Buying a Prius from Hertz Rent2Buy - one experience

So, I just bought a 2009 Package 2 Prius with 27,500 miles from Hertz's Rent2Buy program. I hadn't seen anyone post on this site (or anywhere on the web) about any experiences with Rent2Buy, so I knew I was taking a little risk in dealing with this outfit, but I went ahead anyway, because I got a good price (see below). I thought I would post (a long) something about my experience, in case anyone else might be considering shopping for a car with them.

My Pricing Details
Selling Price: 16500.00
Less Discount: 250.00
Dealer Processing Fee: 199.00
Title/Registration Fee: 222.50
Total Taxable Amount: 16250.00
Salt Lake, UT, Sales Tax (On applicable items): 966.88
Total Price of Vehicle: 17638.38
(I just signed the papers yesterday, finally.)

I do have some things to say about my mixed (both good and bad) Rent2Buy experiences. Basically, on the upside, I thought the price was good, and I never felt like they were trying to milk more money out of me. I never even felt like they were "selling" me at all. On the downside, this iteration of their sales division has only been in business since July '09, and they don't fully have their act together, yet.

Here's how the process worked for me (quite long, sorry):

I found this car online on my day off, Monday MLK day. I made my reservation to pick up the car for a test drive on that Thursday. (Hertz will give you a 2 hour test drive of the car for free. They'll let you extend your test drive for up to 3 days for a cost of $49/day, refunded if you buy the car) I had the day off, though, and I wanted to check out the car that same day.

After a little callling around, I found out that Utah's Hertz Rent2Buy program operates out of the tiny downtown Salt Lake City rental office. The car had to be driven over there from a big holding lot in the airport location, that's why I couldn't get it that same day. In the meantime, they put a hold on the car so it wouldn't be rented until I get it, they told me.

I still wanted to get a peek at the car that day if I could, and the guy at the downtown SLC office very nicely arranged for me to see the car parked over at the airport. It took over an hour for the airport manager to find the car in their massive lot. It was completely parked in, so he opened the car, turned it on and left me alone to sit in it. It has a light tan bisque interior, which doesn't hide stains that well. It had several black scuffs from suitcases and shoes on the bottoms of the doors, and on the threshold of the trunk, and a there were a few very small stains visible on the armrest and one very small one on the passenger seat. There was some kind of medium-sized scuff on the side of the bumper right behind a rear wheel. Other than that it seemed clean and in good shape. I was surprised and pleased to see it was a package 2, I had expected it to be the most basic model, but the extra safety features were important to me.

On Thursday I got a call an hour before I had to pick up the car. "Don't come downtown." They had rented it out and they would let me know when it came back in. A call to the Rent2Buy headquarters (in Oklahoma City) led to an apology and an assurance that the rental should end on Sunday, and they promise to hold it for me this time. I finally picked up the car the following Wednesday. The guy at the downtown office confessed he almost rented out the car again earlier that day.

The car drove well, so we decided to go for the 3 day rental. I had a question for the headquarters office: My 3 day trial rental was due to end on Saturday, but the downtown office was closed on the weekend. What if I didn't want to buy the car, how could I return the car on Saturday? They did not really know, but the DID NOT offer to just extend the rental to Monday.

I took the car into our local Toyota dealer to do a pre-purchase inspection ($53). Everything looked great except for a couple of air filters, the alignment being a little off and the tires being at the end of their life (2/32's depth). I now knew that we would buy this car and on Saturday, I clicked the "purchase" button on the website where I had reserved the car (yep. that's how you do it.)

While I waited for the paperwork to arrive, I got 4 Blizzaks put on the car ($400), an alignment ($129 for unlimited lifetime alignments at Firestone) and a 2nd smart key ($230 with programming at the dealer -- Hertz only had one key).

Hertz Rent2Buy had just started a financing agreement that very week with Chase and the woman I was dealing with got me a good APR of around 4%, which I agreed to. The overnight FexEx documents arrived 5 days later. I was told to call the same woman back to go through the paperwork when it arrived, but she was out that day. I went over the forms with someone else and caught significant errors on two of the forms (not the kind that were trying to charge me more, though). I caught them separately, and they each had to be had to be redone and .pdf's emailed to me. It took up 3 hours of my morning with the waiting. I put a money order together for my downpayment and was told they would not accept money orders, only certified checks, wires or ACH payments.

