Do I read this right

You had a car but you sold it before you got a new one?



Are you sure you should be blaming Toyota for this?





From: Prius-2G@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Prius-2G@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Sam Pratt
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 10:54 AM
To: Prius-2G@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Prius-2G] I'm about to give up on Toyota










Well, I'm just about on the point of giving
up on Toyota.

As noted in a previous post, I sold my 2005
Prius in anticipation of getting a 2010 this
spring/summer; in retrospect, I should have
held onto it, but I got a terrific offer, and
expected that it would be no more difficult
getting a 2010 than it had been a 2005 (I got
exactly the model I wanted within five weeks
of putting in a request back in Fall 2004).

After all, Toyota has had five years to perfect
the sales, marketing and distribution of Priuses
since the last time I bought one, I though.

Boy, was I mistaken.

I have spoken with some two dozen dealerships
from Delaware to Maine. I have encountered some
salespeople who clearly have not bothered to
become familiar with the 2010 plans and config-
uration; others who claim to be kept in the dark
about Toyota's plans; others who misrepresent
their allocations, or what they can get; others
who pretend to be able to get what I want in order
to sell me a higher model; others who take a
deposit on shaky pretenses, then want to hold
onto for what they project might be anywhere
from another month to the end of the year to
get the car.

Far worse, though, than any dealers are the folks
staffing Toyota's "customer experience" line. I
have twice used all the resources I developed as
a former national journalist to climb the ladder
through the various tiers of customer service to
find someone -- anyone -- who was interested in
helping me buy a relatively expensive automobile
in a down economy. The answers I've received have
been ludicrous ("We don't have any way of knowing
where our models are being shipped," for example).

And their promises to call back with better info
have been broken repeatedly.

The configuration I'm looking for is technically
available at multiple dealers within a reasonable
trip from my home, and I'm willing to travel if
necessary to get it; but Toyota doesn't seem willing
to help me find the car so I can go there with a
bank check and drive it back home.

The deep irony here is not merely that in this
slow economy, a car company makes it so hard for
someone to put cash down on a much-anticipated
vehicle... Even more ridiculously, the color and
features I'm looking for are actually the ones which
appear most commonly in Toyota's ads! Why advertise
innovative features (e.g. the solar roof) or tout
others proven to be popular (such as the built-in
nav), and then not produce these cars?

What I'm looking for is nothing more or less than
what is described in the company's press releases,
website and other sales literature; yet Toyota's
attitude is to shrug, "Why don't you settle for
a bare-bones model, or else spend far more on a
higher model with features you don't need?"

I'm thinking it's time to switch to Honda, or buy a
used Prius through a private party -- though I was
really looking forward to 50+ mpg, not 40. Either
the folks at Toyota are seriously incompetent, or
they think demand for these cars is going to be so
high that they don't have to be responsive to
longtime customers. But the lone silver Prius II
which has been sitting forlornly for several weeks
now on my local dealer's lot would seem to belie
that latter supposition.

Well, that's my rant.

--Sam P.





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