14.1K views
New Reviewer
163 comments
Updated by user Aug 16, 2012

Over hiring: So last year when Darren was in charge, he thought it would be a great idea to have 100 sales consultants. Well in the last year there have been 92 sales consultants, with there being about 50 left. Turnover went from 12%, to 52%. CarMax continues to say they are hiring to make investors feel like we are doing that good. Reality check, your company spends around $6-8,000 training each sales person, and when you over staff and then realize it later, and start mass firing, morale drops and people quit. Money well spent carmax.

Funny thing too, Carmax did its survey where 47% of all associates stated they will not stay more then a year from that date, due to morale and management. So two managers took initiative to try and fix it. Well both managers were forced to.transfer to other stores and another manager was told to let it go.

There was also a manager who kept stealing gas, and kept brining cars.back in horrible condition so they kept having to be re detailed. When an associated reported him, the associate got fired.

Lee is the best though. He lost the.company over $3,000 in one transaction, and his best friend of 20 years, and boss, defended him and burried it.

There have been numerous sexual harrasement complaints against the store, on the ops manager and a sales manager and to date, nothing has been done. Sadly 12 of the associates who complained have.now been fired.

More to come!!

Original review posted by user Aug 08, 2012

I am currently an employee of CarMax. I have been working at the CarMax in Duarte now for about 5 years. I have sould hundreds of cars, have been in Presidents Club, and know the ropes. Now it's time for people to know the new CarMax, and decide for themselves if it's worth buying. Enjoy this read, it's stuff no one will tell you, but I've had about enough.

First of all, CarMax has been ranked Top 100 companies to work for now for 8 years straight. Guess what guys? CarMax donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to the company that ranks them. Suprised? You shouldn't be. As the working environment at Carmax keeps getting worse and worse. When the new CEO took over, it went from customer centric, to profit and sharehold oriented. We were all about the customer, and I believe we really were the Top 100 companies to work for before. I also believed in our slogan, "The Way Car Buying Should Be." A great motto to follow. We always talked about our equaties, our statement. "To provide our customers great quality cars at great prices with exceptional customer service."

Oh, those were the days. I miss those days. We used to sell tons of cars, and were very relaxed. Our customers LOVED shopping with us, every customer, from appraisal only customers, to customers doing the entire process of buying a car as well. Our associates were happy, overall, the best company I have worked for. Our store is in shambles right now. Our morale is the lowest it has been ever. Our management is a joke. We used to have managers who cared about us, asked us how we were, and actually listened. Now we have micromanagers stressing if they are going to lose the job, which in turn causes pressure to roll to the sales consultants, who hate their jobs.

When I was first hired, I was told our turnover rate, which means the rate at which employees join the company and leave, was at a low 9%. Almost unheard of in retail, but it was amazing. Right now we are over 50%. No one wants to work here once they start. The lies that are told to get great people hooked are just horrible. Management promising new sales consultants 6 figures, consultants finding out they probably won't even hit $30,000. I feel bad. In the last year, I have seen about 12 people drop out of Presidents Club. President Club is where you sell over 15 cars a month on average for 6 months, (now changed,) they get into this club, and get paid more. ($25/car)

Commission: Most customers come in thinking we are out to get them. Guess what, we are NOW. We used to be the best, never pressured custoemrs, never lied or over promissed. Now we do, we have to, we don't want to lose our jobs. We have a requirement in our region, sell 10 cars a month or you're fired. Guess what, in Feb, only 8 people made it, March? 12. April? 11. Out of 65 sales consultants. Oh and our commission? It's $164 per car, so stop asking for discounts and thinking we say no because we want our commission. You buy a $8,000 car or $99,000 car, we make $2,000 or $15,000 on the car, I get paid $164. If I sell a warranty, another $164. And it's actually worth it, and I will tell you why later!

Human Resources: What a joke. Open-Door policy at CarMax truly means, the door is left open, so other managers and associates can hear. Anything that is reported to Store HR, District HR, or Regional HR, gets sent back to the store management, which means easy retaliation. I have now seen multiple associates terminated after they reported a manager for breaking laws. Yes, for BREAKING LAWS. CarMax HR should be hired by the military, HR can do a better cover up of things. Need people to forget about Area 51? Call Karen, Regional HR, she can do it!

Management: Even bigger joke. Our old store manager, Darren, was promoted after they kept reporting him. This guy cheated on his wife at a Presidents Club dinner, and expected no one to find out. Really?? And the Operations Manager, Ben, cheated on his wife with an ASSOCIATE! He has also had a ton of sexual harrasement claims brought against him, but for some reason the people who do that end up unemployed. Lee, Darrens best friend, is here harrasing people until they quit or he can try and fire them. Micromanage much CarMax? Oh and Steve, the new GM, he loves telling the managers who were reported against who actually submited the report. Retaliation is the game, don't report anything, enjoy being treated like a dog!

