I saved about $7,000 on this car, that’s a significant sum on a used car.   Just like Amazon is making brick and mortar retail stores less relevant in our daily lives why can’t internet car vendors do the same?  I think they can.  So far I think the stats show that only one percent of car buyers have done what I did.  But then again, ten years ago Amazon was just an internet book store.  The times, they are a changing.  Need a car?  Maybe you should look online.  

What about you, have you ever bought a car online?  Do you think you might the next time you buy?

Have you heard any horror stories about online car buying?

Is used the way to go on cars?  Or are you asking for someone else’s problems when you buy their old car?