Carvana touts its delivery service as an integral part of how convenient online car buying can be. I mean, who wouldn’t want their vehicle literally dropped off at their door? But I don’t think customers want their vehicles dropped in the literal sense of the word. But as Motor1 reports, that’s exactly what happened with one Carvana customer.
The Carvana customer in question, one chrisdankers7 on TikTok, posted videos of the incident. In the first clip, chrisdankers7 is taking delivery of his Hyundai Genesis Coupe. Comments from the videos show that the car was purchased for $30,000. Some might think that’s a high amount for a car whose last production year was 2016 — until you learn that this example has just 10,000 miles on it.That doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems though. (I’ll get to that in a bit.)
Everything starts off normal, with the tow driver unloading the car. As the flatbed tilts back, however, you see the car start to roll while the tow operator makes sad attempts to stop the car from rolling off the flatbed, which hasn’t completely reached the ground. In the cringiest moment on the Internet this week, the bottom of the car slams on the edge of the flatbed before slamming into the ground.
Like you, I have many questions. Mainly, why was this person in charge of operating a tow truck? It’s obvious they forgot to engage the parking brake. If you can’t remember to do a simple thing like that, you should find another profession. Rather than get rid of the car though, chrisdankers kept it. In a second series of videos posted on his page, he details the damage done to the vehicle. Interestingly, some of the issues the car has were issues that were supposed to be fixed before Carvana shipped the car. From Motor1:
…another clip (embedded below) takes us under the hood while a narrator talks about alleged issues ranging from coolant leaks to bad power steering fluid and replacement body panels that were supposed to be swapped prior to shipping. Through video comments, we learn the car reportedly had just 10,000 miles on it when he purchased it through Carvana. From the sounds of it, the poor car hasn’t had it very easy despite the low mileage.
As I’ve pointed out before, if you’re buying a car from Carvana — or anywhere else for that matter — do your due diligence and either visually inspect the car yourself or have a mechanic come with you to help you inspect it. While it sucks that the car was damaged while being unloaded, issues with a car with such low miles that were only found after he got the car home are a whole other issue. And with the resulting damage from the tow truck, this could turn into a mess that Carvana might drag their feet on making right.