Miata Mailing List: February 2000, Message #335

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That's OK, you're not alone with Oak Tree. I had my own experience there. I 
was buying a new 10AE, knew what I wanted (it's NOT like there's a ton of 
options to look over for the 10AE), and I didn't have to deal with 
financing. It was a straight deal of "walk into a dealer, point at the car, 
say 'that's what I want', and write a check, making the sales guy a VERY 
happy man."

Simple, right?

Except for the fact that I stood there, ignored (literally) by their 
sales-folk for about 20 minutes. I got one guy's attention, and as soon as 
he made eye contact with me, rather than earn a commission, he decided to 
turn around and leave. Another guy walked through the showroom from smoking 
(so he wasn't exactly "busy with a customer") saw me standing next to the 
car admiring the price tag, and continued right through and left for god 
knows where. I even went so far as to "accidentally" honk the horn for 3 
seconds while I was "trying out" the driver's seat. There was nobody else 
working the showroom, no receptionist to ask for help, nothing.

I decided at that point, that if it was that hard getting them to take my 
money, it was going to be harder still to get service out of them later. I 
wandered around until I found someone who seemed to be sorta important, 
explained to them the how and why they had lost my business and commission, 
and then walked out.

I ended up going to Almaden Mazda (also in San Jose) and had the deal 
closed in 20 minutes, and was quite happy with the results.

D



At 08:22 PM 2/2/00 -0500, Toby Weir-Jones wrote:
>I just got back from the parts counter at Oak Tree Mazda in San Jose, CA.
>
>I was there asking about getting a factory car cover (the standard one, not
>the lightweight one).  I told the fellow behind the desk that I was
>interested in hearing what club discounts were available.
>
>He pulled out the Big Book O' Official Prices and turned to the appropriate
>page.  Reading upside-down, I could see it listed a dealer cost of ~$100 and
>a suggested retail of ~$150.  Leaving the book open, he turned to his big
>calculator, entered a starting value of $186, multiplied that by 0.8, and
>offered me the "20% discounted price" of $148.80.
>
>I decided it wasn't worth pointing out the interesting math in place here,
>thanked him politely, and left.
>
>twj
>
>-----
>Toby Weir-Jones                  Customer Service Engineer
>twj@counterpane.com              Counterpane Internet Security
>+1 408.556.0323                  San Jose, CA