Live in CA - buy in another state?

there are members in the prime pricing thread who have gotten 4k off in the northeast and taken them back to their respective states, so, 5k isn't Impossible.

 

is cali no longer offering 1k rebate?

incorrect, toyota is offering $2,500. rebates in some states. they don't want primes sitting around collecting dust, this isn't california, no one cares about plug ins.

 

i would peruse the pricing thread, and pm the members who have purchased in the northeast. ny and me seem to have very good deals.
it shouldn't be that difficult to bring back to cali, register it and pay the sales tax. but what do i know?

 

I did see an online California dealer offer a $2,500 Factory Toyota rebate. That was today April 16, 2017 and I believe the dealer was in Irvine California. As far as the dealer cutting into their profit margin , that's another story entirely. They appear to be selling the garbage out of these cars, but mainly on the high-end model. My focus group of 10 Prime owners had only 2 Advanced owners; I wonder what the sales mix is in California and the rest of the country.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

not here. perhaps you can help prime_time locate the dealer, that's the first i've read about it.

 

A dealer: DCH Toyota of Milford, MA
is whoring (and I use the term carefully) Primes on the site that is marked IRVINE. He is hijacking the site where I asked for a 100 mile radius to my zip code. He claims to offer a $2500 Factory rebate, which I thought was coming from the Irvine dealer I had found. His rebate may be legit, but I wouldn't buy s**t from someone playing those games. One concern, aside from paperwork hassles, actual warranty, and misrepresentations, would be dealer support for an out of state car in California.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Yeah, Bisco is right. New Car Deals | Local Toyota Deals, Incentives & Special Offers

$2500 rebate in NY, $1000 in CA.


iPhone ? Pro

 

an enterprising young person might load up a car carrier full of east coast primes and sell them in cali. could probably make 20-30k per trip.

 

Yeah, but no kickback money from the feds that way....

 

good point. guess it's a fail, like returning bottles in michigan.

if you buy a car and don't register it, does the next buyer still not get the tax credit?

 

All I know is that the dealers that you buy them from will make you BUY them before you load them up on the truck, and that there's probably a caveat buried somewhere in the pounds of dense, legalese, that says that you have to be the *original* owner to get the dot.gov cheese.

And then there's the mother ship.
OK....so....
I have to tread carefully here, because I've already been holed by counter-battery (justifiably) for making blanket statements about the ethics of people who sell cars for a living, but now I want to say something about people who MAKE cars for a living, and I'm going to try to be as diplomatic as possible.....

Hmmmmmm....

Where to start?
Toyota likes to kiss you sweetly behind the ear and whisper softly that YOU are their customers and that they place your wants and needs above all else.
Well.....obviously that's a load of high-grade fertilizer,
We all know that since Toyota isn't registered as a 501(c)(3) that their main motive is profit......and there's nothing wrong with that.
However (comma!) one has to REMEMBER that the good, kindhearted people in Aichi Japan do not sell cars to the American public.
They sell cars to the 1200 slimy, dastardly, evil-hea......oh waitamintue.....
I'm sorry.
I forgot myself.

Toyota sells their cars to their dealers for amounts not easily discernible to the average car buyer.
Since most dealerships like to keep several hundred units on hand (@ around $25,000 per, wholesale cost) that's usually well north of 5 megabucks tied up in inventory that's sitting out in the elements, depreciating at a rate usually found only in desert fruit stands.

Yes.
I know.
Somebody who has been 'in the biz' since before electric starters were standard equipment is about to point out (semi-correctly) that they don't really "sell" units to their franchisees, but rather they engage in a complicated plan to tie dealers to allocations financially in some labyrinthine scheme that 1,000,000 lawyers with 1,000,000 keyboards couldn't duplicate in a million years.
That only serves to underscore how broken the system still is despite the fact that anyone with even a dial-up internet connection CAN buy a car in any state in the union (at 'local' pricing) but so few actually do so.

So....OEMs, who like to make cars much more than they like to SELL cars (who wouldn't?) usually establish sales divisions that set up these zany dealer finance systems and sales turfs.
Toyota_Motor_Sales,_U.S.A..
Nothing wrong with that either.....(legally)
However (comma!) IF I wanted to start a Toyota dealership in........say....Jacksonville, FL I would have to go through Toyota_Motor_Sales,_U.S.A., Inc. to make sure that I'm not setting up shop too closely to the other 2-3 dealers in the area, and also to make sure that I'm not hurting other dealerships in the area by selling cars at cost plus $1.

See also: Price fixing - Wikipedia, which is technically illegal, unless you set up the aforementioned 'zany dealer finance systems and sales turfs' and lubricate things by shoveling about 32 cubic yards of hundred dollar bills at lawmakers...and by calling it "franchising" instead of price fixing.

Ask Elon Musk sometimes what he thinks about laws protecting auto dealers in this country.
Why Tesla Motors can't sell cars in most of the United States

In other words...if you try to set up a system to move units "too efficiently"......then the car manufacturers REAL customers (dealers) will grumble and complain, and then the mothership will try to end the squabbling at the source.....

Don't believe me?
Try to find an add price that's substantially different than all of the other add prices in your area.
We've (allegedly) had sales people on this very site that (allegedly) stopped advertising prices on this forum (maybe) for reasons unknown.
I heard whispering around a campfire long ago that the OEM warranty 'internet prices' may have suffered from a similar phenomenon.



Ever wonder.......why?

 

sounds like typical commerce. we live in a country (probably a world) where there are no hard and fast rules. and the ones we do have were meant to be broken. it's an evolving landscape, where you need your wits about you to survive.

 

Prime Time,
I purchased in Portland Maine, I was told I can do everything by mail, but the payment must be done either wire or certified check (certified check preferred). I went to the dealer to inspect, pay and drove to my final destination. Main reason for me to be in dealership was to inspect the new vehicle and save $1000 (after my expenses) for the vehicle shipping savings.

 

Best I've been able to find in SoCal is slightly under MSRP. Most are at or above MSRP. This is before the 1K rebate. PM me if you're interested in the details.

 

I am a native Californian. We have always had traffic. We have always had city growth. And we seem to have been first to start taxes, rules, regulations, etc regarding roads, water, smog and the like. Yet, we all stay here. Not sure why, but here we are. Having said that, her in So cal, everyday I see 3 or 4 Prime's. We must own the shipments coming over. : )

 

have you considered the weather?