Buying Experience - Disappointing

Which dealership did you go to? Might as well make that public so other people know to avoid them.

 

Buying Experience - Great

We knew we were paying sticker going into the deal.

Our salesman Bob Miller, at Performance Toyota in Sinking Springs, PA could not have been nicer! We were in and out in 2.5 hours. During that time we were fed and given drinks, never pressured to take the Toyota finance or other deals. We have had numerous call backs from Bob asking if ANYTHING was in question and that we were 100% satisfied with the car and his job as a salesman.

Bob owned a Prius and was familiar with all the controls and Nav system. He went over everything and even programmed our home address for the ride home. One of our driving licenses had a mispelling of the road we lived on and they put in the paperwork to the State to correct that. Title and new owners card arrived within a week from delivery!!

Delivered with a full tank of gas, cleaned, and polished.

FYI the local Toyota dealer nearest to my house gave friends of ours a similar experience to yours. They were at that dealer for almost 6 hours!

Hey .... At least the car is GREAT! I hope you get treated better by service.

Speedwing

 

+1 (or PM me with the dealer's name, so I know enough not to get a quote from that dealership.)

 

These are dealer problems, not Toyota problems. In the US car makers by law are not allowed to sell cars retail; they all must sell through independent dealers. All you can do is comparison shop and complain to Toyota about crappy dealers, who can then apply pressure in the form of reduced allocation of popular models.

As for pricing: the Prius is extremely popular. Dealers see where gas prices are and how they are moving the same as we all do. They are in business for profit and charge what the market will bear. One can now get lots of sales attention and a good price by shopping for an F-150 or an H-2 :_>

 

You think that was bad!!!!

My wife wanted to trade in our 2007 Element SC for a stripped 2008 Prius this past holiday season. She wanted to deal with the local Toyota dealer.

They said they could get a,"package one base car" in silver by trading another dealer in another part of the state.

Here's the Disappointments:

The car arrived and I noticed the wheels were different then the normal dust cover edge style wheels found on high package models. The salesman tried Bullshitting me that he needs to find out how much the, "upgraded wheels" that were put on this car were and we'd be charged for it. He guessed it would be about $400 dollars. I asked why the wheels were changed and who changed them on this car delivered to us as a new car. The truth is, a base model prius has a different style wheel and this guy tried pulling a fast one on us.

Then after we looked over the paperwork, the OTD price was wrong.
Seemed he still tried to get a few extra hundred.

Then they wanted a few hundred bucks for the factory floor mats that were in the car. I had them keep them and we were prepared to get some floor mats for $25 bucks at autozone.

Then I go to drive it away home after the deal is done by my wife and notice the odo / car has over 200 something miles on it. Mind you this is my wife's car and she did most of this transaction. I got upset and drove it right back into the dealership and wanted to know why a new car they got for us had 200 something miles on it. I demanded the factory floor mats be throw in for free or you can have the car back since the paperwork on the odo was fudged with 20 miles listed instead of the 200.

They gave us the floor mats. We now have the car serviced at a different dealership because of the experience mentioned above.

 

richard is exactly right on both points.

I think your first error was not turning and walking out after they turned down your request to match with the $500 from the other dealer. You will probably have your say when Toyota sends their survey.

 

I picked up my new Prius yesterday at a local dealer at the sticker price. It took 2 weeks to get it. The wait is now 4 months. I don't think they made any more than 10% on the car (they said less), which hardly covers their overhead. Discounts on the hottest car in the industry right now are non-existent. You are lucky to get the sticker price.

 

Sorry you had a crappy experience. The dealership I used is an hour's drive from my home. Why did I do that? Because EVERY dealer in my local area had arrogant jackasses working for them! The one I ended up at gave me a discount, had the car detailed with a full tank of gas, threw in the Prius decal on the back bumper and the special floor mats for nothing, gave us a good tutorial on the car before we drove away, our salesman and the finance manager were respectful, they got us in and out within a couple of hours, AND a couple of weeks after purchase we got a balloon & candy bouquet from the salesman (that's never happened to us before with any car we've bought)! If I ever buy another Toyota I will HAPPILY make the drive back to them.

 

Sorry to hear about your bad experience with your dealership. Most of the time, no matter what kind of car you are trying to buy a good salesman can always turn it into an enjoyable experience.

Now that is over, I hope that you are loving the Prius.

 

porsche, i bought mine 3 weeks ago now in boston. IRA danvers gave me a quote of 22,072 on an option 2 but when I went to get it, they ofcourse had none on the lot. They said they could take an order on one for MSRP (about 1800 more than the quote) so i walked out. They ran after me and offered to match the price, said one would come in soon. Long story short, they guy called me the next day and said it could be mid-june before it came in. I picked up the phone, called every dealer in the boston area (well, 9 dealers) and found one (expressway toyota) with one on the lot and they were willing to match the 22,072 price. 48 hours later, I had the car. They didnt try to strongarm me on financing (i wanted to use my local credit union) and didnt even try to sell me stuff I didnt need.

