ItzFilyO

Yup, never ever consider buying a demo car or a retired rental car. They trashed that thing like hell and u buy it. lol

tknx

Lexusfreez - your posts are pretty damn incoherent, I suspect you misunderstood what was going on.

If the car is titled as a new car, you get all the new car stuff - warranty, etc.

What the manager said on the floor is most likely - you are getting a used car titled as a new car. We aren't going to repaint it for you or do anything else like that.

And, in the end, all that matters is what is on the paperwork.

99alta

Don't buy the TLX ! It's not ready for prime time. I REALLY wanted one as we have a local dealership, but the car just didn't feel right+++ compared to my TL.

I spent a lot of time north and south of my location test driving cars and finally bought a Lexus GS350 AWD. I just love the car ! and am sooooo glad I didn't buy the TLX!

As for the dealer experience, the first thing that comes to mind is we live in Alberta. Since the latest Oil Boom service has been relegated to a word as opposed to an action.

Atomic350F

If you "walked out" then you didnt actually take delivery of the car and it's not yours right? The deal is not done until you decide to drive off in the car in California anyways.. not sure of the laws in your area.

A lot of times "demo" at a dealership can mean an "unwind".. this is a car that was purchased yet the financing was not approved, so the customer brings the car back and the dealer must sell it as a "USED" car. These are not usually great deals because the dealer has bought it as new, then must sell it as used. Not sure if this was the case here though.

Anytime you purchase a car though even brand spankin new, definitely inspect that thing up and down for any minor blemishes before you even start negotiating, I have found damages on brand new cars even that have made me keep on looking in the past. If you find damages and you are fine with them making repairs, get this in writing on the "Due Bill" included with all the contracts and disclosures. Negotiating after the fact is hard!

I agree customer service is lacking across the board nowadays though, and you can find crappy service anywhere you go now sadly. We gotta be extra careful out there.. regardless of brand you are shopping for. I hope you dont let a bad customer service experience turn you away from a great brand with known reliability and resale value over many other competitors.

COOLIS

Never buy a demo or loaner, no matter how good the deal is! These things are trashed, sometimes beyond belief. I got a 2013 RX350 loaner with 3,000 miles on the clock last week. The car looked as if it had closer to 100,000 miles on the clock. Exterior had all sorts of dings and scratches and the interior was thrashed. The driver seat leather was well worn and the passenger seat had gum all over it. I had to go back into the dealer to make sure they had notes on all this so I wouldn't be charged. No amount of detailing could bring this car back to new condition.

Your dealer was wrong for saying they would take car of the scratches/dings and not doing that. It happens more often than you think. You were wise refusing delivery of the car, b/c a lot of the time when you bring the car back, they won't remember that conversation about the free detail or whatever it is they offered you.

The warranty form saying N/A under the date doesn't back up your claim that the warranty was supposed to be from the day you purchased, not the original in-service date. If it did indeed say the day you purchased the car, you would have a claim, but the N/A will get you nowhere.

ToyLexFAM

Whatever happened to, "The customer is always right?" How long would it take a GM to apologize, jump in the car, run the car back to the detail shop, instruct the detail shop to spend 30 minutes cleaning and polishing the vehicle, and in the meantime buy the purchaser a cup of coffee? For that matter, the paperwork would take longer than a clean, buff, wax, polish and touch up.

Excuses tend to drive customers away.

bclexus

SW17LS

The issue is the way that he reacted with the delivery woman, and the fact that he just said he wasn't going to accept the vehicle and turned around and walked out as opposed to giving them the opportunity to make it right for him right then and there. That sent everybody reeling, put the service manager hugely on the defensive, and it was all going to be downhill from there.

The customer is not always right. If people have unreasonable expectations, and/or they aren't treating the dealership personnel with respect (I think this was an issue here, and he more or less admitted it was when he finally said he thought I may be right)...then the customer is wrong. He was 100% right in expecting a clean, detailed vehicle. Was he 100% right in expecting that scratches, chips, etc are going to be addressed on a used car? We don't know what the agreement was. Was he right in just turning around and bailing? No.

I have a really hard time believing that had he just said to the delivery woman "I really would prefer you guys handle these issues before I take delivery, let me know when I can come back to do that so you have time to address these problems" that it would have come to this.

