Vroom Review: How It Works, Pros and Cons

Vroom WILL NOT help you at all without a $500 deposit period! I was told they sell 400 vehicles a day by Loriza Rubio. I was also told the vehicle I was interested in was sold to someone else because I didn't put up the $500 they asked for and IT WASNT! Totally a BS online dealership. BEWARE. First dealership I've encountered where they act like they don't want to sell you a car. Absolutely ridiculous.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I bought a car from Texas Direct a year ago. Some problems but great results. I call a year later, I get a card from the Texas Direct sales manager, and I followed up to buy a second car, and the dealership became Vroom and the sales manager has left.

I got through all the poor voicemail and get Byron. I could not move fast enough for them in financing, Two days. And they did not want to do the transaction and said they would just refund my PayPal deposit. Fine with me, but no refund.

Next day the rep Byron said he thought he had done it the prior evening. No, still not done. Eventually, PayPal will refund I suppose, as I asked PayPal to refund the money.

Vroom is a great idea, but short on execution, and the same old industry with worn out promises and poor execution.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I contacted them on 2/8 to initiate a purchase. They placed a $500 charged to my credit card to "hold" the car "until contract signed." The contract was signed and received by them on February 13th. The bank was paid in full on 2/15. Delivery was supposed to be 2/22. It is 3/1. No car. No refund. My emails are being returned undeliverable due to their inboxes "at capacity." My salesperson's email is currently deactivated. Getting anyone with any authority on the phone is impossible. I get told someone will contact me to address my concerns. Nobody calls. Nothing.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I do not recommend Vroom. I purchased a 2015 Toyota Corolla and from the start the transaction was flawed. The quote I received the sales rep "forgot" some fees and shipping costs, despite discussing this in detail. I contracted to purchase the vehicle and received two sets of different paperwork. It was very confusing, and trying to get clear communication from just one person in a timely manner was a joke. I signed all the paperwork and provided them a $500 deposit via credit card.

Then they started hounding me for payment. I signed the paperwork at 4:40 pm on a Monday, I had the cashier's check in the mail to them at 4:45 pm, they received it at 9:00 am the next morning. I told them I was paying cash, I paid them in full with a cashiers check, but they kept referring to my "lien." Once the "lien" is set up, we will call you back. Despite telling them at least four separate times I already sent you a cashiers check with payment in full, there is NO lien.

I have a family member who is an attorney, I had to have them get on the phone with Vroom to once and for all get them to acknowledge my cashiers check, which scared the crap out of me that I was getting scammed! THEN...three separate times I had to provide proof of insurance documentation. It seems like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing at Vroom. All this while, my car is paid in full and it's sitting in Texas with no ETA on when it will even ship. It's now been a week since they received my check and they are just now telling me they will contact me when they find a truck to ship the car. Good customer service doesn't include hounding someone for payment and then taking their time to deliver on their product.

The car is traveling about 900 miles to get to me, they are telling me 1-2 days to find a transport truck and 7-14 days to get to me! They charged me $499 for shipping, and now I have to possibly wait two more weeks to receive my car? There is ZERO sense of urgency with Vroom. They deposited my check, are earning interest on MY money and I have no car. Had I known this process, I would have NEVER bought from Vroom. I don't feel the price I paid for the car provides any value for the hassle. In hindsight, I could have bought local and with the added cost of having to use a rental car for nearly three weeks until the car arrives, I would have come out about even in cost.

Until Vroom starts to really take some of the burdens out of car shopping, I wouldn't recommend them.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

We found a car on Vroom's website that we had been looking all over for. The advertised price was $43,980, which we felt was very fair. We emailed Vroom that evening (it was after hours), and the next morning my husband called them to start the process. When Vroom sent us the deal sheet, the price was marked as $45,500. They marked the price up by $1,500 for no reason other than we showed interest in the vehicle. When we asked for an explanation, they said their marketing team sets prices and that the market supports the new price. They would not honor the original price even though they advertised it hours before we contacted them. The salesperson was named Kelly and she could not have cared less than what they were doing was super shady. She said they made a marketing mistake with the original price and that they sell 150 cars a day so someone would buy it at that price. Very disappointing and super shady. We even had a screenshot of the original price advertised and they just honestly couldn't have cared less. That is very bad business and I would never trust this company to do business with.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