Appraisals: Oh you guys will love this! Before, we used to be really good on buying cars, but CarMax got smart! You see, when you go get an appraisal, a Buyer will look at the car, and how much they are buying/selling for. They usually mark the car down $1-2k below what we pay at auction. Now here's the kicker, the system where they enter a price actually marks a car down AGAIN. Yup. It's called ACR, or, appraisal cost recovery. The system marks cars down an additional $250-3,000. So for example, if a buyer searches for a Mercedes C300, and the exact car is selling on our lot for $29,000, and selling at auction for $25,000, the appraisor will drop the price to about $23-24,000. Now the system will also add some money, so for a car like this, maybe an additional $2,000. So a Mercedes we will sell for $29,000, we will offer you about $22-23,000. Yup, $6-7k markup. Ready for the next kicker? They say they need to mark it up that much because of reconditioning. Well, for example, on this car, they will detail it, which will cost about $60, and that will probably be it. Don't get me wrong, we are pretty good on appraisals. But honestly, a lot of people are now competing with us an offer more. START with CarMax, like their commercial says, but shop around. Anyone and everyone will jump at the chance to beat our offer. EVERYONE.

Reconditioning and repair: So once we buy a car in, we put it through an inspection. Guess what, most cars fail a techs standards, but pass managements. For example, tires and brakes. Management HATES replacing them. Brakes cost $30 for Carmax on most vehicles, but if it meets our standards, which is about the line of where the car starts squeeking because it hit the wear pad indicator, they don't care. Tires? Managers won't properly measure them so most the time they are below standards. Now if your car is under $17,000, they don't care if the tires match. So you can have bridgestone on the front and michellin on the back. But don't worry, they won't be expensive tires like that. We are cheap. I remember an associate went to go pick up a car from Ontario and all 4 tires blew out on the way to our store. Now if a part is bad on a car that will go retail, we have a huge wholesale lot, which are auction cars, to take parts from. Yup, those high mileage, or cars that don't meet our standards, which are low now, will have parts taken from them and put into your Carmax car. Enjoy!

High Output stores: Our store is a regular reconditioning store, and it's bad. Cars look horrible. What do you expect? CarMax is pushing the higehr profit valuemax cars. But there are stores that are high output stores, which means they spend less time on them, which makes them look worse and have MORE mechanical problems. Ontario is one. Avoid cars from this store unless you love waiting in the service lane.

Gas: This one stumps me. I know Carmax is cutting cost to make more profit to make their investors, and only their investors happy, but this is a low. CarMax hires people to go to the wholesale cars, and take the gas out, and put them in our tanks. That means cars with 87, 89, and 91 octane are mixed together and put in your car. That will be the thumping you hear from your engine. It's not normal. Even in expensive $70-100k BMW, Porches, Mercedes, they will get that ***. Tell them not to fill it, or enjoy! Up to you.

Financing: CarMax financing SUCKS. It's not competitive. If you get a Caf (carmax auto finance) approval, take it to your bank. Your bank will destory our offer. I've seen customers get 16% and go to their bank and get 3%. It happens daily!

Warranty: Please please please buy this if you buy a CarMax car. I've seen people with it saves thousands of dollars, because it's used so often. Our comeback rate, which is the rate at which cars are brought back within the 30 day warranty, has sky rocketed. It went from one of the lowest in the industry, around 18%, to it's amazing rate of around 30%. Almost 1/3 of cars are coming back for repairs within 30 days. 30 days! Our warranty is probably the only thing CarMax offers that isn't a total rip off.

Pressure: CarMax used to be against pressuring customers to buy cars. Now if we don't do it, we get in trouble. We have Professional selling princaples that tell us exactly how to overcome your objection, if not we have a micro manager around who will do it for us and scare our customers.

So to wrap this up, you, as a customer, don't matter anymore. It's all about the investor, and our profits. Profits, profits, profits, *** you customer, you DON'T MATTER. Thank you Tom Folliard for pointing that out. Now, when should we take down our signs that say "The Way Car Buying Should Be?" You tell me? My email address is truecarmax@***.com if you have any questions ask. It might take a while, I'm hiding my IP so carmax doesn't fire me.

Location: North Las Vegas, Nevada

Do You Have Something To Say ?
Write a review

Comments

chat-icon

Please avoid publishing any personal information and promotional content

You will be automatically registered on our site. Username and password will be sent to you via email.
Post Comment
Guest

very well put

Guest

I am not understanding why you work there if you are so unhappy? Also not understanding why people are saying they have had good experiences with Carmax but are rethinking continuing with them over this post.

