|
Test Driving Dealers As scientific as the SSI is, it merely presents only a general picture of the entire dealership experience. Though not as meticulous in terms of the approach, motioncars.com went through a dealer test drive last November 25. motioncars.com reckons that there’s more to the car buying experience than the SSI suggests. Since we were in the market for a new mini-SUV, it was fairly easy to limit the competition to three: the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and the Toyota RAV4. Picking the C5 / Libis area dealers, mainly they're nearest to home, we went to the following dealers in this order: Toyota Shaw-Ortigas, Honda Cars Pasig and Ford Libis. Throughout the afternoon, we used different criteria based on the J.D. Power and Associates SSI ranging from trade-in value, dealer facility to knowledge of product by salesperson to determine the overall victor and perhaps the privileged supplier for the new vehicle. (The complete rankings are available at the end of the article.) Toyota Shaw-Ortigas Toyota Shaw-Ortigas prides itself having won the "Vehicle Sales Department of the Year Award" for three years running. Judging from the outside, they have a big inventory mostly made up of Corollas, Corolla Altis, and Revos. Facilities are complete, but not outstanding. Customer parking is easy, and the repair bays are spotless. The showroom is on the cramped side, but at least they have one of each vehicle on display: Corolla Altis, Camry, Revo, and yes, a RAV4. The overall layout of the place is a bit disorienting as the vehicle sales shares its space with the service department. The response time of Marketing Professional Jenny Vi Dela Cruz was fast, approaching us at five minutes after we entered the showroom. She had surprisingly good knowledge of the key features of the RAV4 including the full-time all-wheel drive and the split-fold removable rear seats. She also knew the CR-V quite well, but was a bit clueless about the Escape. She also made the mistake of describing the VVTi as an improved version of Honda’s VTEC-3. Though knowledgeable about the features, Jenny used Toyota’s new pricing promos in trying to seal the deal. Freebies are typical, but complete: LTO registration, tint, floor mats and rust proofing. For cash basis, Jenny is willing to throw in the J-sport grille and rear spoiler as well. The deal is good, as long as everything is done in-house: 45,000 pesos worth of accessories. Third- party financing cuts the discount in half. A trade-in option for any used car is available, and delivery time is quick: roughly two weeks after reservation. However, there was minimal paperwork done during our visit. The pricing promo wasn’t explained in detail, and Jenny neglected to give us a financing computation, much less a product brochure. Fortunately, she did fax a complete set of paperwork (product brochure, financing promo, computations, and such) a day later. |
|
|||||||||