I put in my paperwork to by a Toyota RAV4 yesterday afternoon. It's next day at 1:00 pm and I have received no calls or emails about my application. I called the customer service, and they said that the finance manager as not been assigned to me yet, after waiting 15 minutes. They said they will have someone call me. I am not going forward with them anymore after reading other one-star reviews about missing titles and registrations.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

On December 29th, my truck showed up, so I am eating my words about the New Year showing up before my truck does. Anyway, the truck looked great inside and out. No sign of overspray from the scratches being fixed and the paint job looked nice. The delivery guy was really nice. So, besides the lack of communication skills, everything was great.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Once you sign the finance paperwork and they put your car on the road, this dealership treats you poorly just like every other dealership out there. My car sat in Houston waiting to be loaded for NINE days, and they lied to me about it. It's been over two weeks since it left Texas and I am still waiting for my car. Their "delivery concierge" service is appallingly bad. I get a different story from every agent about where my car is. I will never buy from them again and wish I hadn't in the first place.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

The experience was awful from start to finish. I sold a car to them and also purchased a used 2017 Ford Explorer.

The process of selling my car seemed excellent at first. The submission and offer process was terrific. However, executing the offer turned out to be a nightmare.

As the sale of my vehicle was used towards the purchase of the new vehicle, Vroom was responsible for making the payment to my bank. They told me this would occur as soon as they picked up the car from me. After approximately 30 days with no communication regarding the pickup, I reached out to them to request an update as I had already made another payment on the loan. It seemed as if they had "forgot" to schedule the pickup and told me someone would reach out shortly.

I received a call a few days later from a towing company who then showed up at my house a couple days later. He put my car on his flatbed and just drove away. No paperwork for me to prove to whom I just gave my car to. Talk about a leap of faith! The payment on my existing loan didn't occur for about another week by when I had to make ANOTHER payment on that loan to avoid late fees. So here I am, almost 60 days out from the purchase of a car through Vroom, and I still am waiting for the bank to refund me the almost $1000 I was out while waiting for Vroom to pick up the vehicle.

Back to the purchasing of the vehicle. The delivery of the vehicle was scheduled about one week after the online purchase. I had to meet the driver at a local Walmart to receive the vehicle. It came off the truck very dirty, both inside and out, and was also almost completely out of gas. Not a good first impression.

Due to severe winter weather in my area, I was not able to get the car inspected within the 7-day give-back period. By the time I was able to do so, there were many physical defects present on the vehicle that were not disclosed to me as part of the sale. There was damage to tailgate which was obviously repaired as demonstrated by the T-SHIRT SECURED WITH DUCK TAPE around the rear windshield wiper mechanism. There was also significant damage around the doors due to an apparent break-in attempt and scrubbing during refurbishing.

I reported these issues to Vroom and was told since I was outside the give-back window they were no longer liable. They offered me $500 due to "inconvenience" when three different certified body shops quoted the repairs over $2000.

Another issue is registration. I received the vehicle with a temporary vehicle registration that was good for 60 days. Here I am, with that temporary tag set to expire in five days, and I have still not received any registration paperwork from Vroom. This has prevented me from properly registering my vehicle with my state DMV and also is preventing me from having the necessary state inspection and emission tests required to make the car road-legal. Despite many phone calls and emails requesting follow up, I am no closer to receiving these documents than the day I signed the paperwork.

I know the idea of using an online dealership like Vroom seems enticing as the local dealership experience can be downright frustrating for some people. However, please take my experience as evidence that, at least for this online dealer, it is still better to deal with a local business than it is to deal with a company thousands of miles away that won't stand behind their product and services.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Vroom lists all of their inventory in most major cities, and I had assumed the vehicle was local. I’d never intended on buying a car through a site, but with how friendly and easy my sales person made it seem, it was hard to say no.

Unfortunately, that was two weeks ago. As the title states, they have the business plan together to make sales run smoothly. They don’t have any follow up, follow through, or logistics to actually handle inspection or delivery of the purchase. There’s no mechanism in place to provide information on your vehicle after the paperwork is received, and there is virtually no communication from them.

