Dealer website

You are the customer any business would be proud to have.

 

Agree about the small dealership and caring for its' customers.

In my case, I drove 55 miles each direction, not for price for availabilty. Toyota only allows dealer trades within any given region. Due to where I live (Mississippi) I am in a different region than those dealers in Tennessee and Toyota (or GST) have products equiped in ways other than the Cincinnati which is the region Tennessee falls under.

Sad part is, I am friends with the cat who owns my "local" Toyota dealership but, the TN dealerships are the next closest and selection.

 

Understandable. What part of TN? I live in Nashville currently. Nice area.

 

I live outside of Oxford, Mississippi and the dealer in my case (Chuck Hutton Toyota) that showed the car I was interested in on its' web site and confirmed they had it by email and a phone call and even said I could "drive it home today" is located in Memphis.

 

We tried to do business with our closest dealer.... We made an appointment with a saleswoman who gave a customer 500 over invoice. We went in at 10am when her shift started. She wasn't there. Some other lady wearing glasses with no lenses tried to help us. I gave her the truck we waned and she came back with other trucks. We knew they didn't have it but we were ready to drop a deposit to order via their next allocations. She told us, "this isn't the 90s, you can't order trucks. Trucks are special. This truck should be getting an addendum above msrp." She started raising her voice at us and then she got a manager. Manager came out and asked me questions about what the MSRP said for the vehicle we were speaking of. He was trying to catch me off to prove I didn't know what I was talking about. I gave him specs and broke down the msrp prices and ended it with 36099. He came back with a paper that showed 36099 and finally told me I knew what I was talking about. He said he couldn't authorize 500 over invoice to order and that they weren't doing that anymore. We left and told a sales person we had dealt with before about it outside. He laughed and said he wouldn't try to give us that deal because he knew the managers would shut it down and yell at him. We joked a little and we left. I would feel comfortable buying from them at the right price, but if we do buy a truck at MSRP, which we won't, I would not go back there.

 

Yeah that's just a dealer that clearly doesn't want business. Again, in cases like this, go to whoever treats you the best.

 

For me I went back to a dealer that I have purchased from before. My closest Toyota dealer is a waste of time. Between the arrogant sales staff and the owner who I talked with directly lying to me I couldn't do business with them. So I went back to a dealer that I had a history with but things didn't work out. Yes, I admit that I should have called before I left. I honestly didn't think that a dealer that had 10 vehicles listed on their website would have zero when I showed up. I learned a lesson for sure.

Since then I contacted the dealer and explained my situation to them and they have emailed me back and called twice. During the conversations they have expressed their dissatisfaction of the situation and how they handled it. They admitted that their website sucks and that they should do a better job managing it. They also said that the salesman laughing at me was uncalled for and they are taking action about that. The sales manager said that he wishes things happened differently and will be talking to his staff to make sure that this won't happen again. I believe him. I told him that I should have called first, but I didn't think that they wouldn't have at least 1 of the 10 vehicles listed on their website on the lot. I wanted to test drive one and they were the only dealer somewhat local to me that had a DCSB in stock. (Obviously they didn't actually). The sales manager has offered to pay me for my lost time and fuel costs to make things good between us. I have accepted this on the condition that the check is payable to a local charity. My goal was to purchase a new vehicle, not to make money on a failed trip. The situation could have and should have been handled differently by both sides. I agree that I made mistakes, I should have called. But a dealer/business is responsible for the content on their website and the sales manager admitted that their website does not serve their customers correctly. The two statuses are "available" and "in stock". In this situation neither was true.

I learned a valuable lesson and my question to the fellow TW members here is to ask if anyone else has had the same problems. I was hoping for intellectual conversation and not the personal attacks that some members resorted to. Yes - I should have called first. I won't make that mistake again.

Thanks to everyone that has shared their experience in similar situations like this.

 

Thats never stopped you before

 

Nearly the same thing happened to me in Kentucky...My GF wanted a new 2015 Corolla S plus model (which has the sunroof) so I located one on a dealers website and we both agreed on the selling price OTD....Told the sales woman I would b there in 3 hrs....it was a 2.5 hr drive...told her to get the car ready (wash it, etc.)...then drove to the dealership, pulled into the lot, sales woman was waiting out front...she said come look at ur new car! Walked into the garage area and guess what? It was a "S" model...not the "S plus" model...I said to her, that's NOT WHAT I WANTED! She said its the "S" model w/sunroof...it didn't even have a sunroof...She said "Oops! I thought they ALL had sunroof"....I went into a tirade on her ass! the mgr came out and said "I guess u 2 had a failure to communicate" and "Sorry we don't have ANY S plus models", "Have a safe drive home!" and turned around a walked away...like it was no big deal!

 

You're a good man OP. I hope they earned a 2nd chance from you since they seem to be correcting their mistakes.

 

They definitely have. They were honest with his conversation explaining the mistakes that they made and didn't make any excuses.

 

Bullshit, she knew & so did her boss. It's all part of the plan to sell you on anything they have.

AND....

Holy shit, talk about loss of control. I thought I was in the wrong thread.

I'm not even having to pay to watch this fight.

 

can you just lock this thread already?

 

Why would you want to lock someone else's thread?

 

In my experiences I have learned to not fully trust anything on the website; I most likely would have called first to confirm. I know how these dealers operate and it is a bit shady no doubt...

 

because pissing contest

I would trust this advertisement more than any car dealership website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sZuN0xXWLc

GUARANTEED!

 

What dealer had the wrong inventory on their website?