They also asked me to get a VIN inspection, Safety Inspection, Emissions, and mail back the certificates, along with a copy of a new insurance card, showing the Prius had to be added to my policy. Emissions and safety inspections are not required for 2009 used vehicles this year in Utah, so I just had to get a VIN Inspection. How does one get just a VIN inspection? I had to call the DMV twice to figure it out. I did not even bother calling rent2buy. Even though they are technically a dealer licensed in Utah, I knew they would have no idea.

Now I'm waiting a couple of weeks for my new plates and other documents to arrive in the mail. I still feel like I got a good price ($600 less than the Kelley Blue Book private party "good" value), as late-model used Priuses are especially expensive in Utah for some reason. But I feel like I got the price break in exchange for dealing with an organization that does not completely have their act together yet. (For instance, when was the last time this car had an oil change? They won't release any of their maintenance records. Maybe they'll figure out how to provide those soon. They should.)

I'm sorry this post is so long. I guess I don't expect someone to casually wade through this whole long story. But for someone who is tempted by a good Rent2buy price on a Prius, I hope this could be helpful.

 

paprius4030 - Yes, I am driving around now with Hertz's plates. The car's current registration (in NV) expires in August. Hopefully they'll send me my own registration, plates, and title before then.

PriusSport - After talking with a couple of Toyota dealers, I feel pretty confident that I can still count on any warranty that remains, based upon the mileage and number of years in service. The bumper-to-bumper will remain in place for me until 3 years, 36,000 miles; powertrain until 5 years/60,000 miles; hybrid components until 8 years/100,000 miles. I can also add an extended warranty (which I'm seriously considering) at any time until I hit the 3yr/36K mark. The car was put in service in August 2008, by my guess.

paprius4030 & PriusSport - When Toyota announced their larger brake recall, Rent2buy announced that the affected models were being (temporarily) pulled down from the Rent2Buy website, for safety reasons. I imagine they'll post them again when they've had the recall fix done. As for the Priuses, I can only guess that they were probably pulled down when the Prius recall was announced (even though they were only selling '08 and '09 models, which were not part of the recall). When they move beyond this whole recall situation, I bet they get posted again. Rent2Buy is in 16 states and I think there were about 50-70 or so Priuses posted nationally before I noticed they were taken down.

liskipper - My wife and I both grew up in New York. You are correct that I made improvements (winter tires, 2nd key, alignment) to the car before getting official posession. And Rent2Buy could technically still do something to screw us on these. My experience with them is that they are sometimes incompetent with paperwork and procedure issues, but they are not looking for any angles from which to screw us/enrich themselves. In order to complete the purchase paperwork, I had to add the car to my insurance policy and include a copy of my new insurance card. So, I added the tires and the smart key after the car was already insured in my name. I know that doesn't protect me from being screwed in any way, but I had to start taking owner-type steps before the sale was complete. The weekend before I added the tires, I spun out 4 different times (in another car) on the mountain pass of I-80. Absolutely terrifying. I did not want to drive this car around during snow season on nearly-bald tires. I also needed the 2nd key right away to share this car with my wife. We share a commute every day. I could have waited on the alignment, but I was already getting the tires put on. At least until our wire cleared 2 days ago, I think we were driving the car around as renters, so we were not illegal. Alternately, we could have parked the car on our street and not driven it at all until we got the sale finalized. I think when all is said and done, the whole sale process will have proven to take well over a month. I just decided (to take a risk, you're right, and) drive the car around during that month. Given that I had made that decision, I felt I HAD to get the 2nd key and the good tires.

I'm glad to hear that you guys don't feel like I got a bad deal. I had been wondering recently if my price was good enough to justify the extra hassles Rent2Buy has put me through.

I was also initially worried about whether the car was abused by its previous renters. But then I thought, probably not. Hertz is just expensive enough that they mostly rent to a high proportion of business travellers, as opposed to people looking for a joyride. And If you were type who was looking to go for a joyride with a Hertz car, would you fork over the extra bucks to rent a Prius? I feel like the only unusual treatment the car may have recieved t the hands of the Hertz renters is the higher mileage, but that has been fully disclosed, of course.