Red or Driftwood; CA: 01.12.04; told 120 days; 200+ See note

Date Ordered: 01.12.2004
Dealer Ordered From (Incl. City/State): Stevens Creek Toyota, Santa Clara, CA 95010-1336
Timeframe given for delivery: 120 days [May 12, 2004]
Color: Red or Driftwood
Option Package: 9 +WL +CF
Your # on Dealer's Waiting List: 200+

 

Thank you, miniracer and Diane. D, you sound like you are or work at a dealership, and i appreciate the calibration.

miniracer: they took a $500 deposit, refundable with 10% interest if the car doesn't show up in 120 days. i assume, ref: Diane's comments, that that gives them a pretty wide window to shoot for, so the odds of it taking 120 days or more, hopefully, would be slim, because they won't want to pay me for renting their money!

Diane: i requested red and #9, and i'd guess that many cars are ordered with the full-boat option stack, so that didn't seem to me like it would add a lot to the delivery wait for me. i gave them Driftwood as a second choice, but it looks like that's a popular color, too. [now having second thoughts, and may tell them to reverse the color selection, IF it doesn't upset my place in line.... ] one annoying thing about Stevens Creek is that they didn't seem to have any clue as to how many/how often they'd get shipments.... the fleet dealer i ordered through said that there's no clue or warning of how many get shipped in, or when.

i worked for about ten years in product marketing at hewlett-packard, and spent part of my time handling scarce-product allocations, so i know some of the difficulties in "predicting" shipments when the factory can't turn out enough product. but this seems to tell me that "the factory" and the dealers have a lousy relationship. otherwise, the dealers would get a more realistic view of problems, solutions and delivery dates! something's awry here, methinks.

finally, i ask, why production is so constrained? is it just factory throughput? i read somewhere that they had increased production back in december or so. or is there a component part that's in short supply? that's my guess, and i'm betting on the batteries! any chance for an investment gain here? who makes the batteries that they use?!

cheers, and thanks...
waitin' and a-hopin' in Cupertino, CA...
+af

 

Suggestion:?

i'd put money on the guess that Prius customers are, on average, on the web more than average customers.

what if dealers offered email updates to any Prius customer who would give them their email address, and on, say, a weekly basis, let them know exactly where they were on the dealer's spreadsheet?

the message might be something like:

Last week you were ### on our list.
We received Y cars.
Z orders were filled or canceled.
You are now ## on the list.

?