New Owner In Olympia

Welcome. Here are a few points for you. 8) My experience with Olympia Toyota has been mixed. I ordered in April last year (god almost a year ago!) was told February of this year. My son found a car for me in Helena Montana where he goes to school and I picked up my car in August and have not looked back. Toyota of Olympia did have a car for me to test drive and gave me back my deposit promptly when asked. Service has been less stellar for me. First I called about my 5K and they said "just bring it in any time we will change the oil" I asked about the tire rotation and they said they did not recommend it, so I took my car to Bryan's Automotive on Martin Way. He has been my regular mechanic for many years and is good, quick and prices are fair. He did the 5K just fine. No overfill, tires rotated with pressure to my specks. Bryan is looking into being able to work on the HSD but can not get training yet. I did go in later and talk to the service manager about the 5K and he told me that the G3 Prii did not need tire rotation so in order to save the customers money they did not recommend it, but would do it if I insisted. They recommended a 10k rotation schedule. At 10k I needed the Nav upgrade so I took it in. I brought my own Mobil 1 and gave them a big hint that they could leave the extra oil in one of the bottles and put it in the plastic bag in the back. They got the oil fill right about 350 cc left in the bottle and just below the full by about 1/8 inch. Tires were rotated I am sure of that because the backs had 42 psi and the fronts 40psi. I called the service manager again! The worse part was I was Carrying and reading "New Car Features" the introduction book of the service manual published by Toyota. You have to order this from Toyota and is the technical introduction the the cars systems. They had to know that I was a Prius geek and yet they did not check things out.
Any way welcome from another midwestern boy. Dave who haunts this place as well lives in Oly and is another midwesterner. Nice web site BTW

 

I got a clear bra here in Seatle and love it. I got it from a local place called Island Detail http://www.islanddetail.com/. They use Venture Shield which compared to many 3M and other types has a Lifetime Warranty. Check out the thread for clear bras on www.priuschat.com at http://www.priuschat.com/forums/invisible-...html?highlight=

and also,
http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/archive/ind...dex.php/t-35139

Tell Pat McQuaid I sent yout!
Hope that helps -

Alice
05 Tideland Pearl AM Package with brand new Mud Flaps! (and a clear bra)

 

Also register at www.pstoc.com and come to some of our meets and cruises.

 

I just got mine last weekend, and have been playing with ALL of the features (I am an engineer after all).

The fastest wat to get it to be quiet about a route is to hit menu (top right button next to screen) and then the leftmost button it presents you with "Suspend guidance"

Next time you enter a destination (with "Dest" or voice commands) it will ask you if you want to add or replace. Choose replace.

The file library on PriusChat has a good list of voice commands, which are very fun to play with, but don't work very well at highway speeds.

My most useful command: "POI off"

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jgerecht\";p=\"75699)</div>

CONGRATS, jgerecht.. but you're in Washington.. and it's called the GREEN STATE, because it rains ALL the time...

Bob Andersen

 

congrats on your car. sorry to hear your experience with Toyota Oly wasnt the greatest.

i ordered my car there from Fred Hamilton but my family has purchased several cars through him. he did spend a short time in Tacoma but returned to Olympia because he couldnt deal with the way things were done there.

i have basic service done there and they havent overfilled my oil yet. as far as anything else, i have not had any problems so hard to say how their maintenance shop is... guess i gotta wait till something breaks

 

I also bought at Toyota Olympia Nov '03, Fred was my salesman, excellent experience. Paid MSRP but had a goody thrown in. The maintenance department has been superb, knowledgable, prompt, and has never tried to sell me anything. Hope others will have the same experience. I do not live in Olympia so it is a bit out of my way to go there but I feel it is worth it.

I'm a bit older than most of you and have owned 27 cars, 25 were new purchases, so I have a bit of experience. Actually when I retired in 1967 I worked for a Chevrolet dealer in San Jose, CA for a while, just for fun, and to kill some time. We had a meeting every morning which I called "lie, cheat, and steal' meetings. Sell the customer 'payments' and add everything you could to the auto. From the comments on this site many dealers are still doing that, all those protective coatings and high priced maintenance warranties.

I encountered none of this at Toyota of Olympia or I would have bought elsewhere.

Hopefully I will meet some of you at the Lacey Alternative Energy Event which I intend to attend.

Bob

 

nwprius;

im just the opposite of you, ive also owned 27 cars...25 of them used.

 

After reading this post, regarding jgerecht's comments, I'm glad that I purchased my Prius from I-5 motors in Chehalis.

Most of the communication was done via email. The only phone calls were made on the day before and the day of the sale. No deposit either!

 

Is there anyone who has had more recent experience with Toyota of Olympia (within the last month)?

I failed to be impressed by Titus-Will Toyota (Tacoma) when I bought the car there and when I brought it back to have some stuff installed on it. Their service department seems to know what they're doing, but it's a bit too far for me and their sales staff didn't exactly knock my socks off.

That and they seem to want me to come in about 1,500 miles too soon for an oil change...

FYI, I'm trying to see if I can possibly get some interest up on an Olympia Prius mailing list that I've got set up on Yahoo. This may not be the best place to mention it, but I thought I'd see if anyone was interested.

 

http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/olyprius/

I literally just started it yesterday (out of annoyance that it's not always easy to find or share localized information on some of the larger Prius groups), so there's basically nothing and nobody on that list. I plan on using it for localized issues, discussions, information sharing, possible meeting planning, that kind of stuff - pretty much everything that other groups share, just Oly-ized.

As for oil changes, I plan to wait for my maintenance light at 4,500 miles, then I'll take her in for a change to the Olympia dealer when that light goes solid at 5,000.

 

Why risk letting someone else change your oil?

It's really easy to do on the Prius. everything is accessable with out needing a jack!

 

the roadside assistance is very comprehensive and is designed to put the owner's mind at ease if they have any doubts about the new technology and they will come out for nearly everything, even if you run out of gas. (hard to believe for a car that has a 600+ mile range!!)

if i had known about the free oil change certificate, i would have gone to the new owners meeting too. but i waited 6½ months for my car and by the time i had received delivery, i knew quite a bit from coming here and didnt think i would get anything out of it.

 

The dealer I went to in Seattle had a special edition of the new owner meeting just for prius owners. I was the most knowledgeable there of all, including the service manager (though he only has worked there 6 months) I was extremely impressed by his service standards, and I didn't mind that he wasn't a Prius expert, since he's not the one working on my car. The owners had a lot of questions he couldn't answer, like how the homelink worked, and why they're only getting 45MPG. The free oil change certificate was nice, and at least 5 owners wrote down the PriusChat URL when I mentioned it.