Prius Plug-in Buying Experience

[HectorG]

Or should that read “non-buying experience”. As I’ve reported in an earlier post, I’ve been actively looking to buy a used PHV with a lowish mileage and I’ve been struck by how poor and even unprofessional many of the main Toyota dealers are. As noted previously, the cars are often presented in a dirty condition, covered in bird (and seagull) muck and uncharged or barely charged. Apologies if I’m repeating some of my earlier observations.

One car I was interested in was dirty, uncharged had at least one kerbed alloy wheel (peremptory check before I left the site) and when examining the service history, it turned out it had missed its first service by 2 months, possibly seriously compromising the warranty. However, it was being sold as Approved Toyota Plus. It was very difficult to elicit much about the car’s history. The dealer was hiding behind the new GDPR regs and the fact that the previous ownership was now omitted from the V5. However, I could see from some of photos of the car on their website that it had previously had number plates with a different dealer’s logo. When pressed they admitted it had been bought in, but it was like getting blood out of a stone.

A car I enquired about today, with a view to driving 160 miles to see it, had been sold to a taxi driver in January and then bought back by the dealer in July. It was showing just over 9,000 miles on the odometer and they assured me it had never been used as a taxi 😂 With nearly half a million clocked cars on the road in 2016 and presumably many more since then, I decided not to risk it, particularly as ‘mileage correction’ is a viable diy project these days.

Many other cars seem grossly over-priced to me, or perhaps it is because they are ‘genuine’. Anyway, I think I’ll avoid anywhere within 50 miles of London. Another thing I’ve noticed (it may not be a pattern) that some cars are going up in price, perhaps due to the appearance of the 5-seater meaning the supply of ‘cheap’ 4-seaters will now be eventually reduced and lead to the prices hardening before 5-seater ex-demos appear.

We’ll have to see how long my patience holds out!

 

[Ten Ninety]

It's a shame to hear your experience is so similar to what I found last year, despite you being in a different region. The only encouragement I can offer is that when you do eventually stumble across a decent one, actually owning one is brilliant! 

1 hour ago, HectorG said:

Anyway, I think I’ll avoid anywhere within 50 miles of London.

Amen to that. The cars are invariably in terrible condition even if they're virtually new and the salesmen are always annoying gob****es.

[HectorG]

11 minutes ago, Ten Ninety said:

It's a shame to hear your experience is so similar to what I found last year, despite you being in a different region. The only encouragement I can offer is that when you do eventually stumble across a decent one, actually owning one is brilliant! 

Amen to that. The cars are invariably in terrible condition even if they're virtually new and the salesmen are always annoying gob****es.

Thanks for that Jay. That encourages me to keep going.

Regarding annoying ‘sales executives’ the ‘Customer Consultant’ I dealt with today was called Jazzmin - you couldn’t make it up 😂