Planet Toyota dealer--rip off

That's a rip. I wouldn't do it. There are other places. Someone went down to Danville. Until I've been told that FrBill has sold his car, I'll continue to refer people to Effingham. Check out to the West in the "sticks" where there might be cars with no drivers. Especially now, with temps in the teens and snow, people might not be looking for hybrids.

Use Mapquest, find names and zip codes of towns to the West of Chicago and start calling dealers.

But paying the overage is just perpetuating the act.

 

Sorry, I jumped logic thoughts there.
What I meant was, once you have zip codes for towns to the west of Chicago, you can use the "find a dealer" function on the toyota.com/prius site.

 

Makes me wonder is their game plan isn't something along these lines (and this is just my conjecture, I have never dealt with this dealership):
1) Car comes in
2) Call all people on list in proper waiting order and ask 20% above MSRP
3) If no takers, reduce markup to 15%
4) Call on people on list in proper waiting order and ask 15% above MSRP
5) If no takers . . .

Again, just my thoughts.

 

Check out this page:
http://www.buyatoyota.com/participatingdea...&zipcode=?60001

You might be able to find a dealer in that list.
I went to Toyota.com, entered 60001 as my zip code and it took me to the "Chicago Toyota" site. In the upper-right corner I selected [Dealers] and it took me here. I was not only impressed with the list and the distances, but if you scroll to the very bottom, there's a drop-down menu with tons more.

I suggest that you go through the list, one at a time, and start making phone calls. Sounds like a bunch of work, but the way I see it, you have two months to kill. . . :roll:

Make a few calls each day and you'll be through the list in no time.

 

You said "trade-in" which got me thinking. You prob. already know this, but just in case and for the sakes of everyone else, I'm going to type it up.

I originally wanted to get a trade-in quote from my dealer and one from Carmax to see who would give me the better deal. Here's what I learned that day.

When you trade-in a car at the dealer, the trade-in price is directly deducted from your new car purchase price. This reduces the amount of sales tax you pay.

In Libertyville, I'm pretty sure the sales tax is 7.25%. Let's do some math: (sans other charges)

With no trade-in, a $25,000 Prius x 1.0725 = $26,812.50

Trade-in your car for $5,000, reduce the purchase price to $20,000 and you pay $21,450

Sell your car at Carmax for $5,000 and pocket that.
Buy car at dealer with no trade-in => $26,812.50
Whip out the $5,000 from your back pocket and overall you've spent $21,812.50

That's $362.50 in additional taxes you pay.

So the way it was explained to me is that unless you can get enough from Carmax to cover the taxes, it isn't worth driving all around.

However, in the case where you are purchasing out-of-state, it might be worth it to sell the car at Carmax. At least this way, the dealer can't screw you on the trade-in knowing that you HAVE to dump the car.

for the record, I've used Carmax just to have a recognizable name.