Tad Thorley

How Karl Malone Toyota Lost My Business (and Mark Miller Toyota Gained It)

Recently I was unemployed.  During that time I received a letter from Karl Malone Toyota (where my wife and I had purchased our mini-van) saying that they were eager to buy back our vehicle and would pay “top dollar” for it.  My wife and I talked it over and decided that it would be easier on our finances if we didn’t have a car payment for a while, so we took our van in.  While we were there, the salesman kept putting pressure on us to buy a new vehicle.  I lost track of the number of times my wife or I said that because I was unemployed we weren’t interested in buying a new vehicle.  Finally the salesman relented and made us an offer on our van.  It was lower that we expected, but worth it to get out of our car payments.  We told him that we couldn’t sell it right away, because we’d have to borrow a car from my parents who live in Cedar City.  (This was on a Friday).  That weekend we got a car from my parents.  The following Monday morning we brought in our car.  As we were about to hand our keys over to the salesman, the price offered was thousands of dollars less.  ”Sorry, I gave you the wrong price last time.  That was for a trade-in, not a buy-back”.  We were stunned.  He hadn’t listened to us at all and had greatly inconvenienced us (which could have been averted with a simple phone call).  We left in frustration.

I wasn’t unemployed for long, and when I got a new job my wife and I started talking about selling the van again.  We thought it would be more convenient to trade in our van and get two cars.  Karl Malone Toyota had some cars in their inventory that we could have been interested in, but it wasn’t worth dealing with them again.  Over Thanksgiving break we went to the Toyota dealership in St. George.  It was another unpleasant experience.  The salesman gave us the run-around.  He wouldn’t tell us the exact price of the cars we were interested in, the approximate interest rate we would pay, or the trade-in value of our van.  He kept going in the back room to “talk to his financial guy” and would come back with different monthly payments each time.  Eventually, we left in frustration.

I looked around on the internet for Toyota dealerships and found that Mark Miller Toyota had pretty good reviews (and some vehicles we might be interested in).  I called to get their business hours and talked to one of their salesmen, Mike Kentrolis.  He set up an appointment with me.  After our previous experiences, my wife and I were on the defensive, but Mike was refreshingly straightforward with us.  He told us the prices upfront.  He listened to our needs.  He didn’t put any pressure on us and answered our questions.  The financial guy, Doug, was straightforward with us.

We ended up trading in our van and buying two cars from them.