I happen to LOVE CARMAX... just bought my 3rd car from them couple weeks ago being a Prius.
The awsome thing about carmax and financing is the sales person does the application in front of you and hits submit and it's like watching a 60 second credit application come back but you NEVER get further processing required... they all come back decisioned in under 60 seconds usually... sometimes some of them get manually done at each bank and that can push you to like 5 minutes but as each one comes in they can show them to you approved or denied and terms approved so far... they send to like 6 (at least here in CA)
Carmax own dealer financing (they seem kind of rare to back a loan but when they do seem to be great terms
Wells
Santander
Exeter or something rather (worse than Santander)
Ally (they financed us)
Capital One
if you change the car you are looking to finance it pulls credit again (not a big deal if you are doing all within a couple weeks) but if you change down payment it doesn't.... we actually put in the request with no money down and got the terms and approvals and then tried it with money down to see if it would greatly effect the rate... it didn't so we put $0 down.
The other fab thing about Carmax is when the approval comes over they list any continginsees and that's it... they don't later come back for more info... I only saw 1 out of all our offers want income proof and that was on the exeter which is the worst financing anyway... the most others wanted was proof of bank if we put a deposit down and address (if they want address proof you go over to another program that will pull security questions from public record and if you answer those correct done!
I would not buy into the carmax extended warranty unless you are buying a brand that is known to have issues and I would suggest you don't since you can choose that now!!! they push it hard but you don't need it. just say no!
otherwise as far as paying more than at a dealership for same car.... that's a toss up... you don't have to haggle, you don't have the stress of trying to get a good deal, did you get a good deal, and the stress of financing and if they come back later asking for more info or something like that.... I really don't think I paid to much more if any more for our prius than at a local dealership and I bought it in under an hour and most of that was back end... financing offers came in 5 minutes, I clicked the one I wanted... then they had to get paperwork setup and took car for cleaning... signing takes about 20-30 and then you are off!! that is worth $500 in my book to not go to dealership and haggle.
