Consumer complaint received 2022-05-29
Product: Vehicle loan or lease — Loan
Issue: Getting a loan or lease — Confusing or misleading advertising or marketing
Company: Carvana Group, LLC (VA)

Carvana has a policy and practice of engaging in false advertising to induce customers to apply for an auto financing loan. On its website, Carvana tells customers that it will buy out potential customers leases for trade in credit. Internally, Carvana has a policy of not buying out leases, and forcing customers to instead go through a parallel sale and purchase process where they receive less equity for their carand, as a result, are forced to take out a higher loan from Carvana. This complaint below is based on my purchase of a car from Carvana on XX/XX/2022, which I canceled the following day. The screenshots attached were created on XX/XX/XXXX and recreate the information I supplied in connection with my canceled purchase. 

On XX/XX/2022, I purchased a XXXX  XXXX XXXX on Carvana. I chose to finance with Carvana and submitted a credit application to Carvana. In connection with that purchase, I supplied extensive personal and financial information and agreed to allow Carvana to check my credit and background ( which, to the best of my knowledge, it did ) and to draw several thousand dollars from my bank account. I also supplied information about the car I would be trading in as part of the purchase, that it was a lease, and how much the dealer was quoting me to buy out the lease. From that information, Carvana told me that I would receive over {$1400.00} in equity from my lease buy out. This equity was the only reason I purchased from and submitted a credit application to Carvana, since it was several thousand dollars higher than any other dealer was offering. After I completed the purchase, the following morning, I was presented a contact for e-signature that included all of the information I supplied during the purchase process, including that I was trading in a lease. ( I do not have a copy of this contract because Carvana did not email me a copy and removed it from my app after I canceled the purchase. ) Immediately after I signed the contract, I got a new pop up in my Carvana account telling me for the first time that Carvana is unable to take a lease as a trade in, and I was told to call Carvana to discuss my options. That alert also told me that I had only until XXXX the next day ( less than 24 hours ) to address this or I would lose the sale. It took me the better part of the day to actually speak with someone from Caravana. First I called the number provided first thing in the morning, but I was told I had a >30 minute wait. I then tried their chat function, and I got passed from one agent to the next, who would take about 10 minutes to respond once and the disappear. I tried emailing executive customer service from an email address I found on a message board, but no one emailed me back. Finally, I called again late in the afternoon, and after a long wait and being passed off several times I learned the following about Cavranas policy : *Carvana will not use a lease as a trade in. I asked where this was on Carvanas website, and I was not supplied with a location. I asked why Carvanas website let me move forward with a trade in with a lease, and I was told I was wrong, though the attached screenshots say otherwise.

*If I wanted to go forward with the purchase, I would need to sell my car to Carvana , and then once I have the money start a new purchase with Carvana . I asked severa times how long this process would take, but I was not given a clear answer except that each stage would take weeks. This would turn my 9-day purchase to delivery process into a multi week process, where Id be without a car for likely over a week and had no assurance the car I wanted would be there at the end of the process. 

*Because they would be buying the car from the leaseholder, they apply a different buy out number than the one used to generate my quote. The agent on the phone told me this buy out would be higher than the one I was being quoted. As a result, I would receive less equity ( likely substantially less equity ) for my car-and, consequently, that I would be forced to finance more from Carvana and the payments I would make to Carvana under my financing agreement would be higher. 

As I said, none of this information was disclosed to me during the purchase process. To the contrary, I told Carvana in detail information about my lease, and Carvana agreed to do a trade in based on my lease. Further, on a support section called TRADING IN & Selling, Carvana says it will buy out a lease, and states only that certain lease companies ( not mine ) do not permit it. https : //www.carvana.com/help/sell-or-trade/will-you-buy-out-my-leased-vehicle. I have spent a lot of time looking for anything on Carvanas website stating that it will not use a lease as a trade in, but could not find anything. This is entirely an undisclosed internal policy that Carvana reveals only after customers have submitted a credit application and signed a contract. 

In the end, Carvanas false and misleading advertising induced me to submit a credit application I never would have submitted had I been told the truth. Further, Carvana disclosed the policy only after I had done all of this and signed a contract, and told me I had less than 24 hours to change to a different sale policy or I would not be able to purchase the vehicle. Fortunately I realized that this was a bait and switch and Carvana was trying to take advantage of me ; otherwise, I would have been paying more on my loan with Carvana. However, others with a literal counting down clock, the definition of high pressure sales techniques likely did not realize this and were surely tricked into a less valuable, higher cost loan than they otherwise would have agreed to. 

Carvana is a direct lender to customers who purchase automobiles on their website, and a covered person under 12 USC 5481 ( 6 ). Carvana, further, does not come within the Dodd-Frank Acts exception for auto dealers because it extends retail credit directly to customers for the purchase of motor vehicles and does not assign those loans to third party financial institutions.