This is my first post, so please excuse any unintended stupidity (is anyone intentionally stupid?) or general ineptitude. That said...I'm close to taking the plunge and buying a Prius, but have a question. Would you recommend buying at a dealership, or purchasing on-line (in terms of cost, wait-time, and choice of color/options)? I'm located on the border of LA and Ventura Counties in California, if that makes a difference.
Not a stupid question at all. But as far as I know, there is currently no option for purchasing a Prius on-line. At least, I can't remember anyone on PriusChat ever saying that they were able to do this. (There is some discussion that Toyota dealers will be able to order the new Lexus hybrids on-line, thus making avoidign the whole "this dealership gets X Prii, whether they ordered them or not" allocation scheme.) Can anybody contradict me? If there's an on-line purchase method, I'd like to point others to it.
My car broker friend, located in the West San Fernando Valley, tells me she is constantly being offered all colors and packages of Prius below MSRP by multiple dealers. She does all the work, negotiates the best price, obtains the loan, takes care of the paperwork and delivers the car to your front door. PM me if you want her number.
I found my Prius online but followed it up with a phone call to the dealer and bought it over the phone
If you go to "build your Toyota" on the Toyota site, you can put in different zip codes. Dealers from each area will probably answer you with an offer, since most dealerships have internet sales staff. I would have bought from Kent Cochran at Ehrlich Toyota in Colorado, but I was leery of his traveling far enough to bring the car and then changing the deal, or conversely, my traveling up there and the deal not being what I thought. I posted a question about him on one of these boards and got no response, so I decided to wait. Since then, several people have posted about favorable interstate experiences dealing with him. As it was, I got a call from Mike Calvert in Houston--very convenient, since my son is going to law school there--and got on his list. The wait was about 5 months. About the time my vehicle arrived, I had calls from another 3 or 4 dealers with offers of a Prius available at MSRP. So maybe you can't technically order by internet, but you can certainly use the internet as a tool. Beth
I found my car online, but my dealer is in Virginia, a long drive for you. There are dealers with large allocations around the Washington DC area.
I think its well worth going to carbuyingtips.com or fightingchance.com before you do anything else. I wish I had. If you can stand to wait til supply catches up with damand, so think the end of the year, you may be able to buy below MSRP
innov8v... I bought mine 'online' (Denver)... 'built' it on toyota.com.. got answers from dealers within hours... at the time there were waits.. the internet manager, I picked, confirmed a price and a guess on his part of a time frame.. I did talk to him on the phone twice...once when I gave him a credit card as a deposit (which he didn't process) and again when he called to set a time to pick up the car... NO MUSS NO FUSS! would never go lot buying again... Bob Andersen
