Disrecommendation

[msmemory_archive]

Boch Toyota "on the Automile". Run away very fast.

On Monday, I wrote:
My car will be here soon. According to my new liaison at the dealership, it's on the ground and will be ready for me to test-drive RSN. I suggested that having it ready for me tomorrow evening would suit me very well

Today, they say it's been held up by a storm in the South, and isn't here yet. If I don't have a firm delivery date by Saturday, I believe I shall go down there and ask for my thousand dollars back.

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

What sort of car? My sister has all sorts of info on the delays that Toyota Corporate is making for the Prius, which will finally be hers in a couple of days. John went to help her test drive it two months ago. Now we have Prius Envy.

Toyota

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Toyota Matrix. (I considered the Prius, but they did not have a demo for me to test-drive, and I wouldn't buy one without trying it.) Ordered Dec. 20th. Mine is apparently a difficult case, since Anti-Lock Brakes are not in the standard package.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Pamela got a Matrix recently; she does like it....

i know its a little late but...

[dkapell.livejournal.com]

I reccomend Toyota of Watertown, just the arsenal side of watertown square, they gave me a good deal on my car a few years back, and ive taken it to them for service since. their service department seems to be pretty good. (and they are more convient to waltham)

Re: i know its a little late but...

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

I did leave ominous voicemail on the Sales Manager's box, stating that I want a delivery date by this weekend, or my deposit back. But I shouldn't have to kick *their* backsides in order to give them money for their merchandise.

Since Herb Chambers Toyota in Auburn and Toyota of Watertown are both showing my model on their Inventory Search pages, though at theoretically higher prices, I do have fallback plans.

(Will probably end up getting service through either Toyota of Lexington or Watertown, as both are reasonably convenient to the house.)

Re: i know its a little late but...

[keshwyn]

I have not had personal experience with them, (aside from a Really Stupid Fax) so this is anecdotal, but I would avoid Herb Chambers. Everybody I know who's dealt with them has hated the experience.

Re: i know its a little late but...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

We bought our minivan from Herb Chambers Honda in Burlington, and it was a pretty good experience--certainly better than the other place we looked, the Honda Barn. No heavy pressure, no unreasonable delays (they didn't have it on the lot, but we got the next one that came in, maybe 3 days later).
Going in for service isn't great (they have a dropoff van, but no pickup van), but it's better than the hell I went through the one time I went to Woburn Foreign Motors (? the one at 128 and 93). HCH is reasonably prompt; the hardest part is finding a space in their parking little.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

At this point, I've been in three dealers "on the automile" and they have all sucked:

tpau's hyundai dealer was brusque, and their service department sucked monkey...well, they were bad. Like the people in front of us in line were picking up their brand new new car because their old brand new car had had its oil changed, and the morons forgot to put any *new* oil in before giving it back. This was while we were waiting to try to convince them that a giant leak in her coolant reservoir was NOT normal.

The VW dealer we went to trying to get galaneia's car managed to sell the car a week before telling us we should drive down there to test drive it. Good work, guys.

The Subaru dealer down there didn't want to let me test drive the WRX at all; obviously I was just a boy-racer looking for a thrill ride. You lose...

So at this point, I'm just really allergic to Norwood. Adding in your experience, I'd have to say the area's cursed. You have my sympathies...

[siderea]

You know, I read that first line three times thinking, "Huh. I didn't think she was the type to read about cars. And if she feels so strongly about disrecommending an article, she could at least tell us where it appears. Gods, people are getting so cutesy with their orthography these days; a lower-case initial letter in a title, how precious. Must be in Fast Company or Wired."

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

What is it with car dealers? There must be some decent, straightforward clued ones out there. But when I rant about one dealer, everybody pops up with "yeah, {mine|my sister's|my roommate's} sucked too."

Why is it so goshdarn HARD to buy a car? Almost everybody has to have one, and they have to replace them every 5-10 years, it's not like there's no repeat market.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Well, I've met a few decent ones. The Subaru guys in Concord seemed quite nice; and the ones I bought from in Wakefield, if a tad overpriced, were otherwise very pleasant. The Honda dealer in Watertown seemed OK except when he didn't sell to us in the allotted 45 minutes his manager came over and started putting pressure on him to sell.

I think it's a high-pressure market, and that actually they tend to get better sales for more money if they are abrasive. And people who would be competent enough to do the job well go into a selling field with higher profit and lower pressure and turnover...say, life insurance.

Anecdotally, the higher the profit margin (e.g. luxury cars), the nicer the salescritters are. The Lamborghini/Ferrari guy was downright wonderful; too bad I didn't want one.

If you were looking for an answer, that was. ;-)

Re: i know its a little late but...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

And people who would be competent enough to do the job well go into a selling field with higher profit and lower pressure and turnover...say, life insurance.

Oh...life insurance. Something bizarre I've learned about life insurance sales. I currently work at a company which does software to calculate commissions, etc., and insurance companies have this peculiar custom. When you make a sale, you get a commission for every single premium payment. Now, in itself, this makes some sense: company should pay you based on the total revenue they get from the policy, but they don't want to pay it as soon as you sign the customer up. But then most of them also say, OK, you can keep getting your commisions after you've left the company! So, if you've been selling for 30 years, you've got a pretty much guaranteed income (shrinking some over time, as customers die or drop their policies), and the motivation to sell just keeps fading.

Of course, the upside for me is that this means that insurance companies' compensation plans have vast numbers of transactions, so they're horrendously difficult to calculate quickly, and so they really need us. The only harder case I know of is 401(k)s, where, instead of, say, one premium per customer, twice a year, you have one payment per customer, twice a month.

[rustmon.livejournal.com]

See - I've been *really* lucky as of late.

I go into a dealership that I like (granted, if they lie to me, I will leave), and tell them exactly what I want. This either involves a fleet deal or a fee above invoice. I don't dicker, and I don't argue.

I also look at it this way - If they don't have it on site, I don't buy it. I think I've been burned too much by the 'We'll have it in 3 weeks' thing to do it. What I've done is this:

"Okay - I want this car. You have it? No? Here's my number. Call me when you do, and then I'll be back."

I just found that leaving them money just never worked for me. I also found that when I say fleet deal, a lot of them get turned off.

Using that strategy, I've had very little problems. Of course, being imposing helps, but the last truck I bought, the guy misinformed me, and when I found out, I promptly left and went to another dealer where I got the truck I was looking for. (The sad part is that a very good friend of mine is one of the senior mechanics at the first place I went to...)

Good luck - car buying is *never* fun.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

That's what I should have done. Told them "Thanks, call me when you get my car in. I'll come straight down with a deposit for you." Ah, hindsight.

[dkapell.livejournal.com]

Ive done a bunch of car shopping reiently and the dealerships that i actually liked were:
Honda of Cambridge (fresh pond) (knobhdy has now bought two cars from them)
Toyota of watertown (watertown squareish) (where my car is from)
Cityside Subaru in somerville (tpau bought from them)
the Hyynduai place in framingham on rt 9
the ford place in waltham.
the saturn place in natic (rt 9)

Places to avoid:
The dodge place in watertown square - horrible service department (they wanted to yank the gas line and the brake line on knobhdy's old car to replace just the brake line, and wanted us to pay for them to be careless. we found an independant place that could do the work carefully, for much less)
the honda place on rt9, (bernardi?) (huge sales preasure, got mad at us when we told them that we werent comfortable with them)

Re: i know its a little late but...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I believe I shall go down there and ask for my thousand dollars back.

Either that, or start making noises about demanding they pay you interest on that thousand-dollar loan.