I am not a great car shopper. I don't know how to negotiate well and hate dealing with the bully sales managers. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. My process was pretty straight forward. I went through Penfed's car buying service (which is essentially truecar.com wrapped by Penfed and supported by a ridiculous financing rate) and found a couple nearby dealers. I contacted Pasadena, Cerritos and Hollywood. I heard the all too common "there's no way we can meet that price", "you'll never find that anywhere", and my new favorite "maybe you would be interested in a used car". This was after asking to drop an additional $1k from the price offered over email. The only place I would suggest that you stay away from would be Toyota Pasadena. The sales manager there was especially rude to me, would not hear me out and essentially used bully tactics to scare me into a deal? I'm not sure what he was trying. All in all, I would say do not deal with Chuck at Toyota Pasadena. Anyways, somehow I didn't query Cabe Toyota Scion in Long Beach until today. I do not know why I avoided them. But they were the third suggestion on my Penfed car buying service. So I started with an email communication with Oni Johnson there. She was very responsive, courteous, and helpful. It was pretty much a conversation over email, with about 10 emails going back and forth in about 20 minutes. They gave me a very reasonable price, but I have to say there were two other primary reasons why I went to Cabe, along with the price being the most important. 1) They made for a very pleasant experience from beginning to end. No hard positions, no games, no nonsense. 2) Cabe has a great warranty and service package - 1 extra year toyota care free, 5 years of oil changes free, and unlimited car washes (the caveat being that all of these services must be performed at Cabe in Long Beach). Oni assured me on price and availability so I went down today. Once there, Oni said that I would be working with Cristina Morales for the test drive and to purchase the car should I decide that I want to. Cristina was very professional, very kind and again, no hassle, up-sale, nonsense. It was a very good experience and I didn't have to feel like I needed a defensive wall. I know that I sound like an advertisement for Cabe. But because of how unpleasant my experiences had been until today, I wanted to share a thorough review. To sum it up, 1) solid price (OTD under 22K), 2) no-nonsense, kind, honest service, 3) great benefits in terms of extended service. If you're in Southern California and you're looking for a good place to go buy a Prius, give Oni Johnson an email or a call, trust me. It was that much better than dealing with all the other sales people. Feel free to message me if you want some help or info while shopping for a Prius C.
Thanks! Love the car. Dang, I put down the rear seats (the "60" part of the 40/60) and now the latch won't lock when I try to put it back up. Anyone had this issue? Oh well, time to go back to the dealer.
Welcome to the owner's group. This is a nice bunch of folks and I am sure that you will add to the pleasant and informative group. We have had our C since July. Just this week I learned, watching C videos, that we have a telescoping steering wheel. Knew it was adjustable but had no idea it would pull out. Have fun. Dan
Not sure if it's the same as what you describe, but mine once got stuck and wouldn't go all the way back to the latched position. I just had to slam it harder, lol. (Actually, my fiance had to do it because I was afraid of breaking my car )
The belts at the back may be a problem. Sometimes they stuck on the latch. There are, however, special small folders for them. Those are small pieces of plastic that you can snug the belts behind. They are located on the walls at the back.
Congrats! Thats great! My dealer was hassle free too for the most part. They gave me some trouble when I found razor blades in the car but they took care of the problem.
I'm almost the exact same as you! I bought my 3 at Cabe last night. To me, knocking a couple hundred bucks off the price isn't worth my time or stress (plus, I'm probably not good at it!). I only paid about $130 over the average reported by truecar.com, which is all right by me. The only complaints I have are 1.) they couldn't get the car in the color I wanted (moonglow, had to settle for silver), and 2.) Joe Garcia (the first person I spoke with, who set me up with my sales rep Lulu) needs to work on his charm. Nice that it's only two blocks away from the blue line as well. Makes it easy to get there, for me at least.
Ok, figured it out, once I put the seats back (yea, good note also from Ilya to clear the belts), I have to push hard. Now, this is different from slamming them into place. What I do is put them to the latch, then they dont latch until I push down hard onto the seat. That seemed to do the trick. I did not know the steering wheel telescopes either! Gonna have to give it a try later today. The bluetooth works well with my iPhone, but I do not know how to get the phone functions working. Do the phone functions work with the iPhone?