Instead, he says "I will not take delivery like this!" and walks out. Well...where do we all go from here?

lexusfreez

Thanks all, but it seems Lexus Canada has better sense about this whole thing than a lot of 'experts' here who know more about what happened there than me.

I had reached out to Lexus Canada CEO over the weekend and heard back from his team this morning. That's all I wanted.

They will probably make the dealership understand the Lexus standards and how a customer is not entering into a conflict resolution match when he walks into a dealership.

And it's okay to be annoyed when your 'new' car is not delivered as per expectation.

For all those rooting for the 'manager' and his lousy work, your standards and expectations are different from mine. If I am paying top dollar, I want service. If they won't deliver the promised service, I'll complain and that's my prerogative. And that's all I did. Thankfully, Lexus does not have lousy standards such as yours or I'd have not had an ear for my complaint in a thousand years.

Finally stop telling me or assuming what I did or didn't when you were not even within the 3000 mile vicinity of the incident. And Stop acting as an expert as if you were sitting there with a video recording of the whole incident, entirely based on 'your experience' of the world.

SW17LS

Thats great that Lexus told you that...but what else are they going to tell you? If it makes you feel better to think that they're going to do something to the dealer...fine. I would bet you $1,000 they never even call the dealer...they get 100+ of that same complaint every day, and they have a canned response. If that makes you happy, great. You still don't have the car or the deal you wanted so to me thats still a loss.

Nobody is rooting for the sales manager, I am just trying to help you understand how what you put into an exchange with a dealer effects what the outcome is. Whenever you have a conflict...and you want it resolved...you are participating in "conflict resolution". This thing could have been settled and you'd be driving your car today.

It seems to me that you're not really interested in this conflict being resolved, or the many good suggestions I and others gave you about how to resolve it would interest you. You're mad and you want to whine and complain about it which is fine I suppose...to me such things are just a waste of time. I just can't imagine getting so emotional over a business transaction...you really let this whole thing get to you. Good luck

01LEXPL

iTrader: (10)

Wow... so much dense in this thread.

OP is right, y'all are wrong. Canadian business is different. We aren't the land of ambulance and 'i'll sue you to death' and many businesses know this and use it to their advantage.

OP is disadvantaged, since one conniving owner, owns the two dealers so these practices are going on unnoticed. Not everyone is a smart consumer, those born with a silver spoon in their mouths look at the prestige of the experience of a NEW car, and won't ever see the used car buying experience. And those up and comers won't know a new car experience since they're always buying used.

So why is it that the dealer can flip flop between how they treat clientele?

SW13GS quit being an argumentative Lexus sackrider. You don't know how business is run in Canada. We don't cry wolf over any little thing and treaten to sue which is why MANY dealers and brands get away with similar behaviour. Canadian consumers are used to getting shafted [for the most part] and smart consumers like OP and myself won't ever have that! Especially when a brand tries to tell you its a 'pursuit of perfection'.... start with your clients!

ie. I had a similar experience, regarding a small series of questions for my recent subaru. The dealer ***** were being rude and unhelpful - from a smaller town, being the monopoly; why? because they CAN. One call on my end to the Subaru Canada had them sort the issues, and a local dealer confirmed that the small town dealer is known to be brutal for customer service.

I don't know how Lexus Canada will handle this, but in my case, the Subaru head office called me back pertaining to my issue and updated me that they spoke with said dealer and not a generic answer.

Canadian business is slightly tweaked. In the US they fight for clientele with ideal service such as Sewell Lexus. They're known everywhere, and some are bashed on here all day long.

In Canada, these mega-rich families buy up rights in cities across provinces - like a mob. One controls brands ABC, another XYZ, and that's why they can get away with such practices. It's not uncommon in smaller places like Edmonton. Looking at vast cities such as Toronto or Vancouver this doesn't happen since competition [like the US] is fierce.

And unfortunately, money doesn't talk because I too, would have to drive 160KM's away to the next nearest Lexus dealer in another province so that my "money could talk", much like some are implying in this thread. That's a serious thought to drive that far to look at cars...

SW17LS

LOL, I am hardly a Lexus "sackrider". The business he has an issue with here isn't Lexus anyways, its the dealership. Business is business my friend, I have done business in Canada and with Canadians. Who is saying anything about suing anybody?!? Where did that come from? If anybody is crying wolf, its him.

