7 years ago I was doing a lot of driving and renting a lot of cars. I decided to buy a car that was not expensive, got really good gas mileage, held it’s value, and was very reliable. Out of all the cars I had rented, I narrowed it down to the Ford Fiesta and the Toyota Corolla.
The Fiesta got better gas mileage but the Toyota had more room. I was talking with a friend who had a spouse that worked at Toyota and said that mentioning the spouses name would get a discount and also said I should check out the Scion line. At the same time I had run across some reliability concerns with the Fiesta, so I started to focus more on Toyota. Plus I loved Top Gear and they heralded the reliability of the Toyota truck that had tons of miles, had been destroyed and still ran. So, I thought, why not?
Anyway, the journey started with visiting the dealership in Orem. I tried the Scion cars, which in my opinion are just junk. They kind of look sporty, but don’t perform sporty. Plus it’s like they transported their interiors from the early 90s, which seems to be a theme with Toyota generally, but some of the newer Toyota cars aren’t as bad in the interior department.
I found out quickly that “knowing someone” was worth about as much as some old molding vomit. So that was the end of that. Over a couple months and various visits, I started to settle on a Corolla SE “sport” that had nav, push start, keyless entry and it was easily in my price range. The model was over a year old, but that didn’t matter to me. I went home to discuss the purchase with my wife and have her drive it the next day, but when we went back, it was gone. Bummed, we were going to start the search for a different car from scratch. When we told the salesman this and that the newer model was too pricey, considering it was over 5k more for essentially the same car, he said, “hey, I know we can work with you, I know for a fact that the exact same car was just sold for (I think it was 19.5K which was like 1.5k more than the older model). He Continued, They are just now being discounted”. and added, “If you are willing to buy it today, I can guarantee to get you that deal. What do you say?” and extended his hand to seal the deal. So I shook his hand and went inside the sales room to sign the paperwork.
That’s when the hell began.
The salesman went up to the desk and disappeared for a while. After sitting for an hour he came back with a higher price.
I shook my head and questioningly said, “Um, no, we shook on this deal that you offered and guaranteed.”
He then said, “yeah, but I gotta convince my sales manager and he’s saying that the Corolla has gained in popularity and can’t let it go for that price.”
Yeah, suddenly hot now that I seemed committed.
So I responded, “That’s fine, you guaranteed it, but that’s fine. I’m just going to go…” And got up to leave.
The salesman got extremely flustered and then acceded that the original deal would be honored and said we’d get it done and that I was right and he was going to get the paperwork right that second. So I sat again… for another hour, then two, then three. Occasionally the salesman would pop his head in and say stuff like he really had to put his foot down to get the deal done, but then added if I just went up a couple thousand, everything could get done faster.
After being in there for over 4 hours, I said, “what’s going on?” to one of the other salesman – The salesman that had been helping me had somehow disappeared. The sales manager came over and said, “The price of the car is 22.5K. Are you ready to buy the car or not.” 22.5K was the full sticker price! I said that price was not the deal the salesman and I had agreed to. He just shrugged and said, “it doesn’t matter. That’s the price.” I said that I didn’t agree, he then told me, “Fine, then F*#@ off.”
I was a bit taken aback at how hostile the guy had been, I had sat patiently for hours. I hadn’t raised a fuss. I didn’t even “negotiate” the deal to begin with, it had been offered. The whole experience was sickening to me.
I looked for someone to complain to, but apparently no one would talk to be that was higher up the ladder than this guy at that dealership. So I tried to complain to Toyota North America to no avail. Then I thought I would call the Midvale dealership and talk with them about it. I told them what happened and they acted aghast and the person I talked to, who claimed to be a higher up sales guy at the Midvale dealership, said that they could totally do the deal and they would take care of me.
Somewhere inside of me, I thought I should just drop it, but agreed with the salesman and planned a trip to their dealership. When I got up there, the salesman brought out a contract for me to sign with the correct price and wanted me to get all these extras. I politely declined and then the waiting started again. After a few hours, I just went to the manager and was like, “Seriously, what’s going on?” The sales manager again said, “no, we’re not going to do that price.”
Flabbergasted and more than a little annoyed, I left. I had also contacted the Bountiful Toyota at about the same time, but had just left a message. Then after a week or so after the Midvale experience, I got a call back from Bountiful, but by this point, I was sick of Toyota and again explained to the salesman the situation and just said I didn’t care. He said he totally understood and could make it right. He said he could get me a better deal for a little more money by getting me 0% financing. I was intrigued and thought, why not. However, I said let’s get all the paperwork done over email if we can. I just want to come in, sign the completed docs, get the keys and go. He was like, absolutely.
So all the docs came over email and even though Toyota was not high in my regard, I had agreed to a deal and was still curious about the Toyota brand AND curious to see if the deal would actually go through.
