Firstly, I will say the rating is not a 1 because my daughter and I found the people we dealt with to be friendly, somewhat accommodating to daughter's needs and desires, and (after purchase) didn't just totally brush off the problems she had, (which hadn't happened the two or three occasions when driving the car prior to purchase.)
The buyer in this case was my daughter, but I was there for some of the time dealing with them. They allowed her to take the car to our mechanic. Except for a small glitch in the screen, the mechanic said the car was in good condition.
The dealership said they would fix the screen and sure enough, the next day when my daughter went to check out the screen it had been fixed... so it seemed.
Considering the following, I don't know what else the dealership knew about the car or not, but right after the purchase, not even getting it off the lot, the car, a Prius, would not stay in any gear and kept shifting back to N. Again, the people were nice and took it behind the fence to "fix" that. When they brought it back out, it was functioning properly again. The person who was dealing with us, I believe the owner, said, if this is still is a problem, come back and we'll look at it some more.
The next day, my daughter was driving to an event and when she got there, the car would not turn off. Also, nothing was displaying on the dashboard when she first turned the car on that morning. She dealt with this before with a previous Prius, and when she called our mechanic, he confirmed the instrument cluster is going out and this can affect the car shutting off. To shut the car off, the 12v battery needs to be disconnected, which I was already on my way to where she was to do. Knowing how much gas was left in the car (again, not something visible when the display is out), I drove it around a little bit, and put some gas in it. When I got back to where she was, the car did actually shut off.
Over the next few days, this working/not working would occur (including the display working/not working). Something we expected. She took the car back to the dealership to show them the problem... literally that there was no display and the car not shutting off. They said they would fix it and even give her a car for the day, BUT they wanted to put in used parts. Sometimes that's a fine answer, but for the instrument cluster, our mechanic said a used part is not the answer... in part because the mileage is part of that cluster. We told them a used part is not the answer, and the dealership did not want to put in a new cluster and even questioned that this was the problem.
I actually found a Youtube video showing someone replacing the cluster and in the video was describing the exact problems my daughter was having. Considering... (1) that the screen is once again glitching (pressing on the right side "clicks" something on the left side), (2) that the shifter is once again "sticking", (we figured out a work around for that by manually just pushing it back the shifter back to its resting spot after selecting the needed gear), and (3) the dealership is questioning our previous experience and our mechanic (who knows about Priuses), my daughter and I have lost trust in them, and even with a used part, I wasn't sure they would have put that in properly.
So we are going to have to put in a new cluster, and in the end, because the dealership was willing to put in a used cluster, they did give her some money back (a few hundred dollars) to go to the new cluster.
I think their heart might be in the right place. I don't think they are bad people, but I think their mechanic is not qualified and giving them the best advice when fixing cars. read more