My husband is a mechanic and has never had a job where he has been paid so well or treated so well. He loves his managers, gets good vacation and sick time, gets breaks he actually gets to take, had good insurance including dental and vision, they BBQ for you guys on a regular basis, we have gotten grocery gift cards for the holidays, parties that included free food, activities and gifts for our whole family at Christmas time. We just got back from a completely free trip to Vegas-stayed at Mandalay bay for free, they paid for food and gas for the whole trip! We didn't win any of the awesome prizes they gave away but there was a car given, Tiffany necklaces, gift certificates, .......tons of things that I can't even remember.

We had an awesome time and met a lot of other really great folks who are happy to work there. I can't speak to the issues about the cars because I don't work there but I do know my mom, my brother in law and an old boss I had bought cars there and were happy with the experience and to my knowledge none of them have had any issue with the vehicles. My husband bought a truck there and loves it. I think you have to have an attitude of buyer beware on any purchase you make and do your research but the guarantees and warranties offered seem good to me.

Again though, I don't have much knowledge about cars myself-but do have knowledge about my family life. My husband has been treated very well (and he is half Mexican and has a Mexican last name). He makes way better money there than he has at the four previous repair shops he's worked at, including two big named repair shops and another car dealership. He used to be home late all the time because most places pay mechanics for work done-not hourly.

So he would go to work in the morning and if it was a slow day work all day making nothing then have to stay hours late because cars would come in at five or six and he would have to stay and work to make any money for the day. I'm not saying none of your points are true because I don't work there and don't know but I do work in sales in another field-the strategies and techniques and role playing are there to help you and do work. I can't imagine a company that would ask you to lie to customers and it just does not seem to line up with what I do know about the way my husband is treated. So....maybe ask for a transfer because the mechanics are pretty happy.

Also, Carmax has to be fixing cars because my husband works hard all day. The only complaint he has ever had is that the parts are not ordered correctly sometimes-but that never effects a customer as no mechanic would put wrong parts in. The tech just has the inconvenience of having to move the car out to bring in another one.

Every company has some issues but all I know is that this company has done awesome things for my family and we appreciate it! If any corporate people read these comments you do have employees that appreciate the free burgers, hot dogs, chips and soda and all the other great things you do!

Guest

How much is the cash bonus for CarMax Director's Club and President's Club?

Guest

I am a custemer, I just bought a Honda CR-Z and I understand that if the work force is unhappy, then the product is ***. I am angry!

I don't like dealing with predatory people or company's , if this is Carmax I will have to spread the ward to stay away from Carmax. Predators like this will soon die sooner than later.

Vevala Custemer!

Guest

Thank you.

I just bought a CarMax car. I wish I could have read this before I bought this car. I hate dealing with liars and thieves.

Briah Gkk
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-1106400

I myself have financed a car with Carmax. Not even a month later something went wrong.

I wish I had known about this company first too! I should have read the reviews first.

Frankie S Ync

You also are expected to do lock ups at night (for free) and answer web mails and phone calls for 3 hour periods roughly 15 hours a week (for free) Expected to be at meetings an hour before the store opens (impossible to earn commission) Your phone calls are recorded so the managers can go over them with you and make you feel like a complete child in the 2nd grade. Imagine that, we are trying to sell cars that have safety issues and lie to customers, but yet we are the children!

They tell us we need to "connect" to the customer (THAT MAY CRASH DRIVING HOME) to "SELL MORE" cars! My point is that it's NOT US SALES PEOPLE, IT'S WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT and that comes from the TOP.

So it's time for the CEO to step down and hopefully he will lose everything he has been awarded. carmax is a disgrace.

Frankie S Ync

carmax is not a traditional dealership, so sales people are not going to get paid traditional commission! $160 per vehicle is a slap in the face.

So it's time now to start slapping back. If you sell a $75,000.00 Range Rover you get $160!!

Now this is what I call a Twilight Zone episode. Someone pinch me.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Frankie S Ync

Curious. How much is the cash bonus for CARMAX Director's Club or President's Club after working your butt to the bone --- working days off & working 9am to 10pm with no lunch or breaks? They are friggin slave drivers that care nothing about their employees.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Frankie S Ync

What is a slap in the face is being a top sales performer & being terminated for one comment made by a customer + going over a lazy sales manager who refused to help me with customer service issue = being terminated. This company, CARMAX, is the biggest sham -- claiming excellent customer service, absolute transparency, and oh, so honest.

They are everything but this. They are so cheap and focused on the bottom line profits that they expect the sales people to bold face lie to the customers in order to sell cars. The sales managers are so thin skinned that they are constantly offended; but it is okay for them to "offend" their little underlings every day. I will easily say this is the most dishonest, money hungry company I have ever worked for.

