Unrealistic commission examples when hired, poor company culture - Sales Consultant CarMax Employee Review

2.0
Mar 18, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company appears to be great to work for if you have a job in any level of management and fit in with the culture. Managers (both Sales, Business Office and Buyer dept.) appear to have great work life balance, excellent vacation availability and reasonable albeit lower than industry average pay. As a Sales Consultant the greatest benefit are your coworkers, if you're lucky enough to work in a location with a well functioning sales team.

Cons

As a Sales Consultant you are grossly underpaid compared to industry average, you spend a lot of time providing free appraisals where you only get paid if the customer sells the vehicle. If the car is used as a trade in, you only receive the commission for selling a car. As a part time employee you have to keep a close eye on your customer history as full time employees will often help them if/when you're not there. As a full time consultant expect to work a minimum of 60 hours a week to make something resembling a healthy annual income. Management is very inconsistent. Every Sales Manager have their own agenda and there's a strong level of favoritism happening at a consistent basis. It is close to impossible to advance within the company from the position of Sales Consultant unless you drink all of the Cool Aid and ask for some more. Managers will always point out something negative, even when providing what is supposed to be positive feedback. ("Good job, but here are all the things you could've done better") The Fortune 100 best companies results are a joke, there are annual, monthly meetings where you're coached on how you should think of and answer the questions.

Explore other reviews about CarMax

5.0
Jun 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing benefits with 6% 401k matching and tuition reimbursement.

Cons

Highly reliant on the quality of management at the store location.

1.0
May 31, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote work, first 2 weeks of the 2 month training, offers sick time before PTO rolls in

Cons

Little to no worklife balance, toxic positivity (like when they called the meeting about taking away our bonuses “exciting news” and tried to gaslight us as to why this was a good thing), extreme micromanagement, listening to our headsets constantly without us knowing, AI rating our metrics, unrealistic expectations, you basically do 4 jobs in one (at Carvana, appraisals / selling, financial applications and documents / EPUs, sales and customer service were ALL DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS.

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