I took delivery of my 2010 prius on may 17th 2009.
There is significant differences Between the 2 companies Their situations and the processes they went through.
The 2010 prius Aldo different in many ways Was still a modification to an existing product. The ramp up to production numbers Was simply not an issue.
The toyota process Was anything but transparent, since they provided us no information at all. I ordered my car In february, choosing a dealer in the process. Then there was no information at all Other than we all knew The production of the vehicles would start In april. The way we tracked the estimated delivery of our cars was by container ship traffic.
Toyota provided us non of this information. We have members at priuschat.com who live in japan near the factory and was lucky enough to see them being loaded on to the boat, so we new a proximate time they would be arriving. But there was no predictability As to who would get theirs first, what areas we get theirs first excetera.
I was called By my dealer When my car hit the port of portland oregon so i could prepare financing. Then i heard nothing for a week until the dealer called to advise me my car is ready for pickup. I was out of town at the time So i'll be picked up my car 4 days later
The nissan process Has provided much more information, but this thing about sending out emails to register at a different site on some sort of adrenaline based internet race is a bit strange.
But at the same time They have very limited stock, time sensitive incentives, and a nation wide invitation.
The prius priority purchase program Was a private invitation program only. Toyota was obviously Not stupid enough To accept more invitations then they had product 4.
But at the same time, nissan is a completely different place. This is new product introduction. The very revolutionary product. Gauging interest is paramount to nissan future plans.
As far as issues with the website Ordering process, there can be literally hundreds of possible causes. I deal with Customer education And very very simple internet processes daily. It's nearly impossible To effectively troubleshoot Everyones website issues Because of the Unlimited configuratio options each person has.
The 1 thing Toyota did right Was doing the entire process By email.
But i prefer the nissan process Because the nissan process gives much more choice. The prius priority purchase program Only had 3 the configurations available. If it were not for the 2000 dollar plus Discount i would have passed. The configuration i chose Ted features i did not want. But the discount still made it cheaper than the package i would have chosen anyway.
