What should I do about poor Toyotacare 20k service?

I took my truck in for service yesterday, and when I got it home I noticed the tires weren't rotated, I know because I rubbed a curb leaving a parking garage the day before so there was a mark on both drivers side tires.

I have a degree in automotive technology, but I went back to school and dont have time or money to work on my truck myself. After noticing the tires, I started looking over a few things. I found low tire pressure (28, 27, 28, 28), low power steering fluid, and low coolant.

They also tried sell me a $45 battery terminal cleaning/sealing service. That he said takes 5 minutes. I think from my experience it does take 5 minutes, but a flat rate tech stuck doing warranty work looks for things like that because he probably gets paid an hour for 5 minutes of work.

Should I complain to the dealer? I know my tires were low because of the cold weather setting in, but I thought they would take care of it and I havent been driving much. Today its sleeting and slippery as hell at 27 psi. Has anyone had a similar experience? Next time I will request a different tech and advisor. Am I expecting too much from my ToyotaCare service? Sorry for the rant. Thank you for reading

 

I ran into this with my 5,000 mile service which was only tire rotation.
When I got home I noticed the wheels with all the brake dust were still on front.
The service advisor said "the tires were in the best position according to Toyota's treadwear specs so they did not rotate front to back".
He then said if I wanted to bring it back they would go ahead and rotate the tires. Told them to stick it, they couldn't be trusted.

 

I had some of the same issues. Contact the service manager and/or director and put your complaints out there. If they are indifferent (which many dealers are), find another dealer. Simply amazing to me that dealers do this sort of crap. Too many Toyotas being sold apparently. It is very difficult to find a honest dealer.

 

Yeah I think a lot of dealers and maybe some shops take shortcuts where/when they can.

I'm pretty confident that for my 15k mile service they just had my truck sitting around for an hour and then gave it back to me. Where on the service sheet the service writer noted that it was washed and it was pretty apparent it still had the same dust on it as when I brought it in. And he gave me some b.s. when I asked if air filter was included in the 15k service and he said that it wasn't but the oil filter was. Riiight, you'd go to the trouble of changing the oil filter but not the air filter? The tire pressure for each of the tires showed that they were all in the same place too. Where I had one tire kind of low but didn't bother it to fill it because knew I was bringing it to the dealer soon.

There is one particular service writer at that dealership who pays attention to detail and makes sure everything is done and I'd probably have a good opinion on Toyota dealerships if I only dealt with him. But he wasn't in the last time I went.

I was already questioning about having to bring my vehicle to the Toyota dealership for maintenance and I'm only doing it in the beginning so I don't run into any issues if I have warranty issues. But after this recent service, it's pretty much unlikely that I'll bring my Tacoma back for any routine service after the 20k service.

To me it's not really worth complaining about but I'll just not give them anymore of my business.

 

Rate them at the bottom when you get your survey, they hate that. But then don't go back to that dealer as they WILL hold a grudge.

 

Hasn't happened to me with Toyota, but same thing happened when i had my infiniti serviced at the dealer they had a free tire rotation, i guess it was free because they never actually rotated it. They tried to tell me they did it, and told me they had it on video that the tech rotated them, so I went out and called my wife and had her on speaker, asked her which wheel she curbed a few weeks ago, and she said back right. The service manager walked with me out to my car and saw the only rash was on the back right tire.

So me being a smart ass, asked if i could see the video of the tech unmounting all 4 of my tires and wheels and remounting them. He turned red and I just said you'll be hearing from corporate and i walked out.

If you made a mistake, own it. I would've been fine if he said oh shoot looks like the tech forgot to rotate, but don't lie to me to my face.

 

Or, if you are like my dealer, refuse to send you a survey if there was ANY issue with your service. The level of BS is just astounding. I actually think they have me marked as 'no survey'.

 

Report that to corporate, trust me they will act quickly if they hear that, I thought the surveys were automated thru a 3rd party

 

These days reporting instances like this on Facebook and Yelp seem to have more of an impact. Sadly, these companies often need to be publicly humiliated before they will take any action. If you complain to them in private, or on an internal survey, they often don't care. At least that's been my experience over the years.

 

my thing was 12 months service oil change they didn't tighten the oil pan plug .puddle of oil on driveway.

 

They forgot to put the oil cap back on mine at the 10k service. I haven't decided if I'll go back for any of the rest of the free toyotacare stuff or just start doing it myself.

 

Two things: 1) You have to watch them perform the work when it's being done - find a place where you can see your vehicle and watch from there. I've done that the few times I brought my Toyota's in for service. 2) Check the vehicle over as soon as you pick it up from the service place; look under the hood, at the tires and anywhere else they performed service on the vehicle. Never trust anybody but yourself working on your vehicles - and second guess yourself often!

 

Avoid this dealer for future purchases and service. That's where I am after being disappointed with my last three service appointments.

 

I always laugh when I hear people say I "dont have the time" Your telling me over the past month you didn't watch at least 1 hour of TV? C'man man.... we are all busy, but this was avoidable for sure.

 

Well it's about prioritizing time. I didn't think I had time to work on my truck either until my dealer started f'ing up routine service appointments. Now I've found a way to block 1-2 hours a month for truck maintenance (oil changes, tire rotation, filters, crawling underneath to inspect stuff).

 

I put it right on Yelp when I had shitty dealer service, 3 hrs later I had an email from the owner
of the Dealership apologizing and asking to make things right. I did just that and they've been
great ever since.