Happy Owners of '05 Seaside BC, We recommend our Dealer!

Greetings All,
I have seen many posts which begin "I finally got my Prius and I want to thank you all for the help and information..." and now I am posting mine...

Thank you!

I post our full story below because I found the full-story posts by others to be very useful. If you would like to skip the details, I would just like to
strongly recommend C. RICKEY HIROSE of FREMONT TOYOTA.

He posts on many of these newsgroups. I know he was banned from this one for not following the rules, but I hope you won't hold that too much against him. If you look around, you will find him. His post style may be unusual, but you should not be discouraged by it. He's a decent dealer and gave us a lot of information we wish we had known sooner.


Here's our story, in case you are interested:

(Disclaimer: the information here is an accurate reflection of our experience but I can't _guarantee_ that all of the details about dealers/Toyota are correct; I could have misunderstood some of the information we were given, so I apologize if anything is incorrect)


We have been on a waiting list since May 30, 2004 at Berkeley Toyota. They told us they were the #1 Prius dealer in the nation and they got a very high allocation of 30-40 vehicles per month, but that they had 500+ people on the wait-list so it would probably be 8-10 months.
Since we expected the story to be the same elsewhere (some friends related similar stories from Walnut Creek and Downtown Oakland Toyota), we gave them a check for $1000 (which they cashed) and sat back to wait it out.

Unfortunately, I got rear-ended in October in our poor little clunker car that only had to last until the Prius was ours... No one was hurt and the car is still driveable but the insurance declared it a total loss and my husband was concerned about my safety in the vehicle given my long-ish commute (40 miles one-way). That's when I started combing the newsgroups to see if a Prius could be found faster. I joined a lot of groups (some of you may get this post multiple times because I will post it to all of them ;-) ) and chased a couple of leads (Merced Toyota will ask for $3000 over MSRP initially but you can talk them down to MSRP. We didn't buy from them in the end because of bad timing for us and the distance, but you may have better luck.)

Finally I saw a post by C. Rickey Hirose and gave him a call. He explained that he could get us not just a Prius but probably the exact car we wanted in ~3-6 weeks with no deposit required (as long as we were serious). The more flexible we were willing to be on color, the faster it could be assigned to us.

How could he do this so fast when everywhere else had such long lists? He explained that Toyota wanted to tightly control the sales of Prius to prevent price-gouging (bad for their image!) and to make sure that customers who wanted a Prius, no matter where in the country they are, could get one. So when you place the order at your dealer, they are supposed to enter your name, address/phone number and info on preferred packages to the centralized Toyota customer information database. You would receive a letter from Toyota, thanking you for ordering, apologizing for the wait and giving you a cool "Hybrid-Synergy" keychain to tide you over. Also, if you placed the order before March 10, 2004, you would get a rebate check from Toyota to offset the price increase of the 2005 model when you finally got the car. Toyota then allocates specific cars to specific customers through the dealers and when the cars are shipped from Japan, they can be distributed at the dock to fill these orders. I'm sure they also have unallocated vehicles which are also distributed to dealers, but the ordered cars can be sent to the customer with faster turnaround.

If you didn't receive the letter, then your dealer didn't order your car specifically for you and I can only speculate that they are just taking their unassigned allocation and filling the orders themselves. If you call Toyota of America, you can ask if they have a record of you and when you were entered in their system...

Right after we talked with him (Nov. 15) he placed our order without requiring a deposit. We initially requested an AM package but then a week later changed our mind and decided on the BC. He expected a Seaside BC to be available just at the beginning of December so we asked for it. On Friday Nov. 26 he called to say he had a VIN number and we could come down to the dealership and sign the paperwork. We did so on Saturday Nov. 27 and just had to wait until the following Thursday, Dec. 2 for our car to be ready for pickup. He stayed late that evening so we could drive down from Berkeley after work. The car had 4 miles on it when we picked it up and it was/is beautiful! We are definitely proud owners.

He showed us all the features and we checked all the included options to make sure they were there and then we happily drove it home! We took all of the extra accessories and paid the extra $500 processing fee without trying to haggle because we were a little desperate, but otherwise it was for MSRP. Anyone willing to negotiate can probably do better, but I don't feel cheated because we got exactly what we want with practically immediate turnaround compared to our 8-10 month wait at Berkeley Toyota.

We were concerned that buying from Rickey, we would have trouble getting our $1000 deposit back from Berkeley Toyota, because the receipt from them says "Non-refundable". Rickey told us that it is illegal in California for them to keep our deposit if we decide not to buy before a contract for a specific vehicle is signed. If we had trouble with Berkeley Toyota, he suggested contacting the DMV. Fortunately, they refunded our deposit with no questions asked (maybe others before us paved the way for a smooth transaction) on Saturday. Has anyone else had good/bad experiences with this dealer?

When we went down on the 27th to sign paperwork, Rickey told us he had a Salsa Red BC package available if we knew anyone interested. We had some friends who got on the list at Berkeley Toyota one week before us who were still waiting, so we called them and they went down the next day and bought that car. They will be picking it up tonight or tomorrow! He also told us he was expecting a big allotment of vehicles in mid-December that had not been spoken for yet and we could spread the word. I've seen that he has posted here before but got banned recently for not following the rules, but if you are interested I encourage you to give him a call.

Anyway, I don't really have any newbie questions at the moment because (thanks to you) I knew so much already before receiving the car and more of my questions are answered everyday by reading these fora. Hopefully I have given something back by relating our story.

Thanks again!
Smiling happy '05 Seaside BC Prius parents in Berkeley.

P.S. on Saturday Dec. 4, No Joke I saw 2 Seaside Pearl and 1 Millennium Silver 2G Prius on MLK - 2 driving south, I was driving north and one was turning onto MLK from the west in Berkeley all at once. I wondered why all the blue ones are being sold in Berkeley ;-) but I was happy to see so many Prius on the road.