In the end, IRA of danvers was terrible, all they did was jerk me around, and expressway toyota was professional and honest (i really could not have asked for a better experience with them). Its funny though, without that quote from IRA, i wouldnt have gotten my deal at expressway!

 

Sorry you had a bad experience, but I think you're right to hold Toyota accountable, even if these are "dealer issues." The last time I checked the dealer is still an official Toyota representative and things that the dealer does (or doesn't) do reflect on Toyota.

Given that every flat surface (and even a few that aren't flat) in a car dealership is usually plastered with the manufacturer's name and logo, I can't see how the manufacturer wouldn't be interested in this kind of stuff and even seeing themselves as at least partially accountable for the behavior of their dealers. At least the manufacturer will be in a position to cause change at the dealership.

As folks have pointed out, you'll likely be contact by Toyota national asking for your opinion on a customer satisfaction survey. Be honest, but don't let the negative sales experience detract from an otherwise great car.

If you ever decide to get another Toyota (hybrid or otherwise) you now know where not to go back to.

 

Not surprising at all! I walked out of their lot with my checkbook in my pocket 9 years ago on a Sunday afternoon. Salesman couldn't be bothered showing cars to a woman by herself. Fine. I went to Atlantic Toyota in Lynn and put a deposit on a brand new '99 Corolla. Got my subsequent '03 Corolla, then a '03 Prius (his), then a '07 Prius (mine) from the same salesman. Ira you lost my business when you thought I needed a man to buy a car.

 

Your good experience sounds just like mine with a dealership here in Illinois. I also got that cool Candy and Balloon bouquet in the mail and we were so shocked, first to open up the box and have the helium balloon come floating out of the box. So cool and very nice..

To the OP, sorry you had such a bad experience, it just goes to show, that each dealership is individually owned and operated and they are not all the same. The first dealership I went to test drive the Prius at. The salesman was not very helpful at all in showing me how to drive the car for the test drive, he asked if I had any experience with the Prius and I said NO, none at all. and then he did not even bother to give me any instructions on how to start the car. I had no idea he already started it, and he just did not want to deal with me when I told him I was just looking for now and just wanted to test drive it. So I knew right away that no matter what, I was not going back to that dealer to buy the car even though they are the closest one to my house. Don't let one bad dealer give you a bad impression of Toyota corp in general as it is not indicative of the Toyota corp. and how they operate.

Congrats on your purchase and try and forget about the bad experience now and enjoy the car. It is truly a choice car...

 

Quite a few Toyota dealers have had poor customer relations since the mid 80's, when their cars really took off in popularity. Even with poor relations you can be sure they are still selling a lot of cars each month. I guess that shows how good Toyota's are. Could you imagine the dropoff in GM and Ford sales if they had the same amount of dealers that acted like that? The dealership where I bought my car was also trying to pull all kinds of crap. It's funny how nice they become when you mention you're an attorney.

 

One can avoid a lot of this bother by shopping by phone, fax, and email instead of going around in person. I contacted seven dealers, got bids in writing from three and didn't meet the salesman where I bought until I paid the deposit, and then only because that's when they had one available for a test drive.

 

I bought my Prius on April 8th. On my first trip to the dealer the salesman was a jerk. I wrote a very calm, professional letter (e-mail) to the general manager simply explaining what I wanted and what happened. Didn't even mention the salesman's name. All I wanted was to convey to him what happened when I visited his dealership.

He invited me to come back and ask for him. I did, and he introduced me to his senior salesman asking him to "take care of Mr. Forkner". Yes, I paid MSRP but every question and concern was addressed in detail. The general manager stopped by a couple of times just to see "how it was going".

The finance guy was great. He beat my Credit Union by .5% so I went with the dealer financing. Over all, it took about 4 hours but I left with the new car I wanted and as a happy customer. (Of course, this was when dealers still had cars in stock.)

Mostly getting what you want is knowing who to complain to (someone who has the authority ro resolve the issue) and doing so in a calm and professional manor. In the big picture, I simple state why I am dissatisfied and let them decide how they are going to resolve it.

There are good salesman and dealerships out there. Sometimes you just have to hunt for them. And like was said earlier, don't forget the survey. Above all, calm and professional.

Bob

 

I think that there are many arrogant jackass salesmen out there. I can only assume some are making more money than ever before, so they forget what they are thier for. The option is always to walk away, that is, after being polite,reasonable, non-emotional and last, always going above the salesmans head. If you think about it, the auto salesman is the lowest man on the totem pole. Most important always be firm if not tough, act like you have all day. Fortunately most salespeople at any dealership are anxious to make a sale and are cooperative.You ran into a schmuck.