I know I"m not the only one and there have been posts about this, but I wanted to add to the growing list of people who are done with Toyota and their dealerships. When dealerships take advantage of customers on a large scale (I’m looking specifically at Toyota who has added dealer markups of $12-15K for a Toyota Rav4 Prime), all the decades of being a customer and advocate goes away. Yes, you can take advantage because of the supply situation, and Toyota can lose lifetime customers in the process because of the dealership and Toyota not doing anything about it when customers complained.
I will consider Lexus without giving them the benefit of the doubt, but not Toyota because of the actions of just about every Toyota dealership I have seen over the past two years. I’m just one person, but I’ve got to think there are more like me who are done with Toyota for their dealerships’ actions.
You are not alone. I can buy whatever car I want and I refuse to deal with the shenanigans with the Toyota dealers and distributors.
It’s not Toyota as a manufacturer, it’s specific dealerships. Toyota has no control over what their dealers sell their vehicles for.
As someone who was shopping for a GR Corolla, I know all about pointless markups. There are dealerships who strictly sell at MSRP, but you have to do the work to find them.
Go to a different dealership
It sucks, but as others have said, what can toyota do? The answer is not much. What you can do is shame the dealer publicly and do business with an msrp only dealer. That’s what I did when I was looking for a GR Corolla, and eventually, I found a dealer that was msrp only and had an open allocation spot. The name of the game here is patience. You may have to wait a bit, but you’ll get your car if you choose the right dealer and are willing to wait. It sucks, but this is just the market right now, especially for new toyotas.
OP, what do you want Toyota to do?
State laws mandate that Toyota sell through dealerships. Dealers want profit, Toyota is not to blame for markups. Look up auto dealer laws in your state.
Maybe ask Toyota if u can bypass the middleman, honestly dealerships are stupid as fk. They make money on parts n repairs… don’t be mad at Toyota. It’s ur local dealership. Learn to haggle.
I bought my RAV4 at a Toyota dealership that doesn’t do dealer markup… that’s why I bought it there
THEY DONT NEED YOU…You were never a customer of Toyota anyways. Anyone who says they are done with brand just because of inflated MSRP pricing, you was never a customer to begin with. If you don’t care about durability and reliability, go somewhere else.
This is where negotiating cones in…and if they don’t want to sell you the car at the price you want, go somewhere else. But remember, if you buy with emotion, you already lost.
And you know who you should really blame (next to the dealers)? Those idiot buyers ahead of you that actually paid the dealer markups because they had to buy those cars, basically rewarding bad behavior.
Toyota can’t do jack shit about it based on US franchise laws.
Horrible time to buy right now. Not just at Toyota. Ford F150’s going for over $100k… I’ll stick with what I got now thanks. No hurry whatsoever.
For what it’s worth, I bought a '23 Prius in October with zero dealer markup, zero hassle from the finance department to try to upsell me on anything. There ARE good dealers out there, maybe just not in your area.
I dont think Mazda are doing that
You can shear a sheep dozens of times. You can only skin them once.