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Bill Brown

A complicated man.

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I wanted to skewer Bell Road Toyota for a recent experience I had there. I've already left the same review at Dealer Rater, but it's worth it to leave it here as well. Hopefully, I can steer someone else away from their bait-and-switch tactics.

I filled out an application on Bell Road Toyota's web site. I was pretty quickly called by Doreen from the Internet Sales Department. I explained my situation over the phone: my wife and I have twins and so would have to do our stuff separately. She said that that was fine and that I just needed to come down to start the ball rolling. She seemed very nice on the phone. Little did I know that my situation was just what she needed for a little bait-and-switch action.

When I got there we got down to business. I knew going in that my trade-in was going to be the problem so we tackled that pretty quickly. She said that it was going to be upside down but that it was doable. With that squared away, she pulled my credit. She said that my credit was good and that I qualified for a $520-525/month loan at 60 months for a 2005 Toyota Sienna with $3,000 down. This is almost exactly what I was hoping to get. She indicated that my wife would just need to come down, pick out a color, sign her part of the paper work, and then once I signed my part we could enjoy our new vehicle. I left quite pleased at the experience because it was quick, painless, and no pressure.

My wife got there and picked out the car she wanted. Then Doreen dropped the bomb: the loan was going to be $580/month at 60 months with $3,000 down. That was way out of line with what we had agreed on and I told my wife to decline the whole thing. My wife called me as soon as she got out of the dealership and told me the whole story. As I was preparing to let Doreen know about my displeasure and attempt to save the transaction, Doreen called me.

I asked what the heck had happened. She told me that the original estimation for my 2000 Dodge Durango didn't include a $2,000 new car rebate from Dodge and that was responsible for the bump in payments. I thought that that sounded fishy so I suggested that I could put an additional $2,000 down to keep everything as it was before. She said that that would only bring the payments down to $560/month so I asked if we could bump the term to 72 months. She said that that would get it down to $540/month. I replied incredulously that this wasn't adding up in my mind and that there was something she wasn't telling me. She said she was sorry and she took full responsibility for this mix up--I think full responsibility to her meant that she admitted that there was a mix up.

Basically, Bell Road Toyota attempted to sucker me out of my money at every opportunity and did a classic bait-and-switch with verbal assurances to try and get me to pay more. I wouldn't do any business with them and I would heartily recommend that people avoid this company.

If you want to help other people to avoid this awful dealership, please link to Bell Road Toyota with this blog entry as the href. They deserve it: I have never had a dealer so baldly lie to me and I've had some doozies in my time.