My Carvana Ordeal

I’ve previously been a very satisfied customer with Carvana.  I’ve blogged about my purchase of a 2016 Kia Sedona and my son’s purchase of a 2018 Kia Optima back in 2018.  They were delivered at the same time on two flatbed trucks!

When I got this van, I passed on my older Sedona to my husband to drive to work.  After getting a lot more daily miles on it, that old 2007 vehicle started having some issues and getting check engine lights for sensors we’d already tried to fix, and it occasionally misfired.  So rather than invest any more money in tracking down the issue, we decided to trade it in and get him a new-to-us used car from Carvana that would be more economical on gas.  I surprised him in December 2020 with a 2018 Kia Forte!  It’s a 6-speed, so it’s great on gas, yet it’s still roomy enough to take passengers in. 

I first received a 90-day temporary tag/registration at that time.  When that expired in March, I let them know, and then I received a 60-day temporary tag to print out at home.  When that one expired in May, I contacted Carvana again and was given a 30-day temporary tag to print at home.  I also let them know that June was rolling around, and at that time, my existing registration on my trade-in (which they were supposed to be transferring to my new car) was expiring, so they agreed to switch their process to getting a brand new registration for the Forte. 

Thereafter, I had to call every single month, wasting 1-2 hours on the phone explaining my situation and getting yet another 30-day temporary tag in June and July.  After having 5 temporary tags, I contacted them in early August about needing another temporary tag, as mine was expiring on Aug. 6th.  I was immediately transferred to a Senior Executive Resolution agent.  He gave me his name and email address and told me that I would only be contacting him directly from now on…that I would not have to use the 800 number any more…and he would be my only point of contact until the issue was resolved.  I thought to myself, “Great!  Now, maybe this will finally get taken care of!” 

I was wrong.  He disappeared for the next few days and then told me he’d been out sick.  He assured me he was checking in every day with the manager of the registration team, and he would keep me posted.  Fast forward…my temporary tag expired 15 days ago!  It turns out that they’ve reached the max number of temporary tags that any DMV will issue, so my car has been parked all this time, and I cannot legally drive it.  And the tags I had received were from either Arizona and Tennessee, not TX.  I always thought that was odd, but they told me those were the only states from with they could obtain temporary tags. 

I’m so frustrated!  In looking around on the internet, I ran across a LOT of stories of people who are in the same boat.  Apparently, Carvana just got their license suspended for 6 months by the state of NC, and they cannot sell in the Raleigh/Charlotte area again until January.  The reason was that they failed to provide titles to the NC DMV in a timely manner.  Hmmm…that sounds familiar!  I was thinking that the holdup must be a problem with the title to the car.  The more I thought about it, the more disgruntled I felt.  I decided to file a formal complaint against Carvana’s practices with the TX DMV.  I saw on Reddit that there is another customer in TX who bought a vehicle in about the same time frame, and the same thing is happening to them.  It’s truly ridiculous to be paying for and insuring a vehicle that I can’t even drive!

Late tonight, I got a message from the Senior Executive Resolution agent, and he admitted that there was some kind of problem with obtaining the original title, so they had overnighted documents to the previous owner to have her sign so they could obtain a duplicate title.  That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, because Carvana bought the car from a dealership in CA.  So this is the previous owner from some time ago!  But it’s just as I suspected all along…it’s a problem with the title.  Sigh.  So here I am, continuing to endlessly wait.  If I don’t get a permanent registration this week, I think my next step is to file a complaint, along with the other 3,000+ people, with the Better Business Bureau.

So if you are considering a purchase from Carvana, you might think again.  I sang their praises before.  I guess when it works, it works really well.  When it doesn’t, it *really* doesn’t. 

Our only saving grace in this situation is that about a month after we bought the car, my husband was issued a company truck to drive to work, so he didn’t even need this car after all.  Good thing, or we’d be sharing one vehicle, and that wouldn’t work at all with how much I have to run the kids around with school and jobs.  Ugh!