selling to carmax any good?

[clavicle]

i recently purchased my 08-v and im looking to dispose of my 02 lancer...i couldnt get a good deal to trade it in so i decided to sell it myself...however, i also refuse to shell out an extra $50 to advertise...so i was thinking of driving it over to a local carmax and get an appraisal...has anyone dealt with carmax before?..are they a good option to sell my car to within reasonable kbb value?..your comments/suggestions please...thanks!

[muddy]

Carmax is notorious for offering well below any used car pricing guide. You'll lose less money shelling out $50 for a decent ad. The main drawback is that you might be sitting on an extra car for a little while longer.

I would imagine that if you live in Southern Cal that you could list it much easier and for free on craigslist.com. When I was buying my CR-V, I was picky about the color when they wouldn't cut a deal on any color I didn't particularly care for. As a result, I ended up having 3 extra weeks on my hands while they located and brought one in. They were also low-balling me like crazy on the trade-in so I decided to list my car on craigslist just to see what might happen. I had three calls within an hour and a serious buyer in 3 days. I ended up getting low end KBB value for it at $5500 while the dealership was offering $4000. I probably could have held out for more, but the incentive for me to hold on to the car was fairly minimal by then and actually would have cost me an extra $125 in ad valorem taxes as my birthday was coming up in two weeks if I hadn't sold it then.

Since you're selling a car with pretty decent fuel mileage (assuming you've kept it up, so to speak), you'd probably find someone desperate to get out of a gas-guzzler ASAP with the recent trends in US fuel prices.