Camry Forums - Toyota Camry Forum - BEWARE! This is the latest scam car companies are doing to their customers!

I have been looking at new cars recently, and have encountered a major problem at several big name company dealerships. Dealerships for many large car manufacturers are using highly deceptive selling techniques with regards to having leather seats in their cars, when in fact, the seats are a synthetic plastic alternative. These synthetic plastics are super cheap to make, approximately 3-5 times cheaper than leather. Yet, they are charging as much as $4,000 extra for consumers to purchase them. This is a similar upcharge for what consumers pay on REAL leather interiors. This is highly frustrating as salesmen across the board at several large name company dealerships lied straight to my face when I asked if the product is real leather. At first, I thought this may just be a couple salesmen who were uninformed or desperate to sell a car. As I put in more research, however, I discovered that these companies are attempting to fool consumers into thinking the products are either real leather or are “better than leather” with deceptive marketing. The companies whose dealerships have consistently been deceptive are Ford, Lexus, Toyota, and Kia amongst others. (I should note that there were honest and transparent companies as well who deserve credit, such as Porsche, Audi, Cadillac, and Chrysler (FCA). These companies either used real leather or were honest in that their product was a synthetic plastic.)

For the Companies who were deceptive in their marketing practices, they have names for their fake leather to look out for: Active X (Ford), Nuluxe (Lexus), Softec (Toyota), and Sophina (Kia) to name a few. The above products are composed of synthetic plastics that are not only cheap to make, but are also toxic to the environment. These companies try to push these products to the vegan market as being Eco friendly, but are actually far worse than natural leather. These products are made of Polyvinyl chloride (Chlorine gas + Ethylene + Ethylene Dichloride + Vinyl Chloride) for those who want to research the environmental impacts they have. Leather on the other hand, is not the cause of killing cattle. Leather is purchased from already slaughtered cows from the meat industry.

Outside of the environmental impact, I personally would much rather have real genuine leather as it has a look and feel that plastic simply cannot replace. If manufacturers want to be cheap and use plastic that is their choice, but deceiving consumers with creative marketing into thinking that these plastics are the real deal is wrong. A specific example of this has been my experience with Ford. I was looking at the 2020 Ford Explorer and specifically asked for leather seats. The salesmen took me to a car with Active X which I knew was the synthetic product. I asked him if it was real leather and he said “Yes, the whole interior is leather.” He told me this was the upgraded leather trim package that costs $2500 more than the basic cloth package. This isn’t even an isolated incident, I encountered this problem at several other Ford dealers and then found that Lexus, Toyota, and Kia were all doing similar things. This really bothered me because if I hadn’t known better, I could have paid $2500 more for a product I didn’t want and was fooled into purchasing.

Overall, this issue is really bothering me and I was hoping others would comment or share similar stories with regards to being lied to about leather interiors on cars. I have found that this problem is far more prevalent than I could have imagined, and that consumers are starting to get fed up with it. I’ll leave everyone with this. If you went to buy your wife a diamond ring, and you were given Cubic Zirconia (Fake Diamond) but paid the price for the real diamond. Would you be fed up and pissed? That is exactly how I feel about what these car companies are doing to the consumer.