Talked to them. This dealer is CHARGING MARKUP!!!

 

Riverside Honda, Internet Fleet, not the actual dealer. Pricilla Lopez, (951)509-6535, priscilla@riversidemetro.com. The manager is Larry Wu. Their office is in Volkswagon. They didn't charge markup when I bought it.

 

just to clear up a few things.

deposits are useless in the state of california. until you take delivery of the car, no sale.

there is no such thing as ordering a car from factory, honda can only produce so many cars, and they are allocated to the dealerships. for cars that are on a limited production such as fits, you can potentially wait month to get the manual tranny in the color you want, with no guarantee if it will ever show up.

i dont know the color you want, but take a blue manual base fit for example, there is 1 in the state of california in stock, with 2 on order to arrive in the next month. so if you are looking to purchase this month, you are getting one of three in the entire state.

 

I think we should ban together and refuse to pay markup. I guess that applies to people who don't want to pay markup and not to those who would pay for one at any cost. I would like to see a couple of threads (stickied) "No Markup Dealerships" and "Dealerships with Markup" and have people post their findings. I can start. Oakland Honda, Autowest Honda and Tracy Honda 1K or 2K markup.

 

Good idea. Dealers with markup/Dealers w/o markup. Sounds like a worthwhile topic to me...

 

Just to clear a few things BACK up, there are many dealers that WILL honor deposits. Now most of them that I've dealt with have NOT been Honda dealers, but does something about Honda dealers make them so special as to think that they can shrug off a buyer's serious intent to purchase? Tell you what: dealers start treating our serious intent to buy with respect and ethics, and we'll start treating them with more respect in return.

As far as ordering cars goes, a dealer CAN see the inbound Fits, and a buyer could potentially reserve one of those somehow, without having the rug pulled out from underneath him moments before a purchase.

You want to talk limited production? Tens of thousands of cars in the first year of U.S. sales is hardly limited production. Will the supply side keep up with demand? We'll that's a different story. That is what you meant, right? I mean it must be because you're more intelligent than that, right??

 

???...Why???? Toyota will custom order the Yaris if I asked them to...It's as simple as writing down the car, trim, color, options and packages that I want, order it, and the factory builds it, isn't it?
And why are deposits useless? I had a dealer once tell me that before, and his argument was that since the car is not there, it's meaningless to deal on a price. I told him that he's stupid (ok, I didn't say that), it makes perfect sense, there is a word for it, and it's called backorder.
The only reason I can think of dealers not accepting deposits is because in that case the price of the car is already set with the customer, and then the dealer is forced to sell the car at that price. The dealers don't want to do that because there is a high chance that another customer coming in later offering to pay a higher price. In the end it's all about dealers trying to squeeze as much as they can from us, when we are actually willing to pay MSRP...eeesh.

 

Anyone catch King of Cars on A&E? I get a laugh out of that show but it's sad how they (the stealership) screws their customers.

 

deposits are meaningless. until you take delivery of a car, the transaction is not finished. you can pay a deposit, and if you dont take delivery of the car, the dealer by law will refund your money. you can refuse to take delivery for any and no reason at all.

certain dealerships, espeically toyota (scions), take deposit, their sale is based on building the car to your custom spec. honda is different, there are very few options of the car from factory.

we indeed can see incoming units, for only for roughly a month ahead. you can reserve the unit, but no sale takes place until the vin is on the contract, we dont see the vin until 2 weeks or so before the car arrive.

as far as limited production, why not? each dealership will only get 2-6 fits per month for the rest of the year. 4 different models, 7 different colors, 28 different combinations, most dealership will maybe see 3-4 ofch color in automatic, and maybe 1 of each color in manual, for the entire production year.

you can be as serious as you want your intent to purchase, im sure you do want to buy the car. however, the fact remains you cant order cars from honda, deposit have zero leverage in the process, and for the exact color and transmission, you can potentially wait a whole year before seeing it at the dealership.

 

I had a great experience at vista honda in ventura.

 

How long after the car is built will it usually take to get the VIN#?

 

usually 6-7 weeks from build date to arrival, we get vins around 2 weeks before it arrives.

the timeframe is slightly different for different parts of the country.

 

Thank you.

 

-So all the people on the waiting list are basically waiting for a car that may not even come?
-When dealerships get cars, do they order specific trims/color/option? Or are they just "whatever the factory sends them is what they get" kind of thing?
-If you put a deposit for a car that you see is coming, but no VIN # yet, then does it still mean that the car is defitnitely yours?
-And most of all, why is it that when cutomers want to know what's going on, they never explain the whole process and how the system works? People always get ambiguous answer like "oh, we don't know" "lemme check and I'll call you back (which they never do)". If they are tired of explaining the same thing to all people, a detailed handout would do!

I think people are frustrated because they don't know how the delivery works, and they feel like they should be getting more updates and accessibility than they are. If the dealers would just take the time to explain to them why it's not their fault that the customers can't have the car when they want to, then there would be less animosity towards them. Just my speculation; please correct me if I'm wrong.

Sorry for the amount of questions, just something I've always wanted to know.

 

Must be a west coast thing. I had a painless purchase experience at my dealer on Long Island, NY and if it wasn't for work I'd would have taken delivery on it already. I'll have it this weekend.

 

we can make certain requests for the color. honda will try to accmodate it. they will modify what color/spec is being ordered to what they are producing. cars like civic hybrid, any navi models, fits, dealerships will take whatever shows up.

as for the deposit question, if you write the contract, the car is yours at the discussed price. most dealership will just accept the lost profit if someone else offers them more before the vehicle arrive. however, i've known of dealership backing out of deals to sell to someone else at a higher profit for presold vehicles, quite rare though.

as for not explaining the process, i have no idea, i explain it most of the time if someone asks. my predicted time frame for delivery of my pre sold units are usually on time, but i've been wrong before. i have 1 customer waiting almost 3 weeks for a civic currently, and i thought i would have the car in roughly 1 week. it was a honest mistake, i tried to get the car, but just couldnt.

 

3 in the state...that is just crazy..for the whole state...i should check how many 5spd are in Florida...i got mine, but be interesting just to know what number of 5spd there are

 

I'm having the same experience here in Southern CA. I basicly have 5 different dealers looking for me and none of them have been succesful. One dealer I even have a "deal" with already meaning we went in and signed all the paper work. Our exact car, vivid blue base manual, was at another dealer and they were supposed to do a dealer trade out. They said it would be here the next day. Well two days went by and not only did they not do the the trade out but they never even contacted the other dealer to tell them to hold the car. I'm sure you can guess what happened, thats right the car sold. Basicly between the 5 different dealers we are "working" with none of them seem to care much for putting us in the car WE WANT. They call every couple days telling us they have a black automatic or a red sport manual. What part of we only want a blue or white manual base/sport do they not understand. Whats even worse is that sometimes they call and say we got your car in and then 5 min later they call back and say but it's already been sold. I'm like WTF and they just say well I didn't realize the car came in and since they are such demand one of my coworkers sold it. I mean here I am with money ready and wanting to buy a 4th car for only the two of us (it's not like we need this car when we already have 3 others) and no one is willing to do thier job. We have been trying for a month now with no luck. With the crappy dealers making false promises, selling cars that should have went to us first, and thier lack of help we'll just wait until we get settled in NV after we move and try there.

 

Unless the deposit has been deposited into an account, it's a legal bind that goes with the papers that a buyer and Rep signed.

There is such a thing as ordering a car from the factory.

 

email this guy, honest and decent, met him through these forums
howie.phan@gilroyhonda.com