Apr 05
Remember Cornwall Toyota - The Dealer that shops in the USA for used cars?
Here is text received from Cornwall Toyota’s automatic email system.
“THE BOTTOM LINE - Your buying power increases (or decreases) in direct proportion to the level of local business activity. By shopping locally, the one dollar you spend will go through many hands, generating economic benefits for the entire community at every step along the way. Just as a farmer would not irrigate his neighbor’s fields instead of his own, we need to water our own garden, or rue the day when the harvest is poor.”
These are the same folks that had this add in the paper a few months ago.
Here is what one of our supporters wrote back to them:
What a crock of s@@t. The bottom line is that by buying from your establishment Canadian consumers are just sending more money to Japan. Why aren’t you fighting Toyota for lower prices for your customers instead of trying to pull the wool over their eyes?
It’s 2008; consumers see through this crap now.
April 5th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Just received Email from Cornwall Toyota as I indicated that they are buying in the States.
“Bringing the Pre-Owned product that our clients want to our local market and “selling and servicing” these cars in our market still speaks to the credence of shopping locally. And by the way Serge I bought 3 cars in Michigan and 2 are still here 5 months later.”
April 5th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I suspect that Cornwall Toyota gets its philosophical charge from Mario Puzo’s book, The Godfather, or perhaps the movie of the same name, parts 1, 2 & 3. Everyone should be allowed to wet his beak??? Oh frickin hum!!!!! Keep up the good work CWB – You may not realize exactly how necessary you are to a sound Canadian economy.
John G.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:59 am
The dealers buying in USA sort of contradicts their lame argument that lowering msrps will “hurt” consumers in their “trade-ins”, etc. Though these prices are still quite a bit higher than a consumer buying directly from usa, I interpret dealers bringing in these cars from usa as a sort of dumping practise. I believe we are now getting ripped off even more now.. lower trade-ins/resale values AND very high premiums on new car prices in canada.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Ideally I would like to see Canadian dealers offering U.S. vehicles at fair prices ie. close to the U.S.equivalent. Some dealers have chosen to quietly bring in U.S. vehicles and sell them at higher Canadian prices. Of course, it makes a greater profit for the dealers. Still, it bothers me to see Canadians so willingly handing their money over to American dealerships. Surely there must be a happy medium. Some dealers are taking positive steps in fair pricing for U.S. vehicles and from my experience they seem to be in the Ottawa area. They have very aggressive radio ad campaigns detailing the prices of American cars at their dealerships. From what I can tell the advertised prices seem fair. If anyone living in the Ottawa area has any comments about these dealers, please make them known to CWB.