I would gladly have taken the blue book value... Yeah - carmax has some sort of formula set up depending on how old, how many miles, etc... really if you've done any work on it - they wont pay you for it. And I wouldn't have had to throw over $2000 into it a month before I sold it - cause really the condition doesn't make much of a difference. They mainly are looking for huge flaws/major damage, etc. I pulled everything I could out of it before I handed it back in - sub, tweeters.... The good thing is you can take it in and have it priced and you have like 10 days or something like that to bring it back in for that price. So it gives you 10 days to find someone else to buy it. Mainly it's a convenience and that's why you get a shitty return on it - but it was simple. Oh - My return on my car was around if not a little less than 50% off the blue book value.