[dwei42]

I noticed from a post earlier this week that my salesman Andres is no longer with my dealer (newport european motorcars). i called today to speak to his replacement, a girl whos name i forgot. anyways i was asking her when i should be ordering the car blablabla, but the main reason for my call is to double check my place in line. however she would not tell me and said they are not giving us numbers. then i told her i was given a number from Andres and i would just like to double check. i told her he quoted that i was #6 on the list which i have in writing. however instead of telling me who was #6 on the list, she had to ask me for my name. After she looked at it, she said "oh if he told you you are number 6 then dont worry about it". that sounds kind of fishy to me so i again asked her to state that im number 6. then she went off and said they are not giving us numbers. i then told her how is that possible, caz everyone on the forum was given a number. then she started saying a bunch of excuses that didn't make any sense. whats the deal with this?

 

[Sownman]

You can read some of my thoughts on this in the OMG I'm pissed thread. You an also visit this other website.

http://66.139.73.25/lcuforum/index.php?s=

Read the thread Dealer Tricks. I'll print one of my posts about my experience with MINI from that thread. The only MINI dealer in LA that was honest wasn't completely. They played a game where they wouldn't tell you how many were on the list nor what your position was

Reprint follows...

>>What MINI dealers did was to take their monthly allotments of build numbers (about 25) and order a few cars to cust specs then add market adjusments of $2500-$5000 after you waited 4 - 9 months, in line. You might be #40 in their list, but it didn't mean your car was the 40th ordered . They might order 8 cars for customers and 17 for themselves. The majority of their allotments were ordered to dealer specs and sold to walk in buyers with no wait and loaded with highly priced dealer installed options like Lo Jac and CD changers and floor matts for $2500 plus the $2500 to $5000 market adjustment. IIRC there are 6 dealers in LA area and only one did not behave this way. Only Long Beach MINI ordered their full allotment to cust specs and did not force option packages on you. Even when a buyer backed out of the deal Long Beach put the car on the lot to walkin buyers at MSRP. To buy with them though the wait was very long. BTW this is still going on some two years later. The length of wait and amount of markup has decreased but you still can't buy an "s" model without waiting 9 months or paying over MSRP at most dealers.

You could go to Long Beach and pay MSRP but wait 12-15 months

You could go to any dealer and pay $2500 over and wait 6-9 months

You could go to any dealer and buy on the spot for $6k over MSRP

This all goes on still with MINIUSA's blessing.

As I said before the only thing that can stop this is LotusUSA. The fact that the Elise is so damn small that theres no room to add a CD changer might help<<<<<

Regards

Steve

 

[smoseley]

I say we organize a walk-out... union-style. Let's all get our deposits back at the same time. Teach them to f*ck with Lotus fans!

(Of course, this suggestion is subjectively slanted, as I would stand to benefit more than any of you from such a walk-out )