The bluetooth has been a headache with our Iphone 3s phones. I am thinking it might be the 6.01 update. We had Iphone 3 phones when we bought the car. Phones always worked and the address book did too. Now, no address book and the phone works about half the time, primary. Secondary phone never works. Tuesday I am going to visit dealer for 10,000 mile oil change. Will discuss it with them then. Dan
Entune used to work, does not anymore. The Navigation is not that good. My old car used to list places to eat or get a coffee close by and the Prius Navigation no such luck. The Entune Bing which can be used to search and integrate into nav does not work most of the time. Very frustrating since I paid googles of money for navigation and it lacks some basic functions.
Our audio is totally different but I've had dramas since I upgraded my iPhone 4s to 6.0.1. (I skipped 6.0). The upgrade provided Bluetooth Message Access Profile so the car can now receive text messages and read them out to me, though it can't reply to them. When I go into the menus I can see the phonebook on the car display, but if I try to use voice control is says there are no entries. And bluetooth music has become far more random and flakey than it was before the upgrade. My best bet now is to select an album and then pause it prior to getting in the car. If I'm lucky and the planets are in correct alignment, the car might allow me to play that album... although the car will decide if it will play it in normal or random order, depending on its mood on the day. It will acknowledge its choice with a random icon if that's the way it went, but there is no way for me to control it. Oh and iPod control by plugging it in is all but non-functional now... that's so painful I avoid plugging the phone in unless I'm desperate to charge it.
Rob, thanks for your report. I have not even tried to receive texts on it. Id just like to have the dang phone hook up on a regular basis. I would really enjoy getting the phone book back. We lost that after swapping from 3 phones to 3gs. Oh well, will see what the salesman says Tuesday while getting the oil changed. I have a friend named Rob who also lives in Sydney. We plan to come over one of these days. Dan
Yes, hauling some furniture and supplies utilizing this spacious cargo space with back sits folded. It is a good idea to spend on the rear bumper protector to keep all that scratches off.
Picked up the new "C" today after a 7 week wait. It's the Australian base model, Aqua in colour, known as Summer Rain in some countries. Came with floor mats as standard and was given a free rear bumper protector as an added extra. Put about 70 km on it driving home, then out again to the Golf Club for a celebratory dinner. It had exactly 10 km on the odometer when handed over. Hmmm. Do the dealers have a way of setting that figure during the "pre-delivery" process? It does all the things expected, following the initial test drive plus 7 weeks worth of reading, including, of course the "C" threads here on PriusChat. There's still lots to learn and to get used to but isn't that part of the fun? I'm going to have to connect the Garmin GPS to see how accurate the speedo is. I was being tailgated a bit on the way home from the dealer and it was not for lack of getting up to speed quickly. Maybe the people behind were rubbernecking or just liked the pretty colour! According to the display, the "C" is over 800 km away from its first fill. The consumption figure is gradually decreasing and was showing 5.8 l/100km when I put it to bed tonight.
Welcome to PriusChat! I'm interested that you got a bumper protector as that's not a standard accessory available here. I don't think dealers set the figure - they should be able to deliver it without putting much on the clock, especially if yours came off the ship already destined to be sold to you. I've tested it by putting the cruise control on at 110 km/h and timing my progress along a 5km marked odometer check length along a freeway in Sydney, and I get a figure of around 105.6 km/h, making it closer to accurate than I'm used to. If you're getting 800km then your average fuel economy should probably be better than that - are you using Trip A or Trip B to check the overall economy or was that the "from Start" display against the ODO?
Hello, Enjoyed reading your article and thanks for the helpful information. I live in Florida so I'll have to find my own dealership. But you mentioned Pendfed's Car Buying Service and Truecar.com...........how do these services work and would you recommend them for getting the best price on a Prius C? I'm just in the initial stages of researching so I don't know too much at this point, sorry if it's a silly question. Thanks. Jess
