Power Tailgate Lock Blows Fuse under warranty. Charged me for fuse and diagnosis.

My 2021 TRD Off-road came with factory or port installed remote tailgate lock.

It stopped working at 16k miles. I scheduled an appointment with a dealer to repair ( not where I bought it as we have moved out of state) The technician found it to be a blown fuse but could not find any issue or didn’t troubleshoot any further as it worked again after replacing the fuse. The service advisor told me that fuses were not covered under warranty and therefore
I needed to pay for the fuse and $160 diagnostic fee but as a “favor” he cut that down to $80.

I was not happy about that but there was nobody around when I went to pick up the truck that I could talk to so I got the truck and figured if it really is just a bad fuse I’ll just suck it up.

But now like I thought there is something causing the fuse to blow and so I will need to bring it back again to actually fix it.

He never directly told me that he didn’t the Power lock was not covered under warranty but it I don’t know of any other reason why he couldn’t have billed it to a warranty.

Warranty service issues with Toyota is the reason that I switched and bought a Subaru in 2013.

What do I do when I bring it back this time? I believe they need to fix it under warranty.

I can’t really bring it to a different dealer because in Hawaii they are all Servco

 

Fuses don't generally blow without an overload being present at the time of the failure so you are on the right track. Now, what caused that overload is unknown. If I had to guess, I would think probably a marginal (aka failing) solenoid though I wouldn't rule out water getting into the locking mechanism shorting the solenoid. Very hard to track down. Yes, the service tech probably put a new fuse in it, locked/unlocked it a few times, and called it done because it didn't blow. You might check to see if they put a fuse in that handles a higher load. They shouldn't do that and if they did you really should ask them to explain why there's a higher capacity fuse in there like if there's a tsb for it. Ask them show you the documents from Toyota stating to do that if claiming tsb (and any addendums for the tsb). Make sure it applies to your year of your truck.

 

Kinda sucks, but he was not wrong about warranty not covering a blown fuse. Now if it does it again you now have a pattern versus an anomaly.

PS: sometimes fuses do randomly blow and never do it again. I call those situations "techno-glitches".