Once your paperwork is processed, you’ll receive an email saying it's "in for its final quality inspection" and you'll be instructed that you will hear from the "delivery team" within 7-10 days, and have your vehicle within 14 days (longer depending on location).

Well, I’m on day 13, and I’ve still yet to hear from the "delivery team." I did receive a nice email full of terrible grammar (I mean really, have someone proofread before sending out boilerplate apology emails - knowing the difference between "your" and "you're" is important) this past Monday night (day 12), with the promise that my order would be "personally overseen" and that I'd have some follow up information the next day from this person.

I'm sure it's no shock to anyone that I did not receive a follow-up. The promise wasn't kept, and I doubt they ever intended to.

Here’s my advice, if I'm as lucky as the other reviewers and Vroom is actually reading this (as opposed to my emails?).

It takes far less effort and time to get in front of and own a problem than it does to clean it up. Had someone written or called me on day 1 or 2 of your 7-10 day window and informed me of the delays, and offered some form of "hey, we appreciate your business, we know this is an inconvenience," I wouldn’t be writing this. I would have been understanding. Your customer service rep that attempted to do that on Monday after it was already past the projected date was too little too late, and his lack of follow up and follow through on his promise would have been a fireable offense had it been a core philosophy to keep customers happy.

Look, the reality is that in 2018, a company does 80% of its business with 20% of its customers, and that number is rapidly becoming 90/10 with e-commerce. It takes far less effort to keep a customer and have them come back than it does to create a new one. If you ever want to see some scary numbers, see how much each new customer actually costs from a marketing budget perspective. Repeat clientele is paramount to a successful business strategy. With your current complete failure to keep customers informed or stay in front of problems, you’re not only losing repeat business, you're creating terrorists actively trying to dissuade people from doing business with you. I’m now motivated to go out of my way and post this, as opposed to just not shopping with you ever again.

A company’s strength is measured by how it handles its problems.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend

This is the worst dealership. You will do everything quickly, but they will take their sweet time. None of their deadlines matter at all. Any time they quote you on receiving your car, you’re not going to get it. I contacted them on August 14, 2018, and they told me they were going to check my credit and send it to multiple companies. In fact, they took my credit information and gave it to multiple companies so that I had three hard inquiries on my credit in the same day. This dropped my credit rating from 752 to 700.

Then I was told I needed to send back documents within 24 hours. I got their loan documents in 48 hours, and I specifically told them that if they get them to me the next day, I will have them done, but I was leaving town the following day. They, of course, sent it to me the following day when I was out of town. I came back, I rushed, and I sent them everything. Now I should get my car right? Nope. Anyone that you talk to when they’re selling you the car will say: "We just say two weeks, but you’ll get it much sooner than that."

That is BS, do not believe anyone when they tell you that at Vroom. It’s a straight up lie. So I get organized on my end and get my car insurance set up. I am rearranging my schedule and my work schedule according to their delivery schedule. I’m not selling my old car because, of course, I need it while I wait for this car. I’m sitting and just waiting. I have received multiple emails confirming my delivery date, saying that the vehicle is on the way, however, then I get a phone call saying that unfortunately some driver's truck broke down or something happened and they are very sorry.

I got a 45-day reprieve to start making my loan payments. My first loan payment is due on September 29th, but today is September 7th and I still do not have my car. If I had gone to a dealership, I could have been driving around the car for 45 days without worrying about a payment. That did not happen with them.

I was supposed to receive it on the 8th and now I have received a phone call today again telling me that there has been another delay. This company is totally incompetent. Not only can they not get my car to me, I get an email telling me that I need to send them emissions for my vehicle because it’s needed for my state. I check the DMV, and it clearly says any cars newer than 2009 don’t need Emissions. So I sent this information along with the question of how I am supposed to send them emissions when I am not in possession of the vehicle? I got a catty response back somehow making it seem like I didn’t understand the email. The person literally sent me an email telling me that I was missing my emissions. It was the only thing that I was missing, and I needed to get it to them right away!

Anyway, apparently, now I’m not getting my car anytime soon, my credit has been ruined, and I’m obviously not going to get the full benefit of the warranty that I’m supposed to go. Paying insurance for a car that I don’t have in my possession. Worst experience ever. Do not waste your time, save your money and go to a local dealership.

Bottom Line: No, I would not recommend this to a friend