Complaint Review: Carvana -

We had a vehicle delivered on February 15th. It was falsely advertised as an automatic transmission, and when it arrived, it was manual transmission. There was also a crack in the windshield & the air bag light was on. After contacting customer service multiple times, we were told to take it to a repair shop.

The repair shop referred us to the dealership. This process took two weeks to be resolved, with another handful of calls to Carvana to get the issues resolved. I spoke with a supervisor who offered me compensation for the aggravation & promised a check would be mailed. That was on February 28th. In the meantime, we were told to have an emissions & state inspection completed.

Then, using the FedEx mailing label, ship the receipts back to Carvana. We would receive reimbursement for these inspections, along with Carvana submitting the documents to the DMV for the registration and tags, since it was already included in the price of the car. We mailed that paperwork on February 22nd, and it was received by Carvana, confirmed with the FedEx tracking number on February 25th.

On March 20th, I called customer service again. We had not received the reimbursement for the inspections, our registration or tags from the DMV or the compensation for all this aggravation. Our temporary tags were expiring on March 31st and we had not received any sort of deliveries as promised.

After speaking to a representative, it appears that only then, almost a MONTH after we had mailed in our receipts for inspections, the process to register the vehicle began. We received a text message notification after the customer service call later that day as proof of the initiated process. However, based on the estimated processing time, we were not going to receive our license plates and registration in time!

After contacting customer service again on March 27th, we arranged for a rental car once the tags were expired, meaning we could not legally operate the car. It is ridiculous that multiple hours were spent on the phone trying to negotiate a convenient option for this problem. Again, it is still unclear what happened, when we submitted the appropriate documentation with more than 30 days for processing time.

Furthermore, I also asked about the $250 “aggravation” check I had not received, which was supposedly issued on February 28th. I was promised that check would be canceled, a new one reissued and sent Fedex overnight. When I did not receive it within three days, I called again & was promised the same thing again.

I spoke to two different supervisors about the delay with this check & I still did not receive a check after being promised an overnight delivery TWICE.  Then I was told, after calling a third time in two weeks, that the check had been sent on March 29th, but through the postal service and would take another 10-15 business days to arrive.

Even though I was promised the check to arrive overnight by two different supervisors. From the delivery of the vehicle to the time it took to process all the paperwork, receive reimbursements, repair all the damaged items and contact customer service approximately 20 times, two months passed. Next time, we will spend the three hours at a dealership & not have to deal with such inconsistencies and shady business practices.

Interestingly enough, each time I called, their automated system stated that the calls were being recorded for quality assurance. If I were Carvana, I would use these exact situations to train their employees to follow the necessary customer service and quality control guidelines. Our experience with Carvana was absolutely horrendous.