Toyota ROCKS!

In yesterday's mail, I found an envelope I took to be kinda suspicious. It was emblazoned with stuff like "Special Party Invitation for New Toyota Owners," and the return address was in Wisconsin or something like that. Now, I live in California, and I kinda thought it was another invite like the one for Danny getting his car. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and found this:

DANG--I can't figure out how to upload images that exist as scans on my computer...please help, someone!

Anyway, it is "An Exclusive Invitation for [me] Toyota New Owner Celebration"
Inside, is:
"you are invited to join us for this very special event created just for new Toyota owners,' along with my guests, so they can show their appreciation to me, "our new Toyota Family Member, for choosing Freeman Toyota [yes, my dealership, in Santa Rosa, CA--not somewhere in Michigan]
Then, they go on to give a bunch of bullets about what kinda stuff they'll tell me about to say "thank you," AND they will feed me dinner while they are doing it! The event is slated to last for about 90 minutes on the evening of July 11.

Based on stuff on the back of the card (not to mention the envelope's return address!), I THINK it is not in any way a local deal, and not even that the dealership is generating the names, but that by registering HERE I got picked up in the sweep. (That registration also netted me a survey about my satisfaction with the CAR, not just the standard one that I've noticed most folks get about the dealership.

Anyway, it IS neat. I have only ever had one new car before (a '91 Honda Civic hb with NO frills), and they got mad at me because I refused to put the dealer plate frame on the car unless they paid me, so if there were any parties, I wasn't invited, but I have no idea if anyone else is doing this kinda thing. I am pretty sure we'll go. It will be interesting to see how many attendees are Prions and how many "other!"

And it will also be interesting to see if they serve wine with dinner. Yes, it's at a car dealership, but this IS wine country, and it is likely they have heard of designated drivers! B)

(there are ghosts in this machine...I was messing around trying to use the [you] tag and it didn't work above but I originally had an * and a request for someone to tell me how to use the [you] tag, it worked...so I erased the request and now can't get [you] to work again...)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Jun 23 2006, 08:39 AM) [snapback]275807[/snapback]</div>

Yup MJ--it IS Freeman Toyota. Back in Jan, when I first seriously started thinking about a Prius, I called around to local dealers to find one to testdrive. Marin's attitude was, we couldn;t possibly be expected to have something that we can sell for a premium around for tire kickers, can we? Freeman had one and let us waltz out without keeping our other car keys or anything to go awandering on the quiet Sunday afternoon roads. So, in May, when I actually decided to get one, I was thrilled that it was Freeman that actually came up with one quickest. I did speak to someone in Marin and got whatever info they had and left it that, if it turned out I could not find what I wanted elsewhere sooner, which didn't seem likely, I would call the salesman back. Then, I got a series of calls from some other entity that wanted to know: Did you speak to a salesman? (Um, why don't you ask them?) Did you make an appt. with the salesman? (ditto) Why did you not make an appt...? At which point I asked why they were wasting my time, and yes, it did seem to me to be counterproductive for them to contact someone they do not know for certain is interested in their dealership and piss them off with stupid questions that reveal no one at the dealership knows what anyone else is doing. And the way I left it with the salesman was that I would bleedin' call the bleedin' salesman if I wanted to bleedin' talk to the bleedin' guy. AND DO NOT CALL ME WITH STUPID QUESTIONS THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR EMPLOYEES ANSWER! I spoke with probably a dozen No&CentralCA dealerships--Marin was the only one that had anyone other than the saleperson with whom I spoke call me. I HATE that. I mean, if I get a phone call from a charity that I generally support, I politely tell them I never contribute to anyone from whom I receive a telephone solicitation and they need to remove my phone number from their lists, because if they ever call me again, I will never again contribute. It works pretty well usually (except for the trickier buggers--I say, I don't give in response to phone calls, please feel free to mail me info. Then I get a form that says, thanks for committing to give us money, now please meet your pledge...those go in the shredder--but my college decided to print my name in their annual report as a donor after one of those conversations...hmmm...fundraisers and car dealers--same thing, really, eh, with the car dealers raising funds for themselves!) Anyway, I did understand your issues on the Marin dealership although my experience was not as definitive. And I was VERY lucky to happen upon Freeman....Enquiring minds and all that! Should be fun--I will bring my husband so he can pay attention to the details--he had to do the disable backup beep thing--I can't follow that many directions with a time limit running!

Now, if only I could find the coupon Freeman sent me for a free gift--one choice was a bottle of touch up paint...Got my first scratch... AND I DO NOT KNOW HOW. I had the car washed. I put on the HOV stickers. I went home to show the fandamily the stickers, and RIGHT NEXT TO the sticker on the front left bumper is a 2 inch scratch--that was NOT there 20 minutes ago when I stuck the sticker on the bumper...

As to the dinner info sessions, I DID wonder how they handled the Prion vs Non-Prion, since the questions for the two groups would seem to have to be very different. What I would really like to know is the % of Prion attendees:# of Prii sold and % "Other" attendees: # of other vehicles sold--I SUSPECT there is a higher % of Prions

As to what I expect to get from the Toyota Owners' website, well, the tracking stuff for maintenance seems pretty useful, and there's a link to a 5% discount with Barnes & Noble (if you're not going to support your local indie bookshop), and some other discounts...well, I don't know, there are supposed to be links to service specials at local dealers, but I haven't been able to get those links to work. I am willing to wait and see if it does me any good in the long run. In the meantime, there are links to some interesting news stories and stuff like that. No harm and maybe some ultimate good.

Ok, sorry, I'll stop now...Aren't scroll buttons grand? And "ignore?"

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Three60guy @ Jun 23 2006, 09:37 AM) [snapback]275844[/snapback]</div>

Yup, but I was mistaken. The return address for the invite was MI, not WI. I musta had my glasses on upside down...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(iiwi @ Jun 24 2006, 08:38 AM) [snapback]276316[/snapback]</div>

Hmmm...I think I'd rather have the oil change than the dinner...but I'm not proud--I'll take what I can get. Who knows, there might be other freebies on offer anyway! I got a card a few days after I got the car, with the offer of a free gift of either a travel mug or a tube of touch-up paint. I lost the card, but went up today anyway and asked for the paint (because of the scratch that I noticed about 1/2 an hour after I stuck on my HOV stickers...and the scratch wasn't there when I put the stickers on...Now, of course, the question arises, how do I use the touch up paint so it doesn't look like I used black nail polish (the instructions start by saying something like "sand down to bare metal..." Does that sound like a touch-up to you?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Jun 25 2006, 10:00 AM) [snapback]276522[/snapback]</div>

That's great, thanks! I will now pass on the tip to my hubby so I can blame him when it's messed up!