My Toyota Prius buying experience and a question about paint.

I have quite a story which has another curve being thrown in, at this very moment... In regards to my buying a 2005 Toyota Prius in San Jose, California at Steven's Creek Toyota:

In october of 2005 I put my name on the list. I had 10k to put down and was very excited to be getting a prius. I had never owned a new car. At the end of January I got the call to come down. They didn't have my car, but they had a prius they were willing to sell me and assured me that there was no difference between the 05 and the 06, except for the reverse video and the color wasn't the type of green I wanted, but it was green (some people say it's green now, but I swear it's grey). Oh, by the way, it's 1500 dollars more than the one you put your name on the list for and it's used, with 300 miles on it (this wasn't actually disclosed to me until after I had signed for it). They assured me that it was "dealer used," however, which meant something like it had not been previously owned and was only utilized for, possibly, employee borrowing or loaners or something. In fact, they could not nail down where the car had been or what it had been used for. At least that's the story I got.

So, you might ask me now why I, in fact, bought the car... Here's the deal I got, from my local car dealership: I put my name on the list and they tell me I've got to wait approximately 2 months. After two months I start asking them what the deal is. They put me off for a couple more months and then they start telling me that the truth is that they don't get to order vehicles from toyota. They get what toyota sends them. So, I can keep waiting or take what I can get.

My, at the time, current vehicle had just broken down on me and I had to make a choice between throwing good money at bad or taking what I could get. The car was pretty much the same car, but the color was all wrong. I didn't care about the reverse camera, at the time and I'm not huge on vanity (I bought a prius after all), so the color wasn't a deal breaker. The extra money was something I was actually expecting and the used part didn't seem like a big deal if it was never previously owned. I figured I'd still get my tax break from the government and no one disagreed with me.

So, I bought the car. I love my prius. I will start off with that. I think the car is awesome. But, I think if you spend 35,000 dollars on a vehicle (it's the big package with the nav system, which I couldn't live without at this point, no leather seats, though and I got the service package where you pay for maintenance up front, which is nice) you should probably get honesty and upfront behavior from the people you buy it from.

The biggest problem I had with vehicle, within the first week, was that the stereo did not play mp3's. I don't know about you, but I've got a large collection of music. Even if you don't have as large a collection as I, you can understand the difference between having tens to hundreds of compact discs in your car, as opposed to having single digit amounts (you can store 11 hours of good quality music on the old cd's and I have terabytes worth of music). I asked SCT if there was anything that could be done and they told me that the 06 stereo did not fit and, therefore, nothing could be done. This was a big deal to me and it did just plain suck.

So, I took my car back to SCT and asked them what could be done. My salesman assured me that we could fix this. My name was still on the list, for the vehicle I had asked for and it was expected in at any point. I was at the top of the list, etc. At this point, the salesman also assured me that I would get full value for my vehicle. I was probably going to lose the 1500 bucks they marked up on it, but I figured if the new car wouldn't be marked up, so it'd be alright.

Remember that it was the end of January when I bought the car.

In June or July, they said they had my car. It didn't have leather, but otherwise, it was my car. At this point, they couldn't give me full value for the vehicle, either and Kelly had just come out with the new blue book and the value of the car had depretiated substantially. They offered me 21,000 dollars for the vehicle and I would get my maintenance money transfered. I had put down 10K, but I still owed more than 25K.

I told them that I would have to try to sell my car on my own. I figured I had a decent chance. Looking at local craigslist listings gave me confidence that I would get a good price for my car, at least 30K without the maintenance package. A couple days later I called to tell them where I stood and they told me my car was sold, but that I could put my name back on the freakin list.

I didn't. Instead, I wrote off SCT. Wrote a letter to Toyota HQ, but got the, "they are a private entity not owned by Toyota and their actions are their own." They wrote a letter to SCT and I got a call from someone who was supposed to sound like they cared, I think they even said their title had something to do with customer service. There was nothing they could do, or were willing to do, for me at this point. They had already stated their position.

A couple months later there were no signs of my license plates, so I had to down to SCT to figure out the deal on that. That took another month to figure out and when it was done I ended up with two sets of license plates with two sets of numbers, both registered to my car (confirmed by local police). Also, after my first servicing, I was asked if I wanted to replace the missing dust cap from inside my engine compartment. Not sure where that had gone, but I hadn't had the engine compartment open since I bought the car.

Shortly after I saw a report on the evening news about recalls for the prius, my model. Said something about steering column and possibility for, I think the word was something like, horrendous, car crashes as a result. I went down to SCT (I know, you're thinking I'm a masochist) and told them about the news report. I didn't ask them because they didn't know anything about it. They told me to check online at mytoyota.com or something and that there would be something there about it if there was anything. I did, there wasn't.

A couple months later I got a parking ticket for my old car, dated roughly 3 months after I had "sold" it to SCT.

A couple days ago, I noticed cracking in my paint. I took it to two different toyota dealerships and they both assured me that I was screwed and that they could refer me to people who could repaint the car. One told me that bird s**t could do that, but I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I've owned vehicles before and even had birds s**t on them before and I've never seen this happen. Not to mention that the vehicle had just turned one year old. The other told me that I must've been behind a truck that sprayed some chemical or something on my car. Both assured me that there was no way this was toyota's responsibility.

Oh yeah, and a couple days ago, I received a notice from Toyota about the recall. It says that I should bring my vehicle in to get it fixed, at no charge. Of course, the last servicing I had done, the folks down at Piercy Toyota whom I've had servicing my vehicle for months at this point, fixed it.

My question is:[\b] this paint thing sucks, what should I do? AAA is sending out an assessor to see whether or not they'll pay for another paint job, but even if they do I have a deductible and it'll go on my record and up my rates.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Beryl Octet @ Feb 10 2007, 01:28 AM) [snapback]387894[/snapback]</div>

you think a body shop would be better than the AAA assessor?

I'll just do both.

thank you.