Reason for Visit: Sales
I recommend this dealer: Yes
My Review of Tempe Toyota:
I should put an asterisk by this because I went through the Internet Fleet Dept. through cars.com. I didn't walk into the showroom and haggle with the dealers standing in the lobby. The internet fleet salesman make less commission per vehicle but sell more volume so they are used to selling cars and lower prices. And you can tell because my dealer wasn't wearing a Rolex and trying to flash his bling. He wore beatup shoes and had a Timex and didn't look like was making a lot of money. It's a different dept. than the showroom dealers. I highly recommend going through this process. I made an appointment and went straight to his office. He even warned me that the showroom dealers would tell me that he wasn't there and that I should ignore those dealers and go straight back to his office. I got 750 bellow invoice when purchasing this vehicle.
I'm an informed consumer and I was well aware of the "Black Book" value vs. the "Blue Book Value" of my car. The Black Book is what dealers will actually give you for your car versus the Blue Book. I had Black Book quotes with me in addition to calculating the Dealer Holdout and other miscelaneous charges. I had bad experiences at Larry Miller Toyota in Glendale and Bell Toyota in Phoenix which I wrote about. I was offerred by far the best value for my trade in and bottom line price at Tempe Toyota. I bought a 2005 Forerunner from John and I highly recommend him. He was pretty straight to the point without a lot of warm and fuzzy fake compliments that I received at the other two dealerships. But I could also tell that he knew I was informed. I called several other dealers from the e-mails I received from Cars.com and none of them were willing to deal with me when I spoke with them over the telephone and mentioned the information I knew. John was the only who was willing to deal with me.
Most importantly the car was in pristine condition. It had only 7 miles when I test drove it which implied it had only been test driven once. The Forerunner tested at Bell had 500 miles and the one at Larry Miller had close to 3000 miles on it but it was a demo model.
The only negative thing is that the color of the interior I requested was not honored. This was a mistake and one that John didn't seem willing to correct after the deal was already signed. However, the difference in interior color was so slight and I had missed the distinction as well upon driving it so I didn't make a fuss about it especially when the car had only 7 miles on it. (dark blue cloth vs. dark gray cloth) The other problem is that there was a lot of waiting to get the paperwork in order upon completion of the deal. I waited an additional 3 hours after everything was done.
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