Why we sold our Highlander to Carmax rather than Capitol Toyota

Buying and selling cars isn't my favorite thing to do. Usually there's some degree of frustration involved. Yesterday was no exception.

My wife and I did our best to trade-in our low mileage 2014 Highlander XLE as part of our purchase of a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid, but Capitol Toyota engaged in some tactics that were irritating enough to cause us to decline the purchase offer and head to Beaverton's Carmax instead -- where today we sold our Highlander for $600 more than Capitol Toyota offered, and with much less aggravation.

Our Highlander in the final stage of the CarMax process

I chatted some with the Carmax employee who finalized the sale and gave us a check for $22,000. After I complimented her on how efficient and organized the Carmax appraisal/offer/sale process is, she said, "We strive continually for improvement. We're always asking ourselves how we can do things better."

So this blog post is offered to Capitol Toyota in the same spirit. 

(Note: it's as long as it is not only because I'm wordy, but because our salesman said, as have other salespeople I've talked with, that the survey we'll get from Toyota about our sales experience needs to be 100% "exceptional," or he won't get proper credit for the sale. That seems crazy to me, since without honesty, surveys are meaningless. But he says that salespeople are held responsible for every aspect of a sale, even those they have no control over -- as you'll read below.)

We've bought eleven cars from the Capitol Auto Group over many years. Today I joked with Kelly Stewart, who manages the Subaru dealership now, about how I wished we'd gotten a card punched with every car purchase, since it sure seems like we should be getting a free car at this point.

Kelly has sold us most of the cars we've bought from the Capitol Auto Group: Toyotas, Subarus, Chevrolets. We like him a lot. But he wasn't involved in yesterday's haggling, which helps explain why we walked away from Capitol Toyota tired, hungry, and irritated at 8:30 pm last night.

UPDATE: Seeing the Capitol Auto Group slogan on the RAV4 when I went out to get the paper this morning reminded me that no, we didn't get our way on the parkway last Thursday.

As described below, I wasn't able to get a trade-in offer in the early afternoon even though I'd made an appointment with our salesman to do just that. And on our second trip in the late afternoon it took almost three hours to finalize a deal, even though I'd emailed and texted to Capitol Toyota the prices that we wanted for the RAV4 and trade-in of our Highlander and asked that Capitol Toyota do as much as possible before we arrived, given that we had a sick dog and my wife had gone through a long tiring day.

Yes, we ended up buying the RAV4 Hybrid for $500 over the wholesale invoice. That basically matched the $1,597 Consumer Reports Car Buying Service discount that Gresham Toyota offered for a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid in Limited trim. It was how we got to that point that exasperated my wife and I.

At 1 pm yesterday I took our Highlander to Capitol Toyota for a trade-in appraisal after we learned from the salesman we'd been working with that our RAV4 Hybrid had arrived. We'd waited almost four months after putting down a $500 deposit in early February for the car we wanted, which was before the 2019 RAV4 had been officially released.

Given that it had taken me less than five minutes to come up with a Kelly Blue Book trade-in value for our Highlander, I figured it would be a brief and simple process to get an offer from Capitol Toyota. However, that isn't what happened.

Instead, after talking with his Capitol Toyota supervisors, our salesman told me it wouldn't be possible to get a trade-in offer until we negotiated the RAV4 Hybrid purchase price. That surprised me. I didn't like being told, "We'll work with you on finding a balance between the trade-in offer and purchase price."

Rather, I said, "I agree with Consumer Reports that a car buyer should get separate prices for the cost of a new car and a trade-in offer. That keeps things simpler and cleaner." 

Our 2019 RAV4 Hybrid in the Capitol Toyota lot, along with some of my finger

Now, the RAV4 Hybrid Limited that'd come in had everything that we'd ordered, except for the interior color. It was two-tone, rather than black. (Toyota doesn't make cars to order for some reason; so an "order" really is a customer request, not a certainty, as I wrote about previously.)

Since my wife needed to see the RAV4 to make sure she liked the interior color, there was some uncertainty in the early afternoon yesterday about whether we'd actually be buying the car. But I don't see why this would prevent Capitol Toyota from giving me a trade-in offer, especially since I'd been clear that I wanted to get separate prices for the RAV4 and our trade-in.

Before continuing with my trade-in tell of woe, here's my central problem with how Capitol Toyota sells cars: the ordinary salespeople have no real negotiating authority. Meaning, they have to disappear into a back room to talk with supervisor types, then return to tell you what those unseen people want.

This is old-style car-selling. It's not quite as bad as the "Gosh, I'd love to give you this deal, but my boss is in a bad mood today, so the price is going to have to be higher than what we discussed," but it's disturbingly close.