So the day came to pick up my car and I went to the Bountiful Toyota dealership. All the paperwork was ready, the salesman was eager and I thought, OK, this is how it should be. I signed the contract. I also had to sign other papers for the financing. He had them all in a folder and then said, OK, just one last thing and we’ll get you on your way. Then… nothing and the waiting began. I was eventually told the manager had to approve the deal and he was now super busy…. He didn’t look busy, but again, I was left alone in a sales booth to wait, and wait, and wait. Occasionally I’d look over at the sales manager who was yucking it up with some of the sales guy, but I was again, being patient. I had signed the documents – though they hadn’t.
After three hours the salesman came back with a new contract at a higher price and said, “This is the best my manager can do, just sign it and here are the keys and we can get you outta here.”
I felt no commitment to Toyota, no loyalty and I had had enough. I just looked at him and said, “Are you kidding me?” I raised my voice a little bit and said, “Are you kidding me!” I raised my voice more and said, “ARE YOU F@#%ING KIDDING ME! ARE YOU ALL LIARS! YOU OFFERED THE DEAL! NOT ME! I AGREED. YOU TOLD ME THE MANAGER HAD ALREADY AGREED! THIS WAS A DONE DEAL! DOES NOBODY AT TOYOTA HAVE A SHRED OF INTEGRITY!”
I don’t deny, I made a bit of a scene, two other groups were at sales booths and looked startled. The salesman was shocked as he looked at the other customers and said, “ok, ok, fine.” They signed the contracts and still made me wait for another couple hours. When I finally met with the guy to finalize the paperwork and get the keys, I commented that the ordeal took forever and I asked if it always took this long. He shrugged and said, “if you try to get a deal, yeah, if you’re willing to pay full price or more, we can get you through as fast as you want.”
It was disgusting, I felt disgusted. I got in the car and it didn’t excite me, I just felt sick. the whole thing had taken hours and hours and hours. Between all the hours of negotiating on the phone and sitting in the dealership and driving, I had definitely lost and was driving a car that I didn’t even care about or want – it was just a POS “eco” car that I could beat the crap out of. If you added up all the hours and paid me at my standard rate, I lost thousands upon thousands, especially since I had paying work I could have been doing instead – and they knew it.
As for the car, it was worse than I remembered from all my rentals. The comfort was terrible, the car was the noisiest car I think I’ve been in, the windshield whistled (that they tried to fix twice), the acceleration was a joke. But the worst was the fuel economy. It was somehow terrible! the car claimed 34mpg which I swear had to be a lie, plus the gas tank was a tiny 12 Gallons! I was driving up to salt lake daily for a job I was working on and was filling the tank twice a week! As comparison, my Audi A8 had about a 20 gallon gas tank and I only had to fill it up once every week and a half. My Audi TT? Two weeks with about a 16 gallon gas tank. After a few months, I just let my kid drive it and stopped caring.
We only had the car for four years and several plastics got loose and continually fell out, the car rattled and was so noisy at highway speeds we couldn’t talk comfortably and it even made our ears hurt. The headlights developed haze faster than any other car. “Sport” mode is more like normal mode and not super slow, not sporty at all. The car did not hold its value. After all the taxes and BS, the car cost almost 23K. I tried to sell it for 2 months and finally settled selling it for 12K. That’s 11K over 4 years or almost 3K a year! My TT that I bought for 16K sold for 9K after 8 years, so a little less than 1K per year, no service problems that weren’t covered by warranty. My BMW? bought for 18K, could sell it today for 24K after owning for 5 years with no significant issues. And the BMW is pure joy to drive.
Then the service center was almost as bad as the sales. My son took it in for warranty maintenance and he told me after that one of the techs had a key chain that was loaded like a janitor ring, he stumbled and fell into the car scraping the keys against the car. My son said he was about 50 ft away and only paid attention after the noise so he didn’t fully see it or know exactly where the contact was made. I brought the issue to the attention of the service manager and didn’t ask for anything because my son couldn’t identify the exact scratches. I just thought they should have people who are more accountable. And as I just said, the car had several scratches by this point and I didn’t really care. The service manager called me back later and proceeded to say they had cameras of the bay and that my son was a liar. I was a bit floored and asked to see the footage. He hedged and told me that it would take him a bit and he would email it to me. He begrudgingly offered to have the car buffed which I declined. I never got the email (because he likely lied) and I never went back to Toyota for service.
So did it have any positives? Push start and keyless entry were nice. I guess the tires were cheap? Some of the maintenance items weren’t as cheap as I thought they’d be, but weren’t terrible. Also, my wife liked driving it… but that was just because our other cars were big or manual transmission. After we sold it, I asked if she missed it and she laughed and said, “Wow, I haven’t thought about it at all!” So…no. You compare that to her Mercedes that she once had, not even close.
The Toyota salesman and service men were all liars and just horrible human beings. The salesmen want to cause you pain, they will forfeit their own promises and integrity to try to force you to pay more. Their word is worth nothing, they have no honor and I will never buy a POS Toyota ever again. Toyota is genuinely a POS brand top to bottom (at least in Utah) though I suspect these disgusting behaviors come from the national headquarters since a secret shopper would have easily caught this abusive behavior.
