Anyone have problems today with "Cash for Clunkers" ?

My experience was pretty painless. My dealer is located in Lexington Park MD (Toyota of Southern Maryland).

I spoke to the sales consultant the week of 6 July and told him I was going to use the a CARS eligable vehicle as part of my downpayment.

A Level IV with the solar roof showed up on Saturday the 18th, I put a $500 deposit down on it and then showed up the following Saturday to take delivery. Spent 2-hours in the dealer and drove the car home. The paperwork to complete the CARS turn-in was very simple.

 

Luckily I was able to get in on the CARS program. But I did a bunch of leg work ahead of time. Here's a couple things I learned:

1) Not all dealerships have the same number of allocations. Look for a dealership that has recently done upgrades or built a new building. This allows Toyota to give them a supplemental allocation of cars. This drastically improves your chances of getting a Prius you like let alone one in time for CARS. It also loosens up a lot of squeaky wheels (poor sales practices) and you will find a sharp difference in the quality of information and dealership responses you will get.

2) Even with a larger quantity of cars to work with, the dealer will likely have to trade one of their vehicles (either from on the ground or from "port") to get a model that matches your specs. It will help them a lot to have a few secondary choices. Personally I had to forgo the Solar panels for just Nav. I'm not disappointed because I was valuing the Solar panels more for 'coolness' than practicality.

3) Even with the above two considerations, you can still negotiate price but I don't expect this to be the case everywhere. I was able to negotiate my purchase for less than MSRP but I started a month before CARS went live. I was also working directly with a sales manager. Probably the hardest working salesman/manager, I have ever met.

4) CARS is HOT! It may already be too late. I worked hard to make sure I was in the CARS voucher queue as early as I could get; however, there's a 10 day lag time before the dealer will actually see a check. This means that the final success or failure of the application may not surface until 10 days after your deal is done. Buried in the paperwork you will sign, is a condition that you are responsible for the shortfall should the paperwork get denied. So be prepared for bad news should it come.

Good Luck,
Paul

 

Why, oh why, would you sign this? Do you realize this totally lets the dealer off the hook. Instead, please ammend that to read something like, if the paperwork of the new car purchaser is deemed to be insufficient due to an error on the CUSTOMERS side."

There are so many ways the dealership can screw this up that you only want to be liable if YOUR paperwork is the problem. They could forget to include a copy of something, forget to get a scrappers proper signature, input their bank account number incorrectly, transpose a VIN #, etc.

If anyone has problems here, I would demand to see the e-mail notice to the dealer from the FEDS documenting the reason for the denial of claim. I'd bet 99 times out of 100 it will be the dealers fault, not the customers!!!!

 

Friday morning I thought about buying a new car at random (my Wrangler was breaking). So I went and test drove a Prius on my way home from work. I mentioned the Cash For Clunkers. On Saturday when I went back we talked more about it and basically he gave me $4500 for my car (KBB was $4200) because he said it was a mess of paperwork. So I feel like I got a pretty good deal on trade in and since it was $4500 off instead of a rebate, I also didn't have to pay tax on the $4500.

I picked up my car last night.

So maybe there is hope in that some people might get a little more trade in value if nothing else.

 

I used the CARS program and didn't pay sales tax on the $4500. I'm glad because over here our sales tax is 9.75%.

 

WV - I paid sales tax before the rebate is deducted... bummer.

 

Looks like the EPA changed the fuel rating for some cars. As such some cars no longer qualify for the clunkers program, and some new cars do.

Clunker Confusion: MPG Figures- Yahoo! Autos Article Page

It also looks like the NHTSA will not reimburse dealers that took in a car that no longer is considered a clunker.

"Dealers who entered into agreements with customers before last Friday, based on a fuel economy figure listed at fueleconomy.gov, have only themselves to blame, said Tyson (spokesman for the NHTSA).

"'We made it very clear that they would be holding themselves out to some risk if they consummate a deal before the program officially begins,' Tyson said."

