On Not Buying A Toyota--Take Two

This morning I got an email from Dealix, the guys who run InvoiceDealers.com, wanted to know--Hey, Jane! How did your car buying experience at Elk Grove Toyota go? Didja buy the car?

I thought I would spare them the rather lengthy version you got. For one, they only gave me one of those 250 words or less windows to write my comments in. So I winnowed them down to the following:

The service I got in the dealership was sloppy and inadequate. Although, they knew the model and color of Prius I wanted, the car's battery was dead, and the salesman was unclear about how to recharge it. His explanation of why the battery was dead left me wondering if Prius's are susceptible to this. I thought that by going through the internet, I would avoid the typical sales ploys. I was wrong.

The long version of this is: Chris, the first salesman called last Sunday and left a message saying he had read my blog, taken note of my advice, and was sorry he was busy with another customer when I came in. That's actually the short version of Chris's rather lengthy message, but you get the point. Apology accepted, okay...but hey, wait a minute, you were busy with another customer?

Yes, but were you busy for the 36 hrs before? Did you not have enough time to make sure that the car that I explicitly said I wanted was fully charged. Does it not seem to you that making sure a brand new car is in running order for a test drive is--is--mandatory?

And that got me thinking about my first experience with Toyota, this time Toyota of Hollywood. I got my cute little VW convertible there a couple of years ago. Then, too, I went for a new car, a Scion, but that little Cabrio called out to me. Although it was used, it was shiny black, perfect it seemed, and the salesguys were all over me. Sure, the Owner's Manual is missing, but no problemo! we'll order one for you. Drive it, drive it. And I did, and it was cute, and it did seem to drive nicely, although going around the block in the middle of Hollywood is hardly a fair test of LA driving.

So I signed on the dotted line, and drove it home. I, Jane, was now the proud owner of a convertible. And I lived in LA. Those two facts alone made me a whole lot cuter and a whole lot younger. As I drove down Melrose, the sun shining, my hair blowing gently in the breeze, I smelled something. And my new car started doing something. And then it stopped doing anything at all.

I forget now what the problem was that caused my engine to seize up, it had something to do with a faultily installed ignition switch and fire. It took several weeks to order the new parts from Germany, and, frankly, I never felt the same about the car. I also never got the Owner's Manual. And did I mention that the car was sold to me with a cracked windshield wiper bottle? And those pristine camel seats? I don't know what they did to get them spotless that day, but over the months I've driven it, strange stains have emerged, making me wonder what was done in this car, and by whom.

Thus, I felt compelled to add to my response to Dealix:

The fault is not yours; it's Toyota's. This is the second time I've encountered shoddy and inadequate work at a Toyota dealership, and they are in opposite ends of the state. I love the Prius, but I'm very suspicious of Toyota.

And so I'll wait for another hybrid to get that kind of mileage. Maybe the Saturn will; they're sorta cute. I hate to say never, but now I'm saying it: I'll never buy at a Toyota dealership again.

How To Lose A Car Sale

Yesterday I went car shopping. I knew what I wanted: a Barcelona red Prius with the GPS package, cloth seats, no extra sound system.

Over the years, I've bought a few cars, and I know from experience that car salesmen have well earned their second banana status. They are, in the main, jerks. Perhaps they aren't at home. Perhaps at home they're nice guys who take out the garbage and put down the seat. But at the dealership, they become Macy's parade balloons needing guy wires to tether them to the earth. And they ooze stickey testosterone along with, sometimes, dandruff.

Therefore when I go car shopping, I go girded for battle (albeit with, perhaps, a small chip on my shoulder). When I enter the arena, I'm pleasant but wary. I'm prepared. In control. Ready to deal. I search for a salesman who looks like his IQ is in triple digits, and he passed high school English.

This time I thought I'd weighted the battle on my side a bit by starting out on the Internet. I plugged in all my specs, hit Enter, and fifteen minutes later, Vincent of Elk Grove Toyota was on the phone. We had a nice, longish conversation, that focused mainly on our LA connection and the fact that both of us were new to the area. He recommended Capital Christian Church's Singing Christmas Tree as "one of the biggest things to do in Sacramento," which didn't do much for my longing for LA. We didn't talk a lot about the car because, after all, he had my specs in front of him. He knew the car I wanted; he had it; all I had to do was come in and do a test drive.

Ten minutes after I hung up, Chris of Elk Grove Toyota called me, and we had a pleasant, although shorter conversation. He too had an LA connection, some cousins in the San Gabriel Valley (which is not really LA, as everyone knows). Maybe that's something they teach them in sales school--find a common reference point and hit it for all it's worth. I told him too that I would be in the next day.

Which I was. Primed to drive and buy. Looking forward to dealing with either Vincent or Chris, who seemed to be the new model of car salesman: internet guys, relatively intelligent, Modern Men, as it were. Perhaps they are, but in that tired old ploy, the bait and switch, they said hi, shook hands, and then brought out Brian, who was the salesman I would actually be dealing with.

Brian was definitely an old model car salesman. He put my teeth on edge like chalk on a blackboard. He was alternately patronizing and cutesy. He whined and pleaded like an overtired four year old. He told a sexist story in which he was the star. He vastly underestimated my intelligence, not to mention my ability to add and subtract. He would not take me seriously. He did not listen to me. And consequently, he lost the sale.

Here's my advice to car salespeople:

• Think! If the enquiry came in via the internet, assume a certain saavyness. The people I know who are woefully ignorant and most likely to be conned are Luddites when it comes to computers. You can figure that the opposite is also true.
• Listen! Forget the script, the ten techniques sure to make a customer buy, the five foolproof ways to close a sale. You're dealing with a human being; act it.
• Don't hand off or consult with multiple colleagues. Think of the picture you present: there you are, bowing before the great god finance manager, leaving the customer alone with nothing to do but think ill of all of you.
  
• Don't wear a leather jacket with a shirt and tie, especially if you're overweight. It's cheesy, and you want to avoid anything smacking of that.
• Don't tell a sexist joke to a woman who's buying a car for herself.

I don't know where or when I'll buy my Prius. When I got into my car to drive off the Toyota lot, my little VW convertible seemed a whole lot nicer.