Buyers Are Paying Carvana $4,500 More for the Same Truck. They Are Not Paying for the Truck.

A shopper pricing a Ram 2500 this summer could, on average, have paid about $4,533 less at a local Stellantis store than Carvana was advertising for the same truck. A meaningful number of buyers went to Carvana anyway - and Carvana's new-vehicle stores sold through their inventory at nearly twice the rate of the franchised competition in the same markets. That is not a pricing story. It is a process story, and this week it got quantified.

The numbers come from Catalyst IQ, an automotive digital marketing and analytics firm in Ada, Mich., whose advertised-price analysis was reported by Automotive News on Aug. 18. The firm tracks the lowest advertised price a consumer can actually see for a specific VIN across dealership digital listings - automaker incentives, dealer discounts, and special offers included, with rate and lease specials converted to cash equivalents. It compared Carvana's franchised new-vehicle stores against other Stellantis dealerships in the same designated market areas from May 7 through Aug. 5.

Myth vs. data: "The lowest advertised price wins the deal." Catalyst IQ found Carvana advertising the Ram 2500 roughly 6.2% above same-market Stellantis stores - and Carvana's new-vehicle stores still turned 69% of average inventory within 90 days, versus 39% for competing Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram stores in the same markets, per Automotive News.

What the numbers actually show

Carvana built its brand over 13 years of selling used vehicles online and through its vending-machine towers. More recently it has been acquiring franchised new-car dealerships, and it now retails new Stellantis product through stores of its own - the California New Car Dealers Association counts the company among the nearly 1,300 franchised dealers it represents. Its president, Brian Maas, told Automotive News that technology-savvy buyers want a streamlined process, and that this is exactly what makes Carvana stand out.

The model-level picture from the Catalyst IQ analysis:

Advertised-price gaps, Carvana new-vehicle stores vs. other Stellantis stores in the same designated market areas, May 7 to Aug. 5, 2026. Source: Catalyst IQ, as reported by Automotive News.

Two details matter more than the headline premium. First, the premium is largest on high-demand trucks - the Ram 2500 gap is over $4,500 on average, and buyers pay it. Second, the discounts are as deliberate as the premiums. On slower, more expensive metal like the Grand Wagoneer, Carvana undercuts same-market stores by nearly $3,000. Rick Wainschel, Catalyst IQ's vice president of analytics, described the company as commanding "premium pricing at a time when pricing is already historically high" - and the selective discounting alongside it is the signature of an organization pricing to demand model by model, not a retailer rounding up out of habit.

The market's verdict sits in the turn rates. For the period ending Aug. 5, Carvana's new-vehicle stores sold 69% of their average inventory within 90 days. Competing Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram stores in the same markets sold 39%. Carvana told Automotive News its pricing is transparent and no-haggle, shaped by market dynamics and observed demand, and that its new-car business is profitable - though it declined to say how profitable.

The premium is priced friction

There is a tempting way to read this data and a useful way. The tempting read is that Carvana's buyers are uninformed. The turn rates argue otherwise. A measurable segment of 2026 buyers can see the higher number and pays it anyway, because the product is not just the truck. It is certainty: a firm price, a defined timeline, and a transaction that does not demand negotiating stamina or a full Saturday.

That reading lines up with what the industry's own research has been finding. Cox Automotive's most recent Car Buyer Journey study - fielded in fall 2025 across 2,300 recent buyers - put overall shopping satisfaction at 71% and new-vehicle buyer satisfaction at 76%, both records, with dealership-experience satisfaction among new-vehicle buyers reaching 81%. The drivers Cox cites are not lower prices; they are efficiency, digital tools, and smoother in-store processes. Notably, Cox observes that the most satisfied buyers are not spending less time shopping - they are spending less time stuck in the dealership process. We looked at the friction side of that same research earlier this summer.

Record satisfaction and a documented convenience premium are not contradictory findings. They are the same finding read from two directions: process quality is now a priced variable in auto retail. Shoppers pay for its presence at one retailer, and dock another retailer for its absence - not on a survey, but on the transaction.