 

Nope, life with no kids, filing as single and made decent money in investment. I think I deserve a break

 

Picked up ours this afternoon. No problem but I got all of the qualifying paper work in a couple of weeks ago. Salesman said NHTSA has changed the rules everyday since they were supposedly finalized. First they were told to apply the $4500 as cash off then today to show it as a trade in which in Texas reduces the sales tax. So they had to redo contracts and refund collected tax. I asked about the salvage but they were clueless and I didn't press it,,, suspect they will figure that out later too. He said the sales Manager expects the gov to screw them some way. They are trying to play by the rules but the rules keep changing. Had taken in over 50 clunkers by this afternoon and had a half dozen more they were trying to find the vehicles the customers wanted. Said Prius was the hottest seller and getting hard to come by.
For the record, wife drove the Ensight and Prius and since she will be driving it, let her make the choice. She said it wasn't even a close call. The Prius was winner hands down.

 

Whoops! You beat me to to the punch. I started a new thread elsewhere, hours later.

I personally saw the rating for the 91 Camry V6 auto (I used to have one) go from 18 mpg on fueleconomy.gov awhile ago to 19 mpg at some unknown point in time.

Those who are on the boundary should definitely double check.

 

bummer.

my best year i got my effective rate to 13% (and my marginal was at least 28% then). Now AMT bites my nice person and i am back up to 18% or so. Three kids help bring it down.

You do deserve a break.

I guess all the people with kids in your area should thank you for helping to pay for their schooling.

 

No, no problems here. Did the deal on Saturday and picked up the car on Monday afternoon.
Dealers / car sales people are not to be trusted. They make real estate people look good. They want to make money -that's OK - and they make it from the customer.
Peter

 

Re: ????

I have a deposit on a 2010 Prius III that I will pick up today or tomorrow. My only problem is the dealership wouldn't do the transaction until they were registered for the CARS program and all my paperwork was in and approved. Go on the internet and search for dealerships. I want to edmonds.com and requested a quote from dealerships. I got plenty of responses from dealers.
Good luck.

 

Did our deal for a Model IV with Navigation on Saturday night and drove it off the lot then.

It was sad to see our '87 Mercedes 420SEL go -- real wood in the interior, great shape after 22 years, built like a tank -- but it also got tank-like mileage.

Have already put 240 miles on the Prius.

 

Why are their no approved Toyota dealers on the CARS site?

Stan

 

I think they officially, Toyota, started on Monday, and CARS might not have updated their site/database yet.

 

I think the program is simply unfair. Yes, I know it's designed to get fuel-hogs off the road. At the same time, it essentially "punishes" those who bought responsibly years ago, who now have cars worth less than $4500 but can't qualify for the program because their car's original EPA was better than 18 mpg. That happened to us with a '91 Honda. The EPA was 22 mpg, so no-can-do. Really lousy. So we "reward" those who polluted the environment and "punish" those who didn't. Great job!

 

Is there any way to tell beforehand if a deal is going to be approved or rejected due to lack of money left in the program? As far as I can tell there isn't a way to tell.

At the cutoff point...whenever that may be....there is either going to be a lot of angry consumers who are on the hook for the money, or angry dealers who are on the hook for the money, or some of both! There will be a huge backlash either way.

What the government should have done was something very similar to the hybrid tax credit where say for example they let the first 200,000 transactions go through and then the rule states that buyers have 3 days or something after the 200,000th one is processed to get their deals done and submitted. Everything submitted up through that date is accepted and after that date is rejected. That way everyone would know ahead of time if they are eligible or not.

If one were to buy a car and take delivery and they scrap the old car and then find out a week or two later that the program ran out of money and the application got rejected, someone is not going to be very happy. What recourse is there in that situation? You're pretty much stuck at that point aren't you?

Now if everything gets put on hold....the old car doesn't get scrapped, the new car stays in the dealer's lot, and the transaction can be reversed if the application gets rejected, then that is a very different story.

 

I think the big spike in C.A.R.S. deals will rapidly fall off in just a few days. The large number of deals some dealerships are seeing now is surely due to the more motivated customers getting in line early so to speak.

At least I hope this is what is going on. We are supposed to get our 2010 on Monday and I would be very disappointed if the C.A.R.S. money is gone.