Warranty Bullshit

In the states.. My wifes car (not Toyota) had a paint issue and the dealer told me it was not their problem.
I went to a body shop and got an estimate to fix the problem and they wrote it up and noted that it looked like a factory issue.

Back to the dealer with a regional manager asshole....
He basically told me no way and I told him no problem. I'll take you to small claims court. He told me "no problem, I'm a salaried employee." I just laughed and told him I was self employed and I'll subpoena him, the service manager, the sales manager, the salesman and the dealers owners. Small clams in my state is $45.00. No matter how many people I ask them to subpoena. He got very quiet and then told me to go the a certain body shop and let them look at it. Funny... it was the same place I had already went to. After they seen the quote and their body shop comments, they paid the have it fixed and gave me a free rental for the 4 days!

Don't let them bully you. They will try to push it off and you may need to push back. Be nice, but have the data to back you up.

Good luck!

 

The last time I needed to get a problem resolved I contacted the "Investor Relations" office. This is usually a VP of some type (so they can suck up). You will just get their office but not the person. Explain your problem to whoever answers the phone and ask for their help by RELAYING your contact information to have them call you back. When the person you need to talk to gets a message from this VP's office to contact you about resolving this problem they will be looking at from a different perspective because it came from up high. If they start to baulk then ask for their complete name and remind them you are to report to said VP about how this was handled as the VP wanted feedback. This worked great when I had an issue at Pepboys.

 

As 03coma stated - District Manager should be able to help. Ask the dealership when he/she will be there next and make an appointment.

Worked for my cracked headlights. Dealership didn't want to eat the cost if the warranty got denied so they had it approved first.

 

So I asked for a district manager, which the dealer said they would look into. I waited a few weeks with no answer for when he'd be in, and called Toyota Canada again. I got the "manager will call back in 7-10 days" spiel. On day 9 I called again and asked for them to forward all notes onto me. I didn't say it, but I was starting to look into court.

20 mins later the same manager called and asked if "there was something I needed clarification on". I asked about a district manager, which he said was a possibility if I wanted to go down that road, but kind of made me feel like it wouldn't make a difference.

I then mentioned I was frustrated as I had new bubbles pop up. He asked if I had taken pictures and if I could forward them on. I took pics that clearly show bubbles and sent them off.

Got a call back today saying he spoke with the dealership, and they will be taking care of it. I'm not sure if he means the dealership itself is taking care of it, or Toyota is. The dealer General Manager emailed me back to say he's away and will call me tomorrow. So I guess good news.

 

Thats great man. Can you upload a photo of what is happening?

 

op will surely deliver.....

 

Toyota seems really rugged to deal with on warranty shit. Shame on them.

 

As an alternative I was thinking of getting one company to check the other. Get their paint manufacturer / supplier rep to review the paint issue and state if it's the paint, the prep, foreign matter or application by the dealer. If you could get something from the paint manufacturer saying it is an application error by the Toyota painting dept - it might go a long way towards Toyota to step up to the plate.... Or am I just smoking Bacon?

 

I had a very similar issue with the stock rims on my 2007 taco. The rims were literally rotting away under the finish. My dealer, in n.y., didn't want to do anything and pushed the issue off to the district rep. Needless to say, the district rep didn't want cover it either. At this point my truck was about 3 years old and only had 13k miles on it. I then reached out to Toyota of America, and with a bit of persistence, they agreed to refinish the wheels, but only 3 of them. I saw the invoice for the dealer and could not believe they would baulk over the charge ($125 per wheel) and not try to keep me happy, considering I had just over $30 grand to buy the truck. I wish you luck on getting your issue resolved.

 

There was one much larger one that I think sealed the deal on them fixing it, but I can't find the picture anymore.

 

nvm just found it

 

that's certainly not rock chips.

any warranty from any company is useless. that's why i never buy extended warranty for anything.

i wouldn't worry too much about it. the truck will have rock chips all in the paint within a year or two anyways. the paint is worthless. mine looks like it's been shot with a machine gun on the driver's side.

 

take it back to the dealer and tell them you want to trade it for a new one. If they assess your truck correctly and point out the defects, ask them what caused it and have them put that in writing on your trade in quote. If they state that they are bubbles, you got'em

 

Gotta disagree with you there. Warranties have saved millions of people millions of dollars in repairs. I deal with that kind of thing every day for the past 25 years.

 

Eh, they stripped and repainted all the doors, so I'm happy. I think I'll get rid of this one a little faster then originally planned, but I did manage to get it covered. And if it comes back anywhere, I've got them on record that it's their problem.

My favorite quote from dealing with all of this though: "sometimes rock chips cause bubbles"

 

Curious which dealer helped you out in Edmonton. Mayfield? maybe Gateway?

 

Good you got it fixed.

 

Sherwood Park, and I wouldn't say "helped".

I had a service tech tell me it was rock chips and offered to set an appointment up for me to get it fixed at my expense. I just about took his head off.

I had managers tell me they would call, then never call back. When I finally got it approved, I had a manager call me and tell me I could bring my truck down that week and they would give me a rental. We scheduled a time. I showed up, no one was there and no one knew what I was talking about. Asked to speak to another manager and was told they had all gone home.

I left, then thought it was crap and called. Lo and behold I get a service manager on the phone. She calls the manager I was scheduled to see, then calls me back. Turns out there was ANOTHER Tacoma going in for paint work. She called me by mistake, I wasn't booked in for a month later. The funny thing is, she obviously realized her mistake and called him, because she no-showed our meeting, and I got to meet him when I went to pick up my truck because they have me his keys instead, without even knowing what I was in the dealership for.

Very disappointed with just about everyone. That being said, Art was very helpful and pushed Toyota Canada on the issue repeatedly. At the same time, we couldn't get a manager to call us back on issues with my girlfriend's Rav4 remote start. I will be taking my future business to Mayfield, as I did the negotiating for my friend's purchase, and they were very helpful.

 

UPDATE:

I was doing a spring clean, and I've found more of these on my lower door sills, both front driver and passenger. There's some normal use wear and tear on the sills, but the bubbles are there too. I popped that plastic housing up and found some under there. So now I get to go through another summer of this crap. I'm debating pushing them to strip and re-paint my entire truck.

 

They did that to me too. Toyota has such a great rep because they don't fix anything unless its on the news. That's how they can claim such stellar reliability on their product. Every time I read one of these it makes my blood boil but at least you have your dealership backing you up.
Hindsight, if I had joined this forum prior to buying my truck, I probably wouldn't have bought a Toyota. Trying to make the best out of it now.
Good luck.