Tom Folliard was promoted through the buying side of Carmax not the selling side, and it shows.
Pros
The best reason to work for Carmax is that if you are tired of lying to and stabbing customers in the back, pretending that you are going to talk to a manager when you are not, being ripped off by your sales managers and finance managers, and so on.; then you will enjoy the no haggle, no hassle approach of Carmax. Carmax considers itself a low pressure sales environment, as opposed to no pressure or high pressure. You will pay a price however in that Carmax sales consultants earn far less money than their counterparts at the traditional car dealerships.
Cons
Sales consultants are paid a flat commission which has not risen in over ten years. At $150 per car, imagine how many cars a salesperson would have to sell month in and month out to support a family. Turnover is continuous. Also, advancement is virtually non-existent. Carmax hires and promotes friends for upper management positions. Some sales managers have been waiting for years to be promoted while others who have never sold cars before are immediately thrown into assistant store manager and location general manager positions. The benefits, which were too expensive and too limited to begin with, are now being slashed as sales drop dramatically under the current ecomomic downturn.