For a franchised dealer, that cuts both ways. The uncomfortable direction: part of your market will pay a competitor four figures to avoid your process. The encouraging direction: process is fixable, and unlike a $4,500 price cut, a fixed process does not come out of gross.

The first mile of the process is a phone call

Carvana's advantage is often described as digital, but the more precise description is that it removed dead air from the transaction - no waiting to learn the real price, no waiting for a manager, no wondering whether anyone will call back. At a traditional store, the first live interaction most customers have is not the showroom floor. It is the phone - and the phone is where dead air has been documented the longest.

As far back as 2014, a Marchex analysis of 1,000 mobile calls to U.S. dealerships found 16% going unanswered outright. Among calls that connected, 63% ended without any attempt to set an appointment and 66% without a request for the caller's contact information. The same study found 74% of inbound calls were about parts and service - the highest-margin work in the building. A decade of caller-ID screens and BDC software later, the habits have changed more slowly than the tools - which is why we treat the cost of a missed call as a line item rather than an anecdote.

The tooling, meanwhile, keeps accelerating. Cox Automotive's AI in Auto Retail Tracker, published this month, reports 82% of dealers now using AI somewhere in the operation - yet only about a third of dealership respondents feel on par with or ahead of how AI-equipped shoppers are moving, a gap we broke down last week. The friction Carvana monetizes shows up at most dealerships inside the first thirty seconds of a call: the hold, the transfer, the voicemail box.

What a franchised store can copy without becoming Carvana

Nothing in the Catalyst IQ data says a dealer should imitate Carvana's model, and nothing here requires it. The data says buyers pay for certainty and responsiveness. Those are operational properties, not business models, and each has a phone-shaped version:

• Answer every call, at every hour. Carvana's process never sends a buyer to voicemail. A disciplined BDC, an after-hours answering plan, or an AI voice agent all accomplish the same thing; an unanswered ring accomplishes the opposite. This is the cheapest place to buy back the convenience gap.
• Give callers a firm next step, not a callback promise. The Marchex finding that most answered calls end without an appointment attempt is a certainty problem. A caller who hangs up with a confirmed appointment - sales or service - has received the same commodity Carvana sells: a defined timeline.
• Move price certainty as early in the conversation as your strategy allows. No-haggle is a business model; a straight answer about out-the-door pricing on the phone is just good call handling. The Cox satisfaction data suggests buyers reward stores that shorten the distance to a real number.
• Instrument the phones the way Carvana instruments pricing. Catalyst IQ tracks advertised prices by VIN, daily. Few stores can say what share of yesterday's calls went unanswered, or how many answered calls produced an appointment. What gets measured gets fixed; the phone is no exception.

The bottom line

Carvana did not repeal price sensitivity - its own below-market Grand Wagoneer pricing proves the law still applies. What the Catalyst IQ data documents is narrower and more useful: in 2026, for the identical vehicle, a measurable share of buyers will pay a four-figure premium to the retailer that removes friction and uncertainty, and that retailer converts the advantage into inventory turns its franchised competitors are not matching. The premium is real, it is being paid in your market today, and the first place a franchised store can compete for it costs far less than $4,533 a unit: make the phone the easiest part of the customer's day instead of the first evidence that the process will be work.

If you want to know what your store's phones are doing to your own convenience premium - after hours, on Saturdays, in the middle of the service rush - that is the conversation Carbuki has with dealers every day.

Sources

• Automotive News, Carvana charges new-car customers more than local competitors, Aug. 18, 2026 - autonews.com
• Jalopnik, The Morning Shift: Buyers Would Rather Spend Thousands More at Carvana, Aug. 18, 2026 - jalopnik.com
• Cox Automotive, Car Buyer Journey Study Finds Efficiency, Digital Tools and AI Drive Record Satisfaction, January 2026 - coxautoinc.com
• Cox Automotive, New Cox Automotive AI in Auto Retail Tracker Finds Growing Gap Between Dealers and AI-Powered Car Shoppers, August 2026 - coxautoinc.com
• Marchex study reported by Auto Remarketing, Study: Dealerships Not Answering 16% of Incoming Phone Calls, Sept. 23, 2014 - autoremarketing.com