When I bought my Mini Cooper in Portland, I was told that Mini only sells cars at the sticker price. OK, that made things easy. When I bought my GTI from VW of Salem, I was told that the dealership offers a standard discount from the sticker price. That also made things easy.

And when we'd bought some Capitol Auto Group cars fairly recently from Kelly Stewart, things went easy because Kelly was both the salesperson and the manager who approved sales. So we only had to deal with one person.

What aggravated my wife and I when we went back to Capitol Toyota at about 5:45 pm yesterday was how ridiculously long it took to get some simple prices for the RAV4 and our Highlander trade-in. I'd told the salesman in a text message several hours before we arrived the prices that I thought were fair, and asked him to do as much as possible before we came in.

He knew that our dog is in the late stages of chronic liver disease.

Capitol Toyota is pleasingly dog-friendly, but our dog already had sat on the showroom floor once that day, when I sat around waiting for a trade-in offer that never materialized. And my wife had spent the afternoon walking dogs at the Humane Society, then driving to Sweet Home to look at a possible second dog, given our current dog's limited life span.

But it took over two hours for us to get a price for our Highlander and the RAV4. I give credit to our salesman, who kept telling us, "I don't know why it is taking so long" and "I've told the guys in back that you're tired of waiting and need the prices."

Meanwhile, our dog was lying tiredly on the showroom floor, and my wife was dreaming of the dinner that she hadn't eaten before we left home.

Finally a guy that we'd never met before materialized at our table with a sheet of paper and some annoying words. "You probably could buy 100 RAV4s, right?" I said, "No, we can buy one RAV4, and we've been sitting here for a couple of hours waiting to find out how much it will cost us."

He pointed to the wholesale price and said "We'll give you $500 over invoice." OK, I thought, that should have taken ten seconds to calculate.

Then he pointed to a trade-in price of $22,400 (as I recall; we never got an offer sheet), which was crossed out, adding, "But we want to offer you $1,000 less." So, $21,400. I peered more closely at the offer. I told him that this showed our car was in Fair condition, then pointed out that it didn't have any of the Fair criteria listed on the offer sheet. Like, rust spots.

In my view, I said, the Highlander was in Very Good condition. But surely not Fair. 

The guy from a back room who we'd never seen before didn't attempt to explain the appraisal. He just listened as I said that in my view the Highlander was worth about $24,400, then disappeared again, apparently to talk with another manager/supervisor. Meanwhile, our salesman sat with us and tried to explain why the offer was so low (Capitol Toyota certifies used cars, etc).

I appreciated the explanation.

However, sitting there for several hours, tired and hungry, with a sick dog who deserved to be comfortably at home with us, not lying on a hard showroom floor, put me in a bad mood -- which again, was a rare Capitol Toyota feeling, since our car buying process had gone so smoothly when Kelly Stewart had been handling things.

Eventually the guy from the back room returned and told us that the $21,400 offer was the best they could do. I said, fine. We appreciated the offer to hold our check for the RAV4 purchase until after we went to CarMax the next day.

We'd been promised by the guy from the back room that it only would take another half hour to finish up the RAV4 purchase. But it was more like an hour, after which my wife, dog, and I were even more tired and hungry. Another back room guy handled the sale paperwork.

He gamely tried to sell us add-on's like an extended warranty. I was going to refuse them regardless, per Consumer Report's advice. Having endured the Games Car Dealerships Play for almost three hours, I refused them more quickly and curtly, for sure.

By contrast, everything went super-smoothly at CarMax. Yes, we only got $22,000 for our Highlander, $600 more than Capitol Toyota had offered. It was worth it, though, both monetarily and psychologically.

I felt that our Capitol Toyota salesman had treated us fairly and courteously. However he was powerless once the guys from the back room got involved. Which is a crazy way to sell cars. I'm sure some people are OK with waiting hours at a dealership to do something that should only take a few minutes.

I'm not. Neither is my wife. Buying a car should be a pleasant experience, especially when it costs a bit over $38,000, as our RAV4 Hybrid did. As noted above, CarMax continually works at improving the car selling/buyihg experience for its customers. 

Based on what happened with us yesterday, I think Capitol Toyota should emulate CarMax.  

That said, we did enjoy getting a tour of the RAV4 Hybrid basics from our salesman this afternoon, after we returned from CarMax (in Beaverton). And our new car seems happy in our carport. I look forward to writing about it once we get to know the RAV4 a bit better.

June 1 update: I just sent this email to several Capitol Auto Group managers. Took out our salesman's name.

