[Moto-P]

Rather than posting, well, actually regardless, I think you should contact Toyota National HQ as they are the ones who need to really hear this, and devise a way to correct such disrespectful approach to selling cars.

Here's the contact information for reaching Toyota Corporate Customer Care:

Phone: 800-331-4331
Fax: 310-468-7814
Mon - Fri, 5:00 am - 6:00 pm PST
Sat, 7:00 am - 4:00 pm PST


Now, as for sales of cars in general, in the USA, the dealers are independent, unlike in Japan, and while most are trained on a pretty comprehensive guidelines of Toyota's excellent sales guideline manuals, some dealers, especially those remotely situated choose to not use this, or distort it.

Just for clarification, Scion's "PURE PRICE" is simply a 30 days FIX on an advertised price. It is not a FIX on MSRP sale. So if the dealer says, advertises, or mentions in any way a certain price, high or low, they must honor that for every customer, for 30 days. It also means if that dealer decided to LOWER the heavily marked up price, he isn't allowed to do so for 30 days since he first marked it up. This means, even if he will LOSE that customer to another dealer who was willing to sell for less.

Because of this, areas with more competing dealers will not mark up most of SCION models, and this is true for even the overly demanded FRS. The dealers will gain more from moving the FRS as much as possible so they can be allocated more of them in the next shipment. Dealers who "hoard" and price gouge any SCION and move less of them, will suffer from getting less of them in the future.

When this happens, their ONLY method of getting more FRS will be to do a "dealer trade" where they would ship another car to a dealer who has the FRS available, at whatever asking price of the dealer who has them. Doing this though, makes the original dealer's cost of the FRS much greater, as MOST dealers won't want to trade an FRS for anything with customers of their own waiting. IN the case of combined scenario of dealer trade and PURE PRICE to customers, the offending dealer has to make a choice of losing cash on the sale by doing a trade, or simply stuck not being able to sell the FRS till his next allocation, if there are any... Toyota's policy therefore makes a natural selection of best dealers getting the best stock, and penalizes offending dealers his ability to sell a popular product item.

So all this mark up game does not benefit the dealership for the FRS or any SCION products, nor the customers who visit the dealers who are not any longer, best equipped to sell the FRS.

My suggestions to you, therefore, is to go to a dealership who DOES follow the guidelines, and who do sell a LOT of SCIONS because of them following how they should sell, according to the manual by Toyota HQ. They will be happy to offer you great deals on the FRS, and are just happy to MOVE them out of the lot and into your garage as more they do this, the more they can allocate themselves more SCIONs including the FRS.

Most dealers in the USA will also arrange for reasonable shipping as well. And proper dealers who do this, usually keep a very orderly list of interested buyers, and usually by $500 REFUNDABLE deposits, so they can hold you interest of color and transmission choice. Many times, shipping a car from one of Largest volume dealers in California is comparable or cheaper than asking premiums for rural areas of the US. And they are fully capable of handing shipment, title in your state, and all taxes, and more importantly, getting it faster, with much larger allocations they have over a dealer who can't move Scion. For example, Longo Scion and Penske Scion in southern CA, moves about 19,000 Toyota vehicles per year, and they would have that much more chunk of allocations for all Toyota cars. Also, because the FRS to the best dealers are ALLOCATED, they have the exact VIN numbers and colors/transmission, and how many, and expected date of arrival, unlike a dealer who has to resort to trade, who can't get any definite information on any FRS beyond their small allocation. It is also pertinent to speak to a fleet manager class sales person when calling so complex sale of remote purchase requirements are explained properly and made easy for a buyer, as floor sales person may not be able to handle such requests proficiently, but are working on bonus structures... A properly managed dealer operations are always equipped to handle this, and teams of sales people will always be working in good order to direct each customers to the properly trained person if he/she is not capable and to handle each order well.

I hope this helps... And hopefully, the dealers where you visited will be corrected by your report to Toyota HQ for the better for all Toyota fans here.