OK, I just called Ted (the internet sales manager) at John Hine Mazda (here in San Diego) because I got the same e-mail with the identical VIN - twice. He gave me the correct VIN as well as a build date - MAY 23!!!!!!! So my car is on the ship heading to SoCal. I asked him about port options and he didn't know that there were any. After investigating and giving me the info, he said "it looks like it costs $395 to get some sort of net to hold your spare tire in place" so I explained about the spare tire. Then I described the rotary accent package. Then the front/side/rear air-dam package.

At what point should I ask for my fee for doing all of this salesman's training? ;)

BTW, MP5 you should give him a call, yours could very well be arriving first week of July and you'd never know.

I was originally going with John Hine, but I got frusterated with Ted also, plus my family (Mazda lovers) has had some bad experiences with them in the past. I switched to Cush Mazda up in Escondido and I'm kicking myself now since John Hine's orders made the first boat and Cush's didn't. Consider yourself lucky, my friend....

Originally posted by DisneyDestroyer
OK, I just called Ted (the internet sales manager) at John Hine Mazda (here in San Diego) because I got the same e-mail with the identical VIN - twice. He gave me the correct VIN as well as a build date - MAY 23!!!!!!! So my car is on the ship heading to SoCal. I asked him about port options and he didn't know that there were any. After investigating and giving me the info, he said "it looks like it costs $395 to get some sort of net to hold your spare tire in place" so I explained about the spare tire. Then I described the rotary accent package. Then the front/side/rear air-dam package.

At what point should I ask for my fee for doing all of this salesman's training? ;)

BTW, MP5 you should give him a call, yours could very well be arriving first week of July and you'd never know.

You should've gotten a 3rd email with a corrected VIN. I had ibfubar2000 run my VIN for me and my build date was 5/31 and my car isn't on a ship yet, so it'll probably be later in July. I doubt that the dealership can give me any more info than ibfubar2000 got from the ordering system.

I sent in requests to both Cush and John Hine (through the website, from different locations / e-mails), I figured I'd check in case one of them was better with price or response. Cush never contacted me, so I went with John Hine.

BTW, Ted also told me that he though the prices for the stereo were WAY too high, he said he usually recommends not bothering with any of the options, you can get almost all of them done cheaper elsewhere - mentioned that for the moonroof wind deflector, cargo net, and front / rear spash guards. He may not be up-to-date with his info, but at least he gives me the impression that I can trust what he does know.