Since I said in this blog post that I wrote it in the spirit of helping Capitol Toyota, and Capitol Auto Group, improve, I wanted to share a link with you guys. I don’t have our salesman's email address, just his phone number, so if one of you could forward this message to _____, that would be great.

https://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2019/05/why-we-sold-our-highlander-to-carmax-rather-than-capitol-toyota.html

 

As you can read, my wife and I had a frustrating experience Thursday after the 2019 RAV4 Hybrid we’d ordered in early February finally came in.

 

I want to stress that _____ did a good job, and we have no complaints about him. It was back-room supervisors/managers who made the car-buying process so frustrating, which resulted in us selling our low-mileage well-maintained (all at Capitol Toyota) 2014 Highlander to CarMax yesterday in a pleasingly quick and efficient fashion.

 

Kelly and Nate, when we’ve dealt with you, things have gone pleasantly fine. Thursday was a Capitol Auto Group exception. But our experience raised questions in my mind about some general dealership issues. Such as:

 

(1) After customers have established a good relationship with a salesperson, it seems wrong to have them cut out of the loop at the end of the buying process. Meaning, it was clear that _____ had no authority to do some simple things - like give us a trade-in price — after he disappeared for a while, apparently to consult with supervisors. This sort of thing is irksome to customers like us, and it is different than how other dealerships I’ve bought cars from do things. Like Mini of Portland and VW of Salem.

 

(2) We’ve heard, from _____ and other salespeople, that it is very important to them to get “exceptional” ratings across the board on every question in a post-purchase Toyota survey. Apparently the salesperson is held responsible for all aspects of customer satisfaction, even though they aren’t able to control much of the purchase or trade-in process.

 

Honesty is crucial to satisfaction surveys, since otherwise they’re next to useless. Why does Toyota and the Capitol Auto Group continue with this “survey game” where anything other than 100% satisfaction leads to a penalty for a hard-working salesperson? It puts customers in a tough spot. Should we be honest or should we deny a salesperson we like from getting a bonus and good marks?

 

(3) I  realize that some car buyers must like to haggle, or Capitol Auto Group wouldn’t have the policies it does. But it seems to me that increasingly, people aren’t willing to put up with the Games Car Dealerships Play. You should consider moving to a “no-haggle” approach like many of your competitors have.

 

As an aside, when I was chatting with the CarMax staff person who handled the final stage of our Highlander sale, she told us that she and her husband recently bought a new car from a dealership where they had to wait five hours to complete the deal, even though a price already had been agreed to.

 

Would anyone buy an appliance from Lowe’s if they had to wait five hours (or three hours, as we did Thursday) to complete a fairly simple transaction for a purchase?

 

      — Brian

Comments

[Skyline]

Lasson is worse in my opinion.
We won't do business at either.

[tucson]

Car buying is an adversarial situation. Everybody remains cordial and polite but beneath the veneer is the seller's desire to squeeze every cent out of you they can. They are merciless, which is their prerogative. Really, if you think about it. It has to be that way. At dealerships, I have rarely purchased a car without literally hours of going back and forth with salesmen and management haggling over price. The key to success is to not care if you get the car or not. It's a game. Instead of playing golf that day or going fishing or whatever you do, you go to the car dealership for giggles and grins, to watch them try all the sales tactics they have been trained to use and fail. If you play it right you won't get screwed. But they are pros and have seen your type many times. Remember: There's always another car and another day. Don't like their game? Leave. Don't worry about their feelings. They don't worry about yours as they lift a few extra thousand out of your wallet.

A key to success is to have cash. If you can't afford to pay cash for the car then you should be looking for a car you can afford to pay cash for. Cars are a bad investment from the get go. They depreciate steadily. Immediately. So why add insult to injury by getting into a financing situation and paying even more in interest? 0% financing? Bull shit. You will pay more for the car in the payment structure than you would if you paid cash. Have a trade-in? Sell it yourself. You will always get a thousand or more than what the dealer will give you. Always. Too lazy to do that? Don't like answering calls, answering questions and meeting with strangers in dimly-lit mall parking lots? You will pay by letting the dealer take the car off your hands. Sometimes it's worth it.

So, you find out the actual dealer cost (lower than factory invoice) of the car you are interested in. If you don't know that figure you're sunk. Be prepared to get shafted. You may not know it but you will be. They'll be high fiving in the back room. Anyway, begin work a few hundred dollars below that figure. Of course they won't sell to you at that price. They will come back with a slightly lower price than what is on the window sticker but it will still be higher by thousands than what is a fair deal. So you offer them a hundred or two more than your starting offer. Then they will come down another hundred or two, while you only go up another hundred. This may go on for a while. Back and forth. Ho hum. You've seen it many times.

