How does Costco pricing work once you have sent in your information to Costco?
Does Costco give you a price for a vehicle and you contact the dealer? Or does the dealer contact you. I have never went through Costco so I would like to know what to expect.
You select the make/model you're interested in, put in your name, Costco number, contact number, and zip, and it'll tell you the closest dealership offering Costco pricing on that model, and automatically send your info to them. You can wait for them to contact you (email and/or call within 5-10 minutes in my experience) or you can contact first.I'm in the same boat, looking to go through the Costco Auto buying program as well.
Couple things that might be useful: the dealership(s) closest to your zip may not be in the program for 4runners, so you won't automatically get the closest dealership's Costco salesperson (usually also their internet salesperson). Conversely, if you play around with the zip you can target specific dealerships/areas if you think they may have better pricing. If one wanted to, you could "in theory" enter a throwaway email, bogus info (as long as the # format matches), and play around with zip codes to get a feel for pricing at different locations and then enter your actual information once you find the dealer you want to go for, to save yourself being harassed too much. That said, most Costco program approved salespeople are pretty straightforward compared with the average dealer experience but YMMV.