rhys wrote:
I leased a Rav4 in March when my VW Golf diesel wagon lease came up. It was the easiest, most honest, purchasing experience. Ive driven Ford, Volvo (3), Honda, VW, And now my Rav4.
Why most honest?
- they offered $1100 more for my VW then VW would.
- they communicated by email, text, phone and of course in person...ie: how i wanted to
- they told me the price. Period.
- they were ON TIME for test drive appointments (multiple)
What did VW do?
- refused to give me a price by phone, text or email on a 2018 Tiguan
- would not price end of lease buy out. As in lease is over give us keys whereas Toyota called around and got me $1100 because of low mileage on car
- never on time.
- called me back and left me an disgruntled voicemail when i called and talk to sales rep that i was going Toyota
It is all about experiences. And money of course, and with Toyota i felt valued in both
As a former Toyoto owner (2 vehicles) and on my second VW Jetta and third VW overall, what you say above is in line with my experience on the VW staff. VW Canada sales staff by and large are shit. They are just loser front line sales guys acting like they are superior because of the engineers back in Wolfsburg. For some reason the front line sales staff here in Canada think they are "better" but they did squat to deserve that "better". They are just replaceable sales staff riding on the coat tails of generally slighly better engineering in Germany (and I guess the assembly/manufacturing in Mexico is good too).
On the other hand the Toyota Canada sales staff are "peers" relative to their engineering/HQ peers back in the Aichu prefecture in Japan. They really are top notch.
I'm not sure why I put up with the crap from the VW sales staff but its only once in a while (as in, it's when I replace an old VW with a new one). I tried to convince my wife to replace her Subaru Legacy with a VW eGolf, but the entire sales/front end interface, sent her straight back to the Subaru dealership to get an Impreza.
I'm eyeing the eGolf, but might end up with a Toyota Plug In Hybrid on my next new one.