You say you and he are "smart" consumers. Well...what does that get you? If he wants a Lexus he needs to deal with this dealer. If I had been there, I promise you I would have my Lexus, with the deal agreed upon, well detailed and with the issues repaired by now. What does he have? A canned form email from Lexus Canada telling him how sorry they were? And this makes him a smart consumer? He's spent at least a month of his life dealing with this car and he has nothing to show for it.

Sometimes in life (and definitely in business) you have to decide between getting what you want, and being "right". Well...he has the satisfaction of being "right"...but now he needs to find a different brand car to buy.

salvadorik

iTrader: (1)

In this case I have to fully side with OP. GM's statement of "What do you expect from a used car"' is absolutely wrong however you want to look at it. Right now the brand new GS with something like 5miles or so is sold at or below invoice price here in the state of CA. The pricing for a demo car is higher than the "used" (already owned and traded back to the dealer) car so clearly the demo needs to justify that price differential. Or it is simply better to a buy a brand new for a deeply discounted price. GS is not kind of car that flies of the lot frequently so the customer has a good amount of leverage here to use. What I am trying to say here is the OP's' expectations were/are very reasonable i.e. fully detailed, scratch free and a brand new like condition (at least cosmetically).

Also referring back to the discussion of a customer entitlement and expectations from Lexus Dealerships. I am a firm believer that Lexus Dealerships always must act with high degree of professionalism, demonstrate unsurpassed level of integrity and always be straightforward with a customer. And this must be true even if a customer is not acting properly. I completely ignore the argument stating that all dealerships independently owned so they have different levels of customer service. I think this is a BS excuse. All of them carry "Lexus" name regardless of the ownership so all of them must adhere to the Lexus standards (see above for the standards), period!

Last but not least, although I do agree with the fact that we cannot draw a conclusion on a Lexus brand based one dealership experience, I do think it nonetheless leaves a bad impression on the brand. The competition in the luxury auto segment is very tough. All German brands provide with excellent customer service. I loved Audi's service for two years that I experienced, for example. So expectations are extremely high from Lexus. The customer services is Lexus's strong point and they'd better keep it this way. Enough said.

SW17LS

His response WAS the wrong approach, I agree. My point is what was the OP throwing at the delivery person and at the GM to get that response out of him? People are only human, however well trained and experienced we may be we all have a point at which we crack and react in a way that we shouldn't have or wouldn't under normal circumstances. Somebody doesn't get to be a GM at a Lexus or any other dealer if he just throws stuff out at customers like that on a regular basis.

As for why the demo is more than the used car, its because its never been titled and gets the new car warranty, financing rates, etc. His deal on the car was VERY good. You can't buy a brand new 2014 GS for $15k off sticker....even in CA.

I also would agree, but my question to you would be have you ever worked in sales or customer service and tried to remain calm, professional, and even upbeat when somebody is berating you? Its hard. And people do fall down sometimes. People in situations like this can be really nasty. I'm as cool a customer as they come, but I have thrown people out of my office before because they were just plain too mean and nasty to do business with.

Again...when I go into a business negotiation or transaction I'm not trying to save the world, I'm just trying to get what I want for the amount I want. I'm very pragmatic. If you really expect this incredible experience, you WILL be disappointed.

But its the truth. The truth is that for legal reasons Lexus doesn't have a tremendous amount of control over dealers. You can "think it should be another way", but it isn't that way. Quality DOES vary.

salvadorik

iTrader: (1)

Actually the miles driven while being a demo eats up the manufacturer's warranty (even if the car was not titled), lets say the customer bought a demo with 7K miles so the customer would have 43K miles of the remaining warranty left. I don't see here an advantage as far as the warranty is concerned.

I understand that sometimes it is hard to control the emotion when customers are acting weird but sales department must maintain the professionalism regardless. I see everyday my customers complaining to me about the taxes. They think I am assessing the taxes to them and they don't agree when they see how much taxes they have to pay. Every time I have to patiently explain that it is the law and everyone is treated the same way. If said to my client "what did you expect? to get a refund instead?" and act all defensive, I would lose a lot of clients. The emotions must be kept at bay when the service is a major component of a purchase.

I would have walked away as well if GM asked me this kinda question (what I expect from a used car). GM needs to learn how behave properly. There are plenty of Lexus dealerships that can and will accommodate my needs here in Bay Area.