Black BC (grey int) 9/17, Carson Toyota

Hiya Cris! I sure wish I got more cars and wow, it'd be GREAT to get a black one! :/ Sory sweetie... just hang in there. Are you sure that no other color could make you happy?

 

Cris, adding any color is a good thing, believe me. Any other colors you add just add more choices for you in the long run!

Dianne

 

I dont know, but I honestly dont think it works like that. Toyota has so many cas going to a certain dealership. It would take a lot of time to actually go through the lists like that......ok joe X wants this color and this package...ok so what dealership is joe using.....ok what transport is heading to that dealeship....ok what vessel is suppling that port when that transport is getting ready to leave....ok when does that vessel leave the port in japan. That is so many steps for one car, let alone the thousands and thousands of cars that are entering this country and others across the globe. When the ship lands in japan, they fill it up with as many cars as they can and ship it out. The same things happens at each step. My dealer told me what colors he thought would be likely to come in and regardless of my choice the color he suspected did come in (liuckily it was my second choice).
I think luck is just not on your side in this. Hopefully that will change soon!

 

Toyota has one of THE BEST supply chains on the planet. Just think about the thousands of manufacturing firms that make parts for a specific assembly plant. Getting a car from plant A to customer B is the easy part. If the supply base can be vertically integrated, the dealer order and customer requirements are a piece of cake. There has to be a specific reason for certain cars going to certain dealers, it most certainly is not a random reason. We just dont know what that reason is.

 

What you just said is exactly my point. Toyota orders 100,000 air compressors for example. Each one of those is the exact same thing. It doesnt matter which ones go to which plant because they are the exact same. When you special order a car (and yes I actually have done this) you can track the car from the plant to your door. Some person inputs its location at every point. The only way toyota could do it...is if they assign every order a VIN as soon as the car is completed. That way they now VIN xyz needs to get to Carson toyota. They coul scan it like fedex and track it. Assigning VINs like that would be very difficult though since so many orders and multi orders are placed everyday.

 

Hey, buddy. I ordered on the same day from Carson, but not black. Good luck to you!

It seems to me that there are probably two reasons Toyota allocates in the current "random" way:

1. There's probably some agreement Toyota has with its dealers that they will provide cars in a certain way, and changing that would likely be a big deal, like renogiating contracts with a union.

2. In the current system, orders aren't really verifiable. Even if a customer places a deposit, the customer in most cases can get that deposit back without buying the car. If the car was allocated to the customer who decides not to buy, it probably goes to the dealer whose lot it's on. That creates incentive for the dealer to take orders and then do something outrageous (like refuse to sell at the agreed upon price) to make the sale fall through. The alternative of having the car go back to Toyota for redistribution is expensive in shipping and time.

On the flipside, for cars with less demand, the dealer doesn't want to be stuck with the car if the customer backs out.


Of course this would be solved if the customer could buy direct from Toyota, with the dealers as paid middlemen.

 

Cris, how will Toyota even KNOW what anyone is waiting for, or how long you'd been waiting? How will they know this?

I hear this from time to time and I wonder why you suggest it. They have no clue what ANYONE on my list or anyone else's is waiting for, and they have no clue HOW long you have waited on anyone's list.

 

NOW you get my frustration. Welcome to my freakin' planet. They have your name and address and phone # and an eMail address - that is IT!

 

Hey Cris,

Sorry to hear about your situation. (And I thought my four month wait was extreme!) I know it feels like people everywhere but LA are getting their cars after waiting a week or two, but I called over a hundred dealerships along the route from Georgia to LA before I moved here in January and all of them were quoting wait lists of over four months.

Once you get the car, you'll forget all about the waiting. It's totally worth it, even after just a week of ownership.

-af

 

The sad thing here is that my wait line did not even start moving till mid-December, after all of the Pioneers had their cars. If Toyota had told us (me, specifically) that Pioneer cars would come out of the normal allocations, and not be like the original Pioneer cars and just dropped as "extras" because they were ordered via the internet, we'd have been in far better shape at this dealership. I would have never discounted a single Pioneer car and I would have quit taking Pioneer orders at 25 units rather than 50 of them. But, the said thing is that every single car I would have been allocated normally in October, November, and all of December was yanked to fill my Pioneer orders, leaving a huge stalled early line of folks.

If you placed a request with me in April, May, June of last year, and even thru August, Sept, Oct, etc, it wouldn't have mattered... if my line did not start moving till pretty much Christmas-time, then that's when your wait started. I have heard from people who left orders with me in spring 2003, and all the way thru last winter, but my line DID NOT START MOVING TILL CHRISTMASTIME .... and if the cars were not even being sold to the general public till November, then no one could have been "in line" till at least then, eh?

All the drama surrounding the wait times and the lines has had me stressed, frustrated, and now, bored. It will not change. They can't build them as fast as the public wants them, and with fuel pricing headed back thru the roof again, as fast as the public NEEDS them either. I have been threatened, barraged, grumbled at, and lately, even folks trying to both blackmail me threatening to "go public" with their long wait. Oh my, what a terrible thing! To go public with old news! That there is a long wait and a lack of product being allocated.

Dianne

 

Cris, good news right now is that you are #33 on the wait list (out of over 300 on it) and keep one thing in mind: you wanted only one color choice with only one interior choice for most all of your wait time. That paints you into a corner - a long wait corner, kinda like being in time out without having done anything bad first!

 

interesting to read this, dianne. i recently had one dealer say they could get me a car quickly but wanted me to cancel my other orders because toyota would not allocate a car to me if i was on someone else's list. what you say above sort of confirms my general feeling that this was sales talk.

 

This allocation thing is very strange to me. Is it a Toyota USA problem ?

My current car is a Toyota MR2 Roadster (Spyder in the USA). When I ordered it, I specified colour, extras and so on. The order went to Toyota Germany. My dealer was able to tell me every week exactly the state of my order, including when the car went onto the production line, when it went on the ship, came of the ship, was in customs, and finally on the train being delivered to the dealer. It took 4 month from order to delivery.

I am now about to order my Prius. We have 2 choices, Sol or Executive, and 6 colours. Waiting time 8 - 10 month. Colour or "version" makes no difference as its "build to order" with each order in a queue.

I can only assume Toyota USA batch orders "on spec" and then ships them from the ports to the dealers without regard to the customers requirements.

A very strange way to work!