More SE Toyota Dist. JUNK

OK, we get it. You are peeved and are venting. If the mats are so bad just throw them away and get a good set. Life is too short to drive up you blood pressure on a relatively small thing.

Just remember that your purchase just reinforced these bad business practices. If you and other buyers held firm and did not give your money to this business they would have to change.

 

Come up to Minnesota, they don't tack on the stuff and you can pay $500 over invoice without even asking.

Mike

 

Wow, I haven't posted in awhile, but this thread interested me. I did not remember PriusChat forum having such a tough crowd.....I remembered it being friendlier.

Dean, I've since moved down here full time and believe I now live just a couple of miles from you. My 2007 Prius is still going strong. Since I now live in Florida my MPG has gone up, now averaging 50 mpg. I know that is not as good as many of you, but up in NY I was only getting about 44 mpg. I also had nice ceramic tinting and a dashmat installed....looks great.

I keep getting letters from the SE Toyota dealerships down here wanting my Prius as a trade in. I'm thinking I might just check things out. The new 2011's & 2012's sound nice. The thing is, I now have almost 85k on my 2007. These letters are tempting, (and not very believable) saying my car is in demand and they will pay me top dollar for it. At 85,000 I'm not sure how long to keep it. My other vehicle, (a T&C van) has 45k and is not driven much.

So would it be smart to sell now before 100k? Or would it be smart to keep it for a few more years.......hard to tell. Would I lose more waiting? When is the best time of year to buy? I would probably buy within 100 miles of here, so I'd be stuck with SE Toyota.

I don't mean to hijack a thread, but since my post pertains to SE Toyota and I think we've covered the mat issue enough, I thought I'd post here.

Respectfully, Frank D.

 

Saying they want your car and will give you top dollar on trade-in is part of the game. They JUST want you to start shopping! Once they have you in the mood to buy then they have you.

 

when my plug in came in last week, i asked them how much my 04 with 94,000 miles was worth. i didn't have it with me, but they said if i brought it back when i came to get my car, unless something was seriously different from what i told them, they would give me between $6500. and $6900. when i picked up my car, they took the 04 for a test drive and offered me $5,000. i asked what happened to $6500. and they told me that guy doesn't work there anymore.

 

Frank, your 2007 has a lot of life left in it. A Gen3 is not going to significantly improve your FE but but, based on your package, may be a nicer car. The smart money says to stay with the 2007 until it needs significant work.

Through the EEVC someone involved in the Volt has pointed out that battery cost has dropped from ~$1000/kwh to ~$500/kwh in the last year. More choices will be available in the coming year. Existing models will improve.

 

I was also taken aback at the attitudes towards the OP. Not exactly a warm welcome for someone that has just had a frustrating experience with a car dealership.

Though I've noticed that some members here tend to go on the attack if one posts *any* criticism of the way a Toyota dealership handles their sales. Things that make you go hmmmm.

Don't believe it. I keep getting (and composting) letters from my local dealership telling me that my '09 RAV4 is in "high demand" and that they really, really need to buy it back from me for their inventory. What they're really trying to to is get me to buy a new car from them so that can extract as much money as possible from me, both on the add-ons to the new car, AND by giving me as little as possible on the trade so that they can extract as much as possible from some other buyer for the two-year-old car that I already absorbed a huge chunk of depreciation on. Then I can pay that happy sales tax all over again.

NOT INTERESTED. We're keepin' the RAV4 and will trade the '94 Chrysler.

I can't comment about when in the age of the car to sell it, but I don't think right now is the best time to be shopping for a Prius. Prius just had their best single sales month ever this March. Inventories as some locations are a bit low, so that makes the sales staff feel like they're holding all the cards, and so some of them are really arrogant right now. At my local dealership, I finally found a salesperson that wasn't going to insist on the "no negotiation off the MSRP." (I actually think that somewhere in there he was saying that Toyota didn't like them *raising* the price above the MSRP, to try to make me think that I was lucky to get the MSRP.) But though I liked that salesman well enough, I decided I'd rather make a road trip and take a huge chunk off the sticker.

So if you think that you're in the market I'd watch the inventories at your local dealers and make sure that they've got several sitting on the lot. This salesmen only made the definite concession in price when I knew that the Prius I was interested in was sitting on the lot for a week. (Though he still insisted to me that it would get sold in another 24 hours). I think I'm gonna watch it to see how long it takes. :rockon:

 

We bought the all weather mats as an aftermarket that are priced well below the "included" fee of $299 for carpet mats. Seems silly, but we will keep the carpet ones nice for when we resell it 10 years from now! Perception is everything, I hated my old dirty Volvo carpet mats and they were better quality.

 

I went to the Toyota dealership to buy a hitch for my wife's Lexus. Asked for a factory hitch and they quoted me a strange number that I had not seen on the internet. I asked for details and was told it was a special SE Toyota part. Further digging showed it was a re-branded aftermarket Curt hitch and wiring. I asked again for the factory part and was quoted $20 more for the actual part I wanted. Parts guy said he is required to quote SE part first! I got lucky as this was a special order part and returning would have been a pain.