It’s beginning to feel like everywhere I turn, I see or hear advertisements for your exciting and innovative new Prius. What I want to know is why you’re spending so much money advertising this car when you can’t even make enough of them for those of us who already have placed orders, and your local dealers are now suggesting that the wait for new orders could be as much as six to eight months?
Mightn’t you put that money to better use by spending it on an extra shift at the factory, or building another?
I can’t believe they’re in thinking about making you wait 6 months. This to me calls for giving you something extra. An extra upgrade or some money off the price. I know that this is a great car and all but doesn’t Honda make something similar?
This isn’t right.
They’re now starting to tell people placing orders that it could take six months or more; I ordered mine back in October when dealers thought it would only be a month or two, and my dealer is still hopeful that I’ll have a car sometime in February, though that has slipped from “possibly before Thanksgiving and definitely before the end of the [2003] calendar year.” To be fair, I believe the dealers were caught by surprise as well; when the last big shipment arrived in New York, they were stunned to find out that there weren’t as many of the most popular trim level as they had expected.
And they’re definitely not going to give anything extra for the wait. Some dealers, though not mine, are selling it for more than MSRP; most, like mine, are charging precisely MSRP. There are no deals to be made on the car, since demand is so much higher than supply.
Honda does make something similar, but not close enough to my mind. I don’t really mind waiting, as long as they’re straightforward with me. My boss ordered one, and her dealer has been stringing her along; I feel like mine at least has been very honest about the delays.