I recently purchased a car from Toyota of Pasadena and I must say that they are shady...\r
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Even after I told them that I was going to write a check for the car, they financed the car without telling me and basically used my check to pay off the loan, probably so that they could get a kick back from the financing bank. I only found out about this when I met with the Finance person to sign all of the paperwork. And even then, he didn't tell me about it...when I saw the paperwork and told the Finance person that I was not financing the vehicle but was going to write a check for it, he said ""no problem, that's your choice. You can write a check of it and we'll pay off the loan or you can finance it"".\r
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I think this all began when the salesperson asked for my SSN and the types of data that would be used to apply for a loan. When I asked him what this was for because I was not going to finance the vehicle but write a check for it, he said that they have to run a credit check to see if they can accept a personal check from me.\r
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And the salesperson was an idiot... They had an ad in the paper that day so I took it in with me and when I showed it to him, his questions were: 1. Are you sure that's our ad (even though it had Toyota of Pasadena on it); 2. Are you sure that was in today's paper (even though it had that day's date on it).\r
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And after they agreed to beat a previous quote that I got from another dealer, the salesman told me ""oh by the way, we installed an 'alarm system' on the car which wasn't listed on the window sticker so it will be an additional $695. Right. I told him to remove this alleged 'alarm system' because I didn't want it and they were able to remove this 'alarm system' in 5-minutes.\r
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And the delivery process? The salesman drove the car up from the car wash area, handed me the two sets of keys, and told me to read the owner's manual and let me know if I have any questions. Oh, and to give him all high marks when Toyota contacts me with a survey. Right.\r
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Needless to say, I will not be going back to Toyota of Pasadena for anything, not even Toyota Care service, in the future.
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