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Texas car vending machine helps customers avoid dealership stress

WATCH: Carvana is billed as a one-of-a-kind experience where no salespeople are involved in the car buying process. Instead, this car dealership allows you to purchase your car online, and pick it up at an eight-story-tall ‘car’ vending machine. Owen Conflenti reports. – Jan 27, 2017

Vending machines are nothing new and can dispense just about anything from candies and drinks to iPhones and toys.

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So how about an eight-storey-tall ‘car’ vending machine?

Carvana, a Phoenix-based company, allows the buyer to order their car online without the hassle of meeting with salespeople, price haggling, and spending countless hours on a lot.

“Buying things online is nothing new,” Carvana customer Gregory Winslow told NBC affiliate KPRC.

“We do Amazon. I mean, even back in the days of your grandparents: mail order through the catalog – JCPenney, Sears, whatever, it’s nothing new. But cars, it’s unique.”

One of Carvana’s vending-machine lots recently opened in Houston.

“It’s like the Disney World of car-buying,” Kristin Collins, the manager of the West Houston Carvana, told KPRC.

This is how it works: once you’ve completed the online purchase based on their 7,400-car inventory, you go to the dealer and get your gold coin. Then pop the coin into the vending machine and pick up your brand new car.

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Alternatively, you can have the car delivered to your home.

“It’s really about the customer experience and not about the dealership experience,” Collins said.

She also added part of the draw of buying a car this way is the advantage of determining your own financing, down payment, and when to pick up the car or have it delivered to your home.

“It’s a painful process when you go to a dealership,” Winslow told KPRC.

For Winslow, purchasing his 7-Series BMW from Carvana was a pleasant experience.

“The whole thing (is) you don’t have to leave your home or your office or wherever you’re doing this, and you can be done in under 30 minutes with buying a whole car.”

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