Ok so I thought that building a new computer a few months back was difficult.  Like, it was, but my fiancée and I are getting our first car together and it was been a wildly crazy nightmare of dealership lies and my phone blowing up.

Toyota has a configurator online to piece together the exact car/packages you want.  Victoria and I spent a lot of time over the last month or so reading up on and checking out vehicles, so when we finally selected the car and options we were very set on what we were looking for.  Once you configure the car, there’s an option to contact a dealership to get the car sent to their location for pickup.

Cool, right?

Naw, bro…

So the dealership says that they don’t have a car with those options in stock, which is fine.  I say I did the configurator and that we’d like to order that car to their location.  “Oh, that’ll take four to six months,” says the rep.

Four to six months?  There’s nothing on their website that indicated that that would be the case, which is pretty lame.  I totally understand shortages affecting the car market, but at least give the customer a heads up that the configurator cars are going to take half a year to arrive.

Fine, we’ll search through local stock to get a car that’s mostly what we’re looking for.

We find one that’s basically spot on and as paraphrased in the comic I’ll say it was roughly listed as $20,000.  I called the dealership.

“Oh that car is actually $25,000,” says the rep.

“…but online its only twenty,” I reply.

“Yeah there are markups based on how the market is looking,” says the rep.

Now, this is where I deviated from how the comic above goes.

“So what you’re saying is that this car that you’ve priced at $25,000 is the same as the $20,000 car quote?”

“Yes.”

“So I’m paying $5,000 extra that you tacked on without receiving any other bonuses or packages?”

“That’s correct.”

“…why would I pay $5,000 for zero extra value?”

“Sir, that’s the price of the car.”

“The MSRP is twenty,” I say.

“That’s just the MSRP, there’s a markup,” she says.

Now, in the event that you don’t know what MSRP is, it’s the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price.  It’s what the manufacturer, in this case Toyota, says the price of the product is.  Toyota says it’s $20,000, but they’re charging an extra $5,000 for the heck of it.

I mentioned computer parts before.  While the parts shortage ballooned aftermarket prices, items sold at retailers (if you were fortunate enough to land one) were sold at MSRP.  In this case, Toyota is acting as an aftermarket seller for their own products.

This is a colossally disgusting business practice.

To make a really long story short, we eventually found a place that had mostly what we were looking for and they were reasonable enough to not have a random markup tacked on…

…but that took hours of calls, one dealership hanging up on me, and scouring the internet to find something in our region that was viable.

Boooooooooo Toyota, boooooooooooo.

Oh wait, one more wild conversation with a different dealership, paraphrased excerpt beginning from being told that car I’d like to buy isn’t available despite being listed on their website as available:

“Are there any cars you have scheduled to arrive in the next month or so that I could put a deposit on?” I asked.

“Yeah, we have a model that fits your needs arriving at the end of November.”

“Cool, how much is that one?”

“I don’t know,” said the rep.

“…could you find out?” I asked.

“Only the managers know the price of incoming cars, but I can check with them and give you a call back.”

“Cool, thanks.”

Our call ended and a few hours later I got a call from the same dealership, this time from that representative’s manager. (names randomized)

“Hi, I’m John, I believe you were taking to Steve before about [car model]?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok great, well I’m happy to tell you that it’ll be arriving by the end of November,” the manager proudly stated.

“…I already knew that, I wanted to know what the price was to see if I want to put a deposit on it.”

“I don’t know what the price is yet,” he said.

“When I spoke to Steve, I said I wanted to know the price of the car.  Steve said he didn’t know, but would check with a manager and give me a call back.  You’re now calling me back, and you still don’t know the price.  You called for no reason, you’re literally wasting my time.”

“Oh, I wanted to check to see if you wanted the prime version of the car,” lied John.

“I never once said to Steve that I wanted the prime version.  I want to know the price of the car, and if I like the price I will put a deposit down.”

“I don’t know the price yet.”

“Why is that?”

“We might want to charge more for it in November,” John said.

TOYOTA, EVERYONE!