Sales Rep: Leave deposits on several dealerships...

Thanks for the compliment Dean. I may let you guys know about a vehicle I have coming in, but I promise you guys/gals this. I will not treat this site like my own personal eBay or Craigslist.

 

I TOTALLY agree with your last sentence, NEVER put down a non-refundable deposit. For all you know, you could lose your job or have some major medical expense before the car comes in and not be able to afford it.

Maybe the non refundable bit is regional (not Toyota regional but greedy dealership regional). When I bought my '04, I put $500 deposits at 4 dealers, ALL said deposits are refundable, NONE cashed the check. I made sure to 'reward' the 3 that didn't get the first acceptable car by notifying them immediately so they could take me off their list. At the time, people were waiting up to 6 months or more if they were very specific in their package and color desires.

 

Nah, you go to Berlin City in Gorham

 

And that there is respectful. It is when someone doesn't return a phone call or bother to tell us that they bought one elsewhere, is when the problem can occur. It isn't fair to the other people waiting in line behind you.

 

It is commendable that you post (and I presume tell your customers) your 'requirements', however, I argue with your reasoning.

IF you are ordering a specific car for a specific customer, AND you KNOW you WILL get it in a specific time frame, OK. I see no reason to bother with multiple deposits if the dealer can get me the car I want in the time frame I need it. We only used the local dealer for my wife's '06, no hurry and the wait lists weren't 6 to 8 months like they were when I got my '04. It was still 3 months. BTW, had I gone with the local dealer only, I would have waited at least 4 more months (and I was OK with 2 'packages and 5 colors') based on the wait list they had when my car came in (after a 'short' 6 weeks).

But unless things have changed, a Prius purchase in times of great demand, limited supply means any individual dealer will get some number of cars twice a month and they won't know what is coming to THEM until a week or so before they arrive. The cars wanted by your top 10 wait list may go anywhere BUT your dealership and the cars their wait list wants may go to you. Your top ten may wait months for a car simply because they locked in with you. I give you this scenario:

• Your 1st customer wants a III in black, your #12 is the first to want a IV in red.
• Dealer B's 1st customer wants a IV in red, their #12 is the first to want a III in black.
• You get a IV in red, dealer B gets a III in black. If both #1 customers had deposits on both dealers' lists, and had worked up to the top of each, both #1s gets their car, otherwise, the #12s get their car and #1-11 (twice) still wait.

You are doing your customers a disservice unless you can answer 'yes' to this question:

Do you, and ALL the other dealers, call EVERY OTHER dealer when the cars come in to find 'the' car your customers want, starting at the top of the 'deposit' list every time?

Isn't it LESS work for the dealers if people have deposits at several dealers than for you to try and work a car swap with other dealers for many of the cars you get in? As long as you are adding to your wait list at least as fast as the cars are coming in, you are selling every car you get. No muss, no fuss, minimal work.

It would be a much better system (at least for the customers, and probably for the dealers too) if there were a centralized 'date of deposit' based wait list and Toyota shipped the cars to the right place in accordance to that list. Now maybe they make 100 IIs in some color and 100 IIIs in some color, etc every day, obviously the people on the wait list that want those would get their cars before the top of the list, but maybe (whoa, NOT novel idea) Toyota could actually build with respect to the wait list! Heck, people might get 'the' car they want, in a somewhat timely manner, rather than settling for 'acceptable but not my top choice'.

 

I do appreciate your input Bruce. And you hit the nail on the head with your analogy. In fact, behind the scenes, that was the case in our region. Most of our dealer trade personal have signed up with Yahoo IM. In times past, we would broadcast out that we were "looking for a Black III, have Red IV to trade". And that worked fine before. Maybe not fine, but better than no system at all.

Now, since Toyota switched up model numbers (04-09=1224, 10=1223,1225,1227,1229), it isn't that easy. If I keep giving up 1229's and get back 1223's, guess what Toyota will start to allocate to me? 1223's. So for right now, the only thing dealers are willing to trade are like model codes with different colors. And since there are so few out there, it is hard to trade because they are used to fill orders.

