I was thinking the same thing recently. There have been several posting about small town dealers with available cars, but I haven't seen anyone post a "car wanted" message. Maybe it is frowned on by the board's administrators, but it seems like another possible way for potential owners to get pared up with their desired vehicles.
Posting that you want a specific car is not in violation of forum rules. However, you will be betting on the hope that dealerships are reading this site in their search for customers. AFAIK, Dianne is our only known forum member directly employed by a dealership, so I would expect responses to be minimal at best. My recommendation - do what Pete did, and start making phone calls.
I don't think it'd hurt to post what you're looking for and how far you're willing to go for it (distance). Sometimes some of us come upon unclaimed cars, so who knows if serendipity won't play a part in matching folks up with cars.
actually it's mostly a matter of impatience on my part. i am on a list with a dealer that says i should get mine in about a year. that would be my normal trade-in time, since i am driving a buick rendezvous that will be 2 next month. since it's a business car, i usually change every three years. but talking and reading all the stuff on here and so on is driving me nuts! and since it's my business i theoretically CAN change whenever i want. however, if i were to find a car in, say, california, it would be just a little problematic to drive my buick out there for a trade, and drive back the prius. i guess i could post that i would be looking in the northeast more or less... anyway, as was said, really nothing to lose
This is basically another purpose of the Order Tracking Forum - so that dealers that are local to someone can go in and find someone in their area looking for a car, then contact them concerning the car. The main problem I see in that is that basically any dealer that is out scouting around the internet looking for buyers for an 04 Prius doesn't have a buyer yet because they a) have it marked up way over MSRP or B) have ridiculous addons associated with the car. I would prefer not to see a "Looking for an 04 #9, Salsa" type of post on PriusChat until sometime in the future when demand is down and dealers are more reasonable with pricing we establish a Auto-Broker type of system here on PC. I am also worried that if those types of posts are placed somewhere on the board, that the dealer will think that it's open season to post ads for their own cars. As you can see here we've changed how the Commercial Sales forum is working now due to dealers not willing to follow simple guidelines.
The problem is that smaller dealers who have a Prius on the lot, not selling, probably have no idea that PriusChat exists, and there's no effective way to let them know. Otherwise, a want ad would hardly be necessary.. A small dealer with a Prius could just post "I have a Prius" and sell the thing within 18 seconds
true, though just as there are dealers who don't know about priuschat, there are also many buyers who would not be looking here. and the fact that there is such a wide range of prices being charged by the dealers, with and without added packages or 'market adjustments' only confirms that there are are inefficiencies in the market that can be an advantage to the alert.
