Huffington Post: Customer Disservice Spotlight On: Toyota

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/customer-disservice-spotl_b_498057.html

Aaron Greenspan

I own a Toyota Corolla. It's a car that gets me from point A to point B, where those points usually refer to my house and my office. Occasionally, I drive the car to more exotic places (the grocery store and the gas station), but in all, I don't drive a whole lot. It took me a year and a half to get to 5,000 miles.

It took Toyota nearly that long or longer, depending on when you think Toyota engineers actually knew about the problem, to notify me that my car was being recalled for the infamous sticky accelerator pedal. (The dealership did send me a dubious Russian-spam style e-mail in blue type, full of typographical errors, from a person I'd never heard of, asking me to click on a link to a SurveyMonkey survey where I should type in my VIN to find out if my car was being recalled. "Dear Aaron you must be alarmed by recent news about Toyota recalls," it began.) What I knew already was that the car was being recalled for another problem, as well, or as Toyota called it, "SSC 90H - CERTAIN 2009-2010 COROLLA AND COROLLA MATRIX BRAKE SYSTEM VACUUM PORT SPECIAL SERVICE CAMPAIGN." I had apparently purchased a car that featured a broken accelerator and broken brakes. (Recent news reports indicate that the steering wheel may be next.)

After finding a day on which missing work to take my car in wouldn't be a major inconvenience, I scheduled an appointment and drove to Magnussen's Toyota of Palo Alto, where I purchased the car in September 2008 from a former investment banker. He worked in a trailer outside the main building--the dealership's "internet department." I needed the car because the week before, my old one, a 2005 Corolla, had been totaled on highway 85 by a woman in an SUV who had somehow forgotten to use her breaks as she accelerated into bumper-to-bumper traffic. Though I owe Toyota credit for designing the 2005 Corolla well enough to keep me safe during the accident, I was never pleased about the way in which it was sold to me. The $1,000.00 instant rebate the dealership offered with a financing plan came with a serious string attached--even if you wanted to pay off the balance, you couldn't. Though interest started to accumulate from day one, paying your bill required an all-important account number, and somehow Toyota Financial Services just couldn't figure out how to assign one to me week after week. I reported the company to the Texas Attorney General; the company reported my full payment to the credit bureaus as being "late," which I cleared up years later when it appeared as the only negative activity on my credit report, much to my surprise.

Six months after I purchased my new car, I found myself at the dealership because the car's indecipherable tire pressure icon would sporadically light up and then turn off again. After a while, it stayed on, which didn't seem like it could mean anything good. The service engineers insisted that I had run over a nail with my six-month-old car, and I insisted that I hadn't. No one could find a nail in the tire, and it took days of arguing about the cause of the problem before anyone could even find a leak. At that point, the dealership told me that the car's warranty didn't cover the tires and that I'd have to buy a new tire outright. This caused a minor firestorm involving calls to my insurance company, various tire dealers, a local Sears (which couldn't find the problem, either), and the dealership's service manager. Eventually, the dealership relented and agreed to replace the defective tire. Days later, as I was standing in one of the service manager's offices fuming and waiting to pick up my car, a brochure about tire protection caught my eye. In writing, the brochure plainly stated that every tire the dealership sold was covered under warranty. Both the assistant manager and the manager had lied to me.

Consequently, I wasn't expecting much when I took in my car to have both recalls addressed. I was told that the repair would take a couple of hours, but I had work to do and so rather than wait, I asked one of my employees to pick me up at the dealership on the way to work. It was a good thing, too. Far from "a couple," the repairs took nine hours.

FULL story at link.