Eventually they will discover you are a stubborn SOB and will finally get real about the price. They will offer a more realistic number but it will still be a thousand or more than you intend to pay. So you go up another hundred. The salesman gets an exasperated look on his face as you refuse to accept what he thinks is an offer you won't refuse. Then he comes back with the sales manager. The sleeves are rolled up and now real negotiations begin. They try to pressure you at this point. The veneer of politeness remains but now the body language is serious. They imply that you are not being reasonable and that they have a business to run and overhead to pay. Children to feed. You don't care about that. It's your money and they want all they can get. It's business. You know that finally the real price of the car is getting close. When the bottom line is reached they still are making money or they won't sell you the car. They will let you walk. The price gap incrementally gets closer as they go down a little and you go up a little but less than they go down.

A few times I have shook hands with them and said thank you, no deal and walked out. One time they let me walk but this, I think, is because they had pride and didn't want to capitulate and let me win, not because my final offer was too low. Another time the salesman ran out to the parking lot and called me back.. He said "I think we can make a deal" and there was the contract on the desk with my final offer on it. Deal done. They were happy (to get rid of me and go home) and I felt that I didn't get ripped off but still feeling there was money on the table. This is common. If they sold it to me for X they probably would have sold it for Y. You have to live with that. At least the amount is a hundred or so and not thousands.

I once bought a Mazda at sticker price in 1979. The dealer said, "That's the price. Take it or leave it. We don't deal." I said, "What if I walk?" The dealer said, "See ya". I bought the car. $4000. Can you believe a brand new car cost $4000? Today, that is just enough money to get a lot of headaches and repair bills.

In 2002, maybe '03, I bought a new Subaru online from a dealer in Beaverton. The salesman said, "That's our price. Bottom line." I took the deal and drove up with the wife to get the car. Very pleasant buying experience. No BS and I knew the price was fair.

[Anne Thompson]

When I knew more about 4Runners than the salesperson at Capitol Toyota, and they outright LIED and said they don’t come without sunroofs, I walked. I got my 4Runner at Broadway Toyota (no sunroof, thank you very much). I have it serviced at Capitol - which is lovely. When the salespeople call me and try to get me to
trade it in, my answer is always the same: “bitch, please.”

[Brian Hines]

Anne, Capitol Toyota does have a wonderfully pleasant service waiting area. Fresh fruit. Cookies. Popcorn. Fresh brewed coffee machine. Fireplace. Big screen TV. Dog treats and dog water. Good decision to have your car services there.

[Skyline]

"Anne, Capitol Toyota does have a wonderfully pleasant service waiting area. Fresh fruit. Cookies. Popcorn. Fresh brewed coffee machine. Fireplace. Big screen TV. Dog treats and dog water. Good decision to have your car services there."
WOW!!!
No wonder you constantly get ripped off!
"When I bought my Mini Cooper in Portland, I was told that Mini only sells cars at the sticker price. OK, that made things easy"
You're a sucker, Brian!
O.K., that was harsh.You're not a sucker. You're a liberal.
Don't blame the car dealership or the sales person.
YOU are a scammers dream come true!!
Luv ya anyway, xoxoxoxo

[Skyline]

We will be buying a Rav4 this year just to keep up with the Hines's.
But let me tell you about our last Toyota Purchase:
My wife got in the mood for a new car and, like you, spent a lot of time researching the details.
After months of sorting through it all, she found the EXACT new car she wanted at a **certain** local dealership. They agreed to a great price and the deal was on.
The day before we went to pick it up, I called the dealership and told them that they were to have the papers on the desk for us to sign and that we would not spend more than 15 minutes closing the deal.
We walked in, read, signed and dated the contract and handed them a check.
3 days later our phone rang and it was a manager from the dealership, "I'm sorry to bother you with this, but we sold you the car for $1000.00 less than we meant to. Can you bring us a check for $1000.00?"
I replied, "Not only no, but HELL NO!!!"
"So you're the kind of person that can live with this, " he asked?
"Yes", I replied. "I'm the kind of guy that negotiates a deal, signs a contract describing the terms and conditions of the deal for both parties, writes and signs a check for payment in full; yes. I'm THAT kind of guy. "
CLICK
Less than a week later an employee of a friend of ours from Albany stopped in and noticed our new car.
When I told him the crazy part, he told me that THE SAME THING happened to his boss at the same dealership!!??? AND his boss heard about someone else that it happened to.
We have asked around and nobody in the business **admits** to have ever heard of this scam.
As for me, I buy all of the trucks for our business from Skyline Ford and have since 1986.
NO complaints. Love them!
If only they sold Toyota's!

[Helo]

Able to visit the Capitol Toyota one and loved the ambiance there. Surprised to see they have lots of treats for customers and even for pets. My friend easily processed his papers for the 4Runner purchase.