Clear evidence is .... I still have not been paid my final paycheck and it is nearly 30 days since the joyful day of being paroled from this "prison." They have so many "RULES" that are cause for termination -- that the employee knows nothing about until the "rule" is broken & the employee is written up for breaking the precious rules this demonic company has kept hidden. Yet they have meaningless, at nauseam, same *** training week after week; but never address these important rules that hurt nothing. Example, never have keys in your hand or pocket in the showroom unless you are walking into the tunnel to hand them over to the customer.

Never, after a test drive, after taking the car back for prep, etc. *** car was already sold to the customer. You say what? Yes, you are written up for this.

Many of their *** rules seem to be ways in which they can fire someone when they cannot find anything else. Horrible company to have any contact with; whether you are unfortunate enough to work there or purchase a car there. They will try everything to NOT fix their sub-standard sold cars.

Everything is about Carmax bottom line profits. BUYER BEWARE.

Guest

Bakersfield CA needs new management they are all shady and have preferential treatment towards certain employees. The ones that are left in the corner they slowly get rid of them.

This store is a great example of why people shouldn't work here. Our LGM Steven is a two faced man who is angry half the time and intimidates everybody. If you are not likeable or dont meet the requirements expected your life becomes miserable in this work enviroment. I was promised a great company to work for and received nothing but fake expectations.

Favoritism and racism is all this store is driven by. Lets not mention how many broken cars are in this location!!

Frankie S Ync
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-901518

Anger and low morale is very common these days. The only people smiling are the "big boys" in corporate.

If anyone gets a chance watch Inside Job, it's a documentary on the power of corporations. After watching this you will understand why it's miserable in your work environment, and it's because there is just not enough money to go around for everyone else.

Guest

What did you expect when we hired all those people from Circuit City. They helped that store go Bankrupt with their great ideas.

Now what makes you think they are not going to do same with Carmax.

You thought they learnt their lessons but NO, they are PROUD and EGOISTIC MANIACS who think they see a very Bright Future (for themselves, and not Carmax). They don't care for you or the company.

Frankie S Ync
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-887134

Ahh, good ole ex Circuit City boys. I remember how bad C.C was.

Corporate DID NOT WANT employees earning better than "average pay" so all the excellent employees left. Carmax is very, very similar.

Employyees are leaving left and right, and they earn $160 per vehicle. Shame on carmax.

Guest

I work for CarMax and did when he posted this. He is completely full of it.

It is a great company to work for and the customer is the only thing that matters. I joke with my LGM all the time that I want him to ask the CEO how he keeps the shareholders at bay. Customers matter as do the associates. We have over 130 stores and growing.

I simply cannot imagine that his is that much worse than ours.

Guest

You obviously haven't taken the time to learn CarMax standards, how they are developed, and why we do the things we do. You also do not understand CarMax Service Operations processes, nor do you have a basic understanding of Octane.

Frankie S Ync
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-868298

So many vehicles are back for repairs so carmax standards pretty much aren't worth much.

Guest

One would only know how it is if they have work there. Indoctrinating individual to believe what is being said is true.

King of Prussia PA Carmax has ton of demon management individual that have sold their soul for currency. Richard is the grand master, Glen is second master, Doug another master, Sarah another master, Paul another master, mark another master, Lloyd another master, Hannah another master.

What do these individuals all have in common "skin color is white". These individuals hold key positions to oppress there fellow coworkers of color.

There is bias at this particular Carmax. Lies, deceive, as well as manipulate coworkers mainly minorities. One can not voice their opinion unless it's what they tell you to say.

I'm a white individual that see the one as one whole, not these type of people that I named out because what they are doing is enslaving these innocent people with their lies as well as abusing them verbally to brain wash them.

I have recorded audio in areas where they taught no one was listening that I will release to the news so that the public can hear these people use racist remarks as well as negative tactics they use on these innocent hard working minorities that work there.

Let the public hear what actually goes on in carmax beside what's already being said here that is factual. I would recommend there "Mr.

Ben" slogan to all minorities that presently work there to find another job where they will earn more, be appreciated, and have quality of life, not being abused, lied too, and not seen to be less than human. The "evil empire" is Carmax, the way buying a car should not be.

Guest

I work for CarMax too also Presidents club just recently and about 75% of your comments is total BS. Get a life

Guest

I currently work at CarMax, I have had the opportunity to train new associates in the new stores we are building. I love it, and I plan to stay with the company.

Some stores will have their problem, any company will. But if they follow the CarMax way, employees will be treated right, the cars will look good.

CarMax will pay the money to produce a quality car, that's what I know to be fact because we will paint the entire car if it doesn't meet standards. They stay by their standards.

View more comments (143)

CarMax Reviews

  1. 258 reviews
  2. 129 reviews
  3. 69 reviews
  4. 30 reviews
  5. 19 reviews
CarMax reviews