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Fortunately we didn't buy a car from this place but here's the story you should know before buying. My son was hit by a driver who ran a stop sign and it totaled his Scion. We found what we thought would be a good replacement on the CAG website. We talked to the salesperson and researched all the websites to make sure there wasn't conflicting information. We live in Kansas so I asked them to hold the car for 1 day as we had to drive 10 hours to see it and I didn't want it to be gone. They told me they charged $300 to hold the car and that it was non-refundable if we didn't purchase the car. Based on all the information we had it was our intent to purchase the car so I paid the fee. We drove all day and spent the night at a hotel near CAG and went to the lot first thing in the morning.
I don't know if the pictures they have online were photoshopped or not but the car was a disaster in person. The hood was barely hanging on and it almost fell off when we opened it, the car had some modifications that looked like they were spray painted with a rattle can and despite the salesperson saying their mechanics had verified everything was in working order, my son is a mechanic and we found that some of the engine accessories were not functional and there was a hole in the exhaust line where an O2 sensor was supposed to go so exhaust was leaking out in to the engine compartment. You get the picture and we didn't even drive the car it was so bad.
Here's the kicker.. The morning of our meeting I was on the Cargurus site and noticed a new report posted. Cargurus uses Autocheck and they reported in Autocheck that the car had frame damage as reported by the auction house. Unfortunately, CarFax doesn't report this type of thing nor did CAG advise us the car had frame damage. Had we known that we would not have driven 10 hours to see the car. I talk about the issues with auction cars below.
Here are a couple important things to note. The other report indicated the car was purchased from an auction. That is not always a bad thing but most of the time when cars go to auction it means a reputable dealer was unwilling to sell it because it has issues they don't want to stand behind. Often times groups like CAG buy those cars for a great deal and then try to turn them over to unsuspecting or uninformed consumers. The other thing is that the other report showed the frame damage and CarFax did not so be sure to check every resource you can.
It gets worse. When we confronted the salesperson about the frame damage she said that she was unaware of the damage but the salesperson lingering next to us said he was aware of it and tried to explain the situation. I then asked if they knew about it why didn't they disclose it and the salesperson again said she wasn't aware of it but when I said the guy next to us was aware he suddenly said he was not aware of the damage.. You can see where this is going..
We asked if based on the circumstances and the fact we drove 10 hours to see a completely misrepresented car if the could refund the $300 and they said NO!!.. Strong indicator of their customer service..
Long story but hopefully it is helpful to anyone thinking of buying from CAG.