I was driving my 2001 Chevy Impala, a retrofitted cop car with almost 90,000 miles, on the BQE in intense snow, sleet and hail, with my two kids in the backseat.
Three things happened at once that day. The “check engine” light came on with an alarming bong, the radio went out and, most spectacularly, one windshield wiper blade on the driver’s side jettisoned off the shaft onto the busy Brooklyn highway.
These problems were likely not related to each other, but were all related to one central fact: It was time to get a new car. And, much to my own surprise, I would eventually just buy one off my phone.
An app-based life
I’ve written before about how I never joined Facebook and I spend very little time on social media. Having worked in cybersecurity, I’ve also developed a natural suspicion of many new technologies -- I’ve not adopted smartwatches or fitness monitors or at-home voice-activated assistants because I think they have major security and privacy implications that I’m not yet comfortable with.
But there is one area of my life where I have ignored these instincts entirely, to my betterment: apps for home services. I’m a single mom, and to simplify what can be major time-consuming activities, I religiously use Delivery for weekly laundry pick-up and drop-off, Instacart and Amazon Fresh for grocery and pharmacy deliveries, and Handy and Taskrabbit for home repairs and lawn service. Doing this has given me back several hours a week, which I can devote back to more important things.
To my time-stressed mind, going to a car dealership seemed like a hellish nightmare. Haggling over prices and financing, worse than that.
So it wasn’t a stretch to try Carvana, a car-buying app that promised to keep me out of the dealership.
Something under $10,000
Carvana was founded in 2012 in Arizona. The company says the used cars it sells have never been in an accident, have no frame damage and must pass a 150-point inspection before being shipped to customers from various “hubs” throughout the country.
I spent a great deal of time just browsing the app initially, with the goal of getting the cheapest car possible in case it didn’t work out and the return process was difficult. The user interface of the app was very fresh, easy to navigate and offered the ability to search by a lot of different, even minor parameters (heated seats, sound system, etc.) which made the process more fun than I expected.
