Buying Experience - Disappointing

I am buying my Prius from a Denver buyer broker who represents buyers only. He does about $250,000 in business per month through fleet managers, which is how he gets such good deals. He charges a fee of $600 and gets no kickbacks. In other words, by state law he's a buyer's broker, not an auto broker who can make money on both sides of the deal. He says I will get the Prius for "close to invoice." How close remains to be seen, but I will be checking his figures against Consumer Reports numbers. Anyone interested in more info can PM me. Buyer brokers are the way to go but you have to first make sure they're bonafide buyer brokers and not auto brokers. State laws are different on this.

 

I just picked up my brand spankin new dark blue Prius (pkg 6) last night. I called a bunch of dealers on May 9th, but none had any available, and all of the cars they were expecting were already spoken for. I then called a dealer that was in the middle of corn-country, and they had two Pkg 6's coming in that weren't yet spoken for. I put down a deposit on May 9th, and the car came in on May 19th. The salesman and finance manager were extremely nice and professional. Both answered all of my questions, and there were no surprises. The interest rate I received was a quarter less than what my bank was going to give me (and I'm a "premier" customer). Yes, I paid MSRP, but around Chicagoland dealers and individual sellers are asking higher prices for slightly used Prius' than the MSRP on a new one. So, MSRP was OK with me. I highly recommend Brian Bemis Toyota in Dekalb IL if you need a car.

btw - I love my Prius! I love the dark blue color, too! I think it's new this year, since I haven't seen any this color around town.

 

Welcome to Prius Chat!! that was a very smart idea contacting a dealer out in DeKalb... I bought mine last month from Elmhurst Toyota, I assume you must have called them as well, they are now taking orders for a 4 month wait. When I bought from Elmhurst in April they had 21 just sitting on the lot..

Enjoy your new Prius, Post some pics when you can. I have not seen too many of the dark blue either. I work downtown and count at least 2 a day walking from the train station to my office, and have not seen a dark blue one in a very long time

 

If GM, Ford and Chrysler can get their act together, of all the foreign car companies, Toyota will be hard pressed to get repeat customers. I went to 6 Toyota dealerships to buy my Prius, even helped a friend get one, and in NO CASE, did I feel like the dealership cared about me, wanted to deal with me, or anything of that nature. When its time to replace my Prius, its going to take a lot of convincing myself to look at Toyota again.

The dealer I finally bought from, didn't show me anything on the car, didn't want to accept my credit union's money, interest rate or anything, even forced me to go to my credit union to get a check, which my credit union was not going to do, so they had to accept normal procedures for money transfers at the dealership, which pissed them off.

Toyota might make great cars, but their dealers for the most part suck.

 

Richard, regarding all the arrogant jackasses I mentioned in my previous post: they were all jackasses by phone and email. We didn't go visit any except one and that was simply to test drive one. Later they also proved to be jackasses. Unfortunately, keeping them all at arm's length didn't protect us from their jackassedness (new word I just made up)! When we finally found the exact car we wanted an hour away we did all negotiating by phone and put the deposit on it by phone. OP, I know you love your car now, I love mine, but I realize that when you're in the middle of being treated like crap it really makes you want to just say the hell with it.

 

Sorry to hear you had such a crappy sales experience! Glad you are loving the car though It's really unfortunate that decent dealerships are so hard to find. Most places you walk into and immediately feel like they're trying to pull one over on you. Thankfully we've had great experiences with our last 3 cars here in New England. My last two cars were from Mountainview Subaru (now called Subaru of Keene in NH) and they were great to us. No pressure, always got a good deal. Never paid more than $500 over invoice. Got my Prius from Toyota of Keene, in NH and they were even more fantastic! Our saleswoman, Heather, was straightforward, didn't play games and gave us exactly what we were going to push for before we even asked for it. We were all ready with arguments for why the price we wanted was fair to both of us and she came right out with it before we could use em...kinda took the wind out of our sails Haven't taken my car in for its first service yet (only 2000 miles on it so far) so not sure how the service department is yet. Keeping my fingers crossed that they are as good.

Hehe, we live in MA but have yet to buy a car here. Had horrible experiences at the few places we did go (was looking at Civic's for awhile and found the worst dealership I've ever been to at Herb Chambers Honda in Westborough).

 

First time I went into a Toyota dealership in White River Jct, Vermont, I was harrased, disrespected, and belittled. I swore I would never deal with Toyota again, didn't buy from them and have been a Honda and Volvo buyer since. Fifteen years later, convinced the Prius was for me I tested the waters with Wolfchase Toyota in Memphis, and have been more pleased than I was turned off so many years ago.

 

Don't blame Toyota. The dealer is the problem. We got $1600 off the MSRP. They gave us the wheel locks and the Sirius radio that they had installed on the car. I had arranged the price the day before in about 30 minutes. I scheduled a time to sign the papers and pick up the car and we went to the dealer and walked out with the car in about 2 hours. The salesman explained the operation of the car to us and called the next day to see if everything was going well. Last week they gave new owners a free dinner and a tour of the service facility and a free car care kit. Great dealership and we love the car.

 

Hi Newengland folks... Gary here, we are trying to have a Boston meeting at Expressway Toyota off rt 93 sometime in June..Hope to see you all there. They want to sponsor our meeting.. Check out our local club news .. Sorry you had such a bad buying experience.. On the other hand, We had such a great ecperience buying our prius. My car has about 3000 miles on it now and I am averaging between 58 - 62 MPG'S...Also good luck with your new Prius....

 

I bought mine with package 2 altogether $23479.00 at lithia toyota in vacaville ca. It was a very good deal because I shop around before the purchase. After 2 days, me & my wife decided to return and exchange it for a different color. No question ask because they have a policy for a 3 day cooling off period and they are the only dealership who does that. after putting a little over 200 miles on it, it was replaced with a different color for the same price plus another $60 because it had an added option of preffered package instead of floor mats only. So I ended up driving away with a fresh 3 mile odo reading prius.

Very good dealership, Lithia toyota, highly recommended. Check out their website.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y36/slkgitong/IMG_4147.png

 

Glad to hear you had a good experience with Lithia. When I was dong my shopping around in North California I emailed over 30 Toyota dealerships around SF Bay, from San Jose all the way to Sacramento. Lithia was one of the few dealerships who never answered my messages. Most dealerships I talked to were asking ridiculous MSRP prices, over $29000 for a Touring, and did not have the car I wanted.

In the end I bought from Concord Toyota in Concord, CA. Their internet salesman, Ron Cooper, had the lowest price for a full loaded Touring, just $500 over dealer invoice price. He even showed me their invoice from Toyota. No hidden fees, no surprises. Of course the finance guy at the dealership wanted me to buy all kinds of extra stuff I didn't need (corrosion protection, overpriced extended warranty, pre paid maintenance, etc) and insisted that I finance through them but I did not budge and produced a blank check from MY bank that was pre-approved for any Prius... He didn't like it too much, but after a while I got my car. The salesman, who is also a Prius driver, had the tank filled and the car cleaned and waxed for delivery. I'd recommend Concord Toyota's internet sales to anyone, saved me a lot of haggling from a floor salesman!