Now, that may change in the near future, it may not change at all. And in all reality, a customer can tell me they don't have deposits down anywhere else, and I will certainly not call every dealer in the area checking up on them. I'll just place the order, attempt to get them the car ASAP, and roll the dice.

With all that said, and us in basic agreement on how to best handle the situation of "lists", you can agree with me that it is bad business to knowingly take a deposit for someone that has 4 down already. Due to how the allocation works, even the smaller dealer has a chance to get the exact car you want. If customer A gets it from them, in all likelihood, I have "used up" one of my preferences and now have a car coming in that doesn't fill an order when I could have gotten one for the next customer in line instead. The second customer now has to wait at least 2 weeks longer. Is that fair to him, the one that put down only one deposit?

 

Berlin City Toyota? Berlin, NH is a bit above Gorham. Thankfully the paper mill is gone now, so no more stench up there.
I have my car on order from Irwin Toyota in Laconia, NH. They seem very good there so I'm hoping it comes in soon. The cars won't be at the Port until May 29th.
Oregon has the cars in stock now.

 

I have the Primus 2006 and I love him very much... fantastic car

 

Jabber,

Thanks for your perspective.

I have a refundable deposit of $1000 on a IV solar/nav, with a pre-order discount of $500 off msrp. I am 22nd in line, which means i may be waiting a while. I also have an informal convo going with a different dealer (that i started before i knew about the pre-order pathway). The 2nd dealer got back in touch with me and asked if i wanted to be on his "list" and I said "sure" and told him what i wanted - no deposit, no formality. If the second dealer for whatever reasons has my car sooner (and meets the price) i would be inclided to take it and let the pre-order dealer know what's up.

Also, I am willing to take red, blue, black, or blizzard pearl, because i like those colors and suspect that flexibility could move me up.

 

Flexibility in the color will help a lot. Since I fill orders based on oldest order first, if you are 8th on my list, and everybody ahead is particular on color, you will get a better shot.

I don't blame people for putting down multiple deposits. In fact, if I was buying one, I probably would also. And I have no problem keeping someone's name around without a deposit in case I have a car that comes in that gets through the list without an owner. I will call that person right away. In fact, I have a list of about 5 people from this site looking for specific cars. I even had to put them in Excel just to keep them straight with color choices and models along side my sold orders

 

I guess that depends. If you tell the regional reps that you need the following 35 models/packages/color/options vehicles, will they work hard to send them to YOU? And how do they decide where to send the 1 red IV with Nav when 10 dealers are waiting for that car? Do they even KNOW there are 10 dealers waiting for that exact combination? The fact that they will send you more 1223s if you keep trading 1229s to other dealers for them BECAUSE that is the CURRENT top of your wait list suggests that the region reps have NO IDEA what the customers actually WANT. Could be the next 85 people on your list want 1229s.

I'm pretty sure back in '04 and '06 the dealers got whatever the regional reps decided to send, and the regions got whatever Toyota wanted to send them. NO input from the sales people as to what was WANTED. REALLY BAD business plan, from the customer perspective. I took a Driftwood BC though what I WANTED was a Seaside AX(I think?). I COULD have turned it down, but since I had told the dealers that either model in anything but black or white was acceptable, I felt it would be wrong to turn down the BC and hope the cheaper model came in soon. That was a choice I made, Toyota didn't force me to buy something that wasn't exactly what I wanted, but they sure didn't make it easy to GET what I wanted.

As I understand it, you STILL can't get all models in all regions. I don't understand why a company as big as Toyota can't centralize the orders and fill them, pretty much first come first served. They could even KNOW how many to build AND in what configuration making for HAPPY customers. They are doing nothing positive for their Prius customers nor their dealers with this delivery model. Bad karma all around but no hit to you, the suffering dealer TRYING to do right by your customers.

 

Hey, it isn't MY fault they named all the dealships in Gorham "Berlin City xxxx" rather than "Gorham xxxx". The Berlin City Kia dealership in Williston, VT isn't in Berlin, N.H. either.

I'm sure there is some history behind the "Berlin City" name. Battery Street Jeans in Burlington is on Pine Street. It was on Battery Street when they first opened. Hint, NEVER name your business based on it's location