I've recently bought two used cars -- one from Carvana (about 2 years ago) and one from a dealer (in the last month). In both instances, I paid with a certifie

I've recently bought two used cars -- one from Carvana (about 2 years ago) and one from a dealer (in the last month). In both instances, I paid with a certified check, so financing complications did not come up. In my experience, Carvana was a substantially easier process. I picked the car out online, "ordered" it, and they showed up a few days later with a flatbed and put the car in my driveway. I signed some paperwork and we were done in less than an hour at my house. The dealership took almost 3 hours to get me out of the door even though we had done a fair amount of work up-front to avoid having to spend time at the dealership. I suspect a lot of this could have been mitigated by the dealership if they were better with paperwork and interfacing with the DMV or doing some work ahead of time. In the end, however, I'd rather not buy from Carvana again. You have no room to negotiate and their customer service is not great. Their prices generally aren't better than the dealer's prices BEFORE you negotiate with the dealers. If you're buying a newer used car (I usually buy cars that are 2-3 years old), the certified warranties that the car manufactures offer are a really nice bonus that Carvana can't offer. For example, I just picked up a certified 2019 with around 19k miles. It's basic warranty will now run until 2025 or 100k miles. And the manufacturer warranties, in my experience, are substantially better than after-market warranties since the dealers' service departments work directly with the manufacture on servicing them and the dealers are more aligned with your interests than the manufactures' since they make a lot of money off doing repairs. Whereas third-party warranties are more like insurance and you better have your ducks in a row if you actually need to make a claim and expect to have it paid.