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Whelp, my Subaru was t-boned by stop sign runner and I'm tired of owning responsible family oriented cars that bore the everloving out of me. I've got a 2011 G37 Sedan bought site unseen from Vroom.com coming and I couldn't be happier. I would've never done this if it hadn't been for an article @ Jalopnik Doing The Unthinkable: Buying A Car From A Website Without Seeing It Or Test-Driving It First
I completed the paperwork yesterday and as the title says I'm going flipping crazy waiting for this beautiful beast to show up. I'm sorry my Subaru was totaled, but I'm glad it led to something better.
Congrats on the car! A few years ago I bought a car site unseen from a dealer about 6-7 hours away, was well worth it. I've tried my luck doing the same for a g37x but have not found the one yet. Let me know how it goes I may check out that dealer if the car is as described
The car arrived Monday. This is it, a 2011 G37 Journey with 60k miles on it for 17,800. The exterior was excellent, just some swirling on the hood and a little tar on the body behind the tires. Interior was not as good as the pics on Vroom.com appeared. I had a prominent discoloration and small tear on the passenger seat, red stained carpet and a rather severely pitted windshield. Nothing was a dealbreaker and nothing out of the ordinary on a 5 year old car with that many miles. That night I took it out to have some fun with "spirited driving" and discovered the tires were absolute crap. While, new they were Kumho Sense shod on all four corners. On their website Kumho recommends these tires for Corrolas, Civics an xB. On the G37 the traction control light would start flashing around 4-5k rpm and the rear end gets a little light and twitchy. My first thought was: super mega-cool!, my pzev 170hp Legacy would never do this! Then, I clicked the transmission into DS mode and with any steering input under throttle, the car would fishtail and was just plain undriveable.
The next day I contacted Vroom.com who told me they put the tires on the car and while they admitted they were touring tires, not performance tires they denied it should be any issue. Vroom's reasoning: since inputting the car model on Kumho's website showed these tires fit, they must be appropriate tires. I got more than a little upset over this. I argued and threatened to return the car, but Vroom.com wouldn't do anything about the tire situation.
That night, I priced descent tires and went over the paperwork. Turns out I got all googly eyed over this car and utterly failed to read and understand the paperwork. The 17,800 car that I put 4000 down on still had 18,800 left to pay off. In my haste, I agreed to a few warranty add-ons covering the paint, interior and what not. When I read what these warranties covered I hit the roof. The paint warranty which was described as they'll fix any issue with the paint for a $50 co-pay doesn't cover: Collision, vandalism, road pebbles, debris or foreign objects. Basically anything that can damage your paint it doesn't cover. Read on a little further and I discovered that if you can get them to cover a paint repair, they are under no obligation to color match the paint.
That was it for me. I called them and elected to return the car under the 7 day, 250 mile refund guarantee. I'm not jaded to buying a car on the internet, but I won't be doing it from Vroom.com. I'm really hoping to find another G37 as I've got a pair of Berk HFCs and a k&n oil filter for it. What can I say? I got a little excited reading this forum.
The car arrived Monday. This is it, a 2011 G37 Journey with 60k miles on it for 17,800. The exterior was excellent, just some swirling on the hood and a little tar on the body behind the tires. Interior was not as good as the pics on Vroom.com appeared. I had a prominent discoloration and small tear on the passenger seat, red stained carpet and a rather severely pitted windshield. Nothing was a dealbreaker and nothing out of the ordinary on a 5 year old car with that many miles. That night I took it out to have some fun with "spirited driving" and discovered the tires were absolute crap. While, new they were Kumho Sense shod on all four corners. On their website Kumho recommends these tires for Corrolas, Civics an xB. On the G37 the traction control light would start flashing around 4-5k rpm and the rear end gets a little light and twitchy. My first thought was: super mega-cool!, my pzev 170hp Legacy would never do this! Then, I clicked the transmission into DS mode and with any steering input under throttle, the car would fishtail and was just plain undriveable.
The next day I contacted Vroom.com who told me they put the tires on the car and while they admitted they were touring tires, not performance tires they denied it should be any issue. Vroom's reasoning: since inputting the car model on Kumho's website showed these tires fit, they must be appropriate tires. I got more than a little upset over this. I argued and threatened to return the car, but Vroom.com wouldn't do anything about the tire situation.
That night, I priced descent tires and went over the paperwork. Turns out I got all googly eyed over this car and utterly failed to read and understand the paperwork. The 17,800 car that I put 4000 down on still had 18,800 left to pay off. In my haste, I agreed to a few warranty add-ons covering the paint, interior and what not. When I read what these warranties covered I hit the roof. The paint warranty which was described as they'll fix any issue with the paint for a $50 co-pay doesn't cover: Collision, vandalism, road pebbles, debris or foreign objects. Basically anything that can damage your paint it doesn't cover. Read on a little further and I discovered that if you can get them to cover a paint repair, they are under no obligation to color match the paint.
That was it for me. I called them and elected to return the car under the 7 day, 250 mile refund guarantee. I'm not jaded to buying a car on the internet, but I won't be doing it from Vroom.com. I'm really hoping to find another G37 as I've got a pair of Berk HFCs and a k&n oil filter for it. What can I say? I got a little excited reading this forum.
The utterly offensive flipping clownshoes tire:
Sorry to hear that man, I got my 2013x coupe with 31k miles for a little over 18k with a warranty. Since I've gotten my car in July I absolutely love it. It does however have a salvaged title... That is about the only bad thing about this car. It was in a wreck and the only thing that needed fixed was the right exterior but because it was the whole side the company considered it totaled so I got it extremely cheap. Nothing was/is wrong with it though. My dad was a mechanic and now is in charge of a bunch of mechanics so he looked at the undercarriage, behind the wheel wells and what not. Nothing wrong! Don't be afraid to get a salvaged title necessarily. Get the vin# and look up the car to see why it has a salvaged title. Sometimes it isn't as bad as it seems. Got mine for a steal.
wow that seems like a pretty terrible dealership from a customer service stand point. This is the some of the same issues I have been finding trying to find a decent car on the internet. Esp through eBay... I've had dealerships comes down as far as $13,000 for a 2009 with 50,000 miles on it... only to read reviews on how shady the dealership is and then find out they take on almost $2000 worth of fee's and want you to finance through them for their "special internet pricing" option. I've decided it would be well worth it to hold out for the right car either from a trusted member of this forum, or close enough that I can check the car out in person.
Good luck with your search, hopefully they don't give you a hard time about returning the car.
What a roller coaster of a thread! I think this sort of thing may be more common than we realize and it just turned out they sold a car to someone who was an enthusiast, and would look for/care about these things. I'm sure many people get their cars and are overwhelmed by excitement and fail to notice small issues here and there that were not previously disclosed.
In either case, good on you for deciding this car was not worth keeping and using their guarantee to return it. Best of luck with the next purchase, hope we see you back around these parts, but with a bit better luck the next time around!
