Carvana
Consumer Discretionary
63
out of 100. Number 91 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Carvana does well
- Renewals 3 of 20. Few problems found.
- Arbitration is not ironclad: customers can opt out of the entire disputes section within 30 days by emailing [email protected], without affecting the rest of the agreement or the purchase; small-claims court filings are exempt; and in-person hearings happen in the customer's home federal district under AAA consumer rules.
- Sensitive personal information (SSN, driver's license, passport, precise geolocation) is explicitly 'Not sold or shared.' Privacy-request transparency is unusually good: Carvana publishes full metrics — 7,031,872 do-not-sell requests honored in 2025 at an average of 1 day, zero complied 'in whole' deletions hidden (616 in part, 141 denied).
- It offers three opt-out paths (request form, browser-only tool, account settings) and honors opt-out preference signals (GPC).
- SMS opt-in texts are not sold for third-party direct marketing without express consent.
- Financing terms are presented as stable: rates won't change unless the customer's information, order, or terms change, or the 30-day pre-qualification expires (per Carvana's help center).
If you dispute anything — the car you bought, how they handled your data, your credit check — you can't join or lead a class-action lawsuit; every claim must be fought one-on-one in private arbitration.
The fine print
10 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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If you dispute anything — the car you bought, how they handled your data, your credit check — you can't join or lead a class-action lawsuit; every claim must be fought one-on-one in private arbitration.
Claims may be submitted to arbitration on an individual basis only... You and we acknowledge and agree that you and we are waiving any right to (1) participate in a class adjudication in arbitration, either as a class representative, class member, or class opponent; (2) act as a private attorney general in arbitration; or (3) otherwise seek relief in a representative capacity.
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The private arbitrator — not a judge — decides whether the arbitration clause itself is even valid, which makes it much harder to challenge in court.
[A]ny dispute relating to the validity, enforceability, interpretation, or scope of this Agreement, the arbitrability of any Claim, other gateway issues of arbitrability, or any alleged waiver of this Disputes Section shall be exclusively resolved by the arbitrator and not by a court.
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Even if you win, you can only recover what you actually paid out of pocket — no punitive or consequential damages, and your own legal costs aren't covered. You also waive your right to a jury trial.
To the extent permitted by applicable law, all judgments or awards, whether in court or in arbitration, shall be limited to actual out-of-pocket damages (excluding attorneys' fees) and shall not include any indirect, punitive, incidental, and/or consequential damages.
Terms Of Use, Section V(L)(M) 'Governing Law; Forum Selection; Waiver of Jury Trial; Damages'
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Your data can be sold or transferred to advertisers and other businesses for essentially any lawful reason Carvana chooses.
We reserve the right to use, transfer, sell, and share data about our users for any lawful business purpose, such as analyzing usage trends and seeking compatible advertisers, sponsors, clients, and customers.
Carvana Consumer Privacy Notice, Section F (Google Analytics paragraph)
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Carvana openly admits selling or sharing a sweeping profile of you — including race, religion, browsing history, location, and recorded support calls — to lead-generation companies, advertisers, and analytics firms.
We and authorized third parties collect... [and may disclose to] ... 'Third party social network services; Data analytics providers; Marketing and advertising partners or providers; Companies that create or receive sales leads.' Categories sold or shared include identifiers, protected-class characteristics (age, race, gender, religion, marital status, veteran status), commercial information, browsing and search history, geolocation, audio/visual information (call recordings, chat logs, web activity recordings), employment and education information, and inferences profiling your preferences and behavior.
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Carvana records what you type on its site — potentially including form entries — using session-replay software.
We use technologies like session replay tools to monitor and sometimes record your interactions with our Service and Digital Properties. This includes how you navigate, your keystrokes, and how you engage with content.
Carvana Consumer Privacy Notice, Section F 'Device and Activity Monitoring Technologies'
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Even after you delete your account and leave, Carvana keeps your personal data — partly so it can market to you again later.
Once you have terminated your relationship with us, we may retain your Personal Information in our systems and records ... for other legitimate business purposes, such as to enable easier future user onboarding, demonstrate our business practices and contractual obligations, or provide you with information about our products and services in case of interest.
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Anything you post — photos, reviews, videos — becomes Carvana's to use forever, in ads or anywhere else, without paying you a cent, and you can't take that license back.
You grant Carvana a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, cost-free, and sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform, display, and otherwise use and exploit in any manner whatsoever, all or any portion of your User Content ... without compensation to you.
Terms Of Use, Section IV(A) 'User Content, Interactive Services, and License Grant to Carvana'
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If Carvana misprices a car in your favor, it can simply cancel your purchase at its own discretion rather than honor the listed price.
If the correct price of a vehicle or other item is higher than Carvana's stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before delivery or pickup of the vehicle or cancel your purchase and notify you of such cancellation.
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Carvana can rewrite the rules whenever it wants; just continuing to use the site counts as you agreeing to the new version, with no notice required.
This User Agreement may be modified from time to time; the date of the most recent revisions will appear on this page, so check back often. Continued access of the Service by you will constitute your acceptance of any changes or revisions to the User Agreement.
How these were found
Terms of Use effective October 17, 2025, and Consumer Privacy Notice effective June 29, 2026, both read directly from carvana.com via browser_open on October 1, 2026. The text-message terms and financing-terms-change note were read only as search-result snippets from carvana.com (official domain), not the full pages. Carvana's individual Retail Purchase Agreement and Retail Installment Sales Contract are generated per transaction and are not published publicly, so they could not be reviewed; prior litigation (Jennings v. Carvana, 3d Cir., Pennsylvania one-document rule) shows the enforceability of Carvana's separate arbitration agreements varies by state. Document versions may change; the June 2026 privacy notice already includes references to ADESA (Carvana's auction arm), reflecting post-acquisition consolidation.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.