Horrible buying experience from Toyota 101 in SF Bay Area

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jbarnhart @ Jun 6 2006, 08:32 PM) [snapback]267063[/snapback]</div>

So here is a long update. Thanks everyone for your input. We immediately got on the waiting lists at a few other dealerships, including a few outside of the Bay Area. Funny thing is that every Bay Area dealership immediately charged the $500 deposit to a credit card where-as 2/3rds of them outside of the area took a credit card number but have yet to charge the card. Also the stated wait periods ranged from 3 weeks to 4 month depending on the dealership. (Are they all closer to 4 months but some dealers bend the truth a bit and promise 3 weeks?)

Back to the story. Soon after my first post, jbarnhart was kind enough to forward my contact info to the owner of Toyota 101 (Thanks a lot for doing it!). Not long after, I got a call from Jim Rimmer, one of the people listed as owner on the Toyota 101 website. He was appalled at the service we had received and said that a number of their policies were broken, including calling people on the wait list once every other week. He also said that it was not unheard of in their industry to have cars sold out from under you to someone who offers a little more money. He never said that's what happened to the car that was "damage in shipment", but he said that the sales people are out for themselves and that it is the managers' job to make sure that sort of stuff didn't happen. Jim was very empathetic and offered to knock off $500 from the MSRP, refund our $500 deposit, pay interest on that $500 deposit, consider a dealer loan for a lower interest rate (since we had a Capital One Blank Check at 5.4% that expired and the new eloan one went up to 6.15%, cost = $520 over 5 year loan) and try to do a local dealer trade to find the car we wanted ASAP. He said he’d talked with his managers and sales staff and they would be changing/reinforcing how they deal with prius buyers. He said we should deal with George Long, one of their managers, from now on if we were still interested in dealing with them and that he could help us work out the details.

We contacted George who had only heard about the $500 off MSRP and that he’d have to talk to Mr. Rimmer about the rest of the deal and that he’d get back to us. On June 3, George said they had a Silver Pine #3 coming in their next allotment that would be ours and that it was scheduled to arrive in port on 6/5 and would be ready for pick up by 6/15. We replied that unless they could do something about the loan issue, we’d probably just go to a different dealership. On June 7, we got another email saying that the car was ready for pickup and that they couldn’t do anything about a loan but they would take $1000 off the MSRP.

$23966 msrp
$ 1000 discount from msrp for all the issue mentioned above
$22966 your cost
$ 45 doc fee
$ 246.75 DMV
$ 1898.41 Tax base on 8.25% for San Mateo County
$25156.16 Sub-Total
$ 500. Deposit
$24656.16 Total out the door.

At this point, we decided that $1000 off and a car in hand was worth it since I have no faith that any other car dealership would be any better (although I must say, San Francisco Toyota has kept up with their promise to call once every 2 weeks). So we went to the dealership and checked out the car. We’d ordered one with a gray interior but were surprised to find the car allotted to us had the beige interior. George tried saying that’s what we had ordered until I showed him our original order sheet. He then went off for a bit and came back with a lame story that all Prii in a specific region ship with the same interior color and if you want something else, you have to special order it and it takes many more months. Funny since San Francisco Toyota said that Gray was more common and would be an easier order to fill. George came back with “well, of course they are going to say that, they are a commission based operation whereas we don’t take commissions so we have no reason to ever lie.†At this point I was getting tired of the car salesman BS, so we tried to get them to knock off a couple more dollars, which they wouldn’t do. George offered $625 on our trade-in (KBB dealer trade in “fair condition†is $1140). Again more BS about having to get it smog checked, all the paperwork, etc. reduced the price from the KBB dealer trade-in price. According to George, that sort of stuff is not reflected in the difference between KBB private sale and KBB dealer trade in. At this point, we almost decided to abandon the deal. God, I hate car dealerships!. George came back and offered $765 on the trade-in which we declined (Craigslist here we come). George said that Toyota Financial couldn’t come close to matching our interest rate so he wouldn’t even bother to check it or see if they could match our rate from ELoan. I have a feeling he just wanted us to get in the car and leave.

We went back to the actually deal guy who tried to push the 7 year/100k warranty for $2300 and 12 coupons for prepaid maintenance for $895, both of which we declined since we knew we could get much better deals right here at priuschat!. We carefully read and signed all the documents and got out of there with the car.

Rationally, I’m happy we got out of there with $1000 off MSRP. I’m thrilled that I won’t have to deal with car salesmen for another 7-10 years. Overall, I’m happy Toyota 101 was able to compensate us for our troubles but I still wouldn’t recommend them to anyone else until someone else has seen that they’ve changed their policies. $1000 is $1000 and it’s enough to get me past my personal feelings about supporting a business that I feel was dishonest and out to basically rip people off. The extended warranty for $2300 is way more than it should be, their trade-in process was appalling, we were greated with a number of BS excuses and explanations to our concerns by George, and I still have lingering issues about them selling cars to people who offer a bit more money. Jim Rimmer was a very nice person and was great to talk with, but it all comes down to the quality of the sales people and managers that work for him. Until I hear that someone else has a better experience through them, I’d recommend that you get on the waiting list at several different places. Thanks again to jbarnhart, he saved me $1000. Having driven the car for a day, I’m already forgetting the pain of purchasing it. It’s great to finally have it and drive it!

Best,

Jeff