Here’s the good news. We have the car back and so far it works. We’ll monitor it for the next 90 days and see if it is fixed. Now, here’s where the criticism begins:
- We brought the car in last Monday with the gas tank 3/4 full, but when we got the car back the tank was almost empty which forced my wife to fill it up almost the second she got the car back. We did authorize the dealer to drive the car to test it, and they drove it 150 Km’s (that’s 93 miles in old money). But given everything that has gone on, you’d think that the dealer would be smart enough to put at least that much gas back into the tank. You can bet that somebody is going to be paying for that as that’s completely unacceptable.
- The dealer removed my iPod dock connector and didn’t put it back. Okay, fine. It took me two minutes to put it back. But still, put things back the way you found them when you work on other people’s cars. Is it that hard to do that?
- There were white hand prints on various parts of the car. I’m guessing that’s from the latex gloves the techs wear. Would it have been too hard to clean that up?
- The tech left a wiring schematic inside the car that gave me a really great idea as to what was wrong with the car. I’m keeping that so that if the problem comes back (which I hope to god it doesn’t), I have this as proof as to what they did. BTW according to the report, they replaced a pin connector as according to writing on the diagram that my wife and I found it was causing a “loose connection.” Oh, here’s a hint to people who servce cars, it’s never a good idea to leave stuff like this in the car for customers to see.
- When my wife returned the loaner, she pointed out the issue with the airbag system. She was given a bunch of beyond lame excuses (“Her purse was too heavy” was one of them. That is lame!) and then was told that they would “reprogram” the car. WTF does that mean? It means they’ll do nothing. One thing that I should point out here is that the loaner was provided by a major car rental chain that has a location right inside the dealership. So the dealer isn’t actually responsible for the fact the car had an issue because of the fact that they don’t own the car. However given that we got the car because our car had a problem that could be called a quality issue, and had been to the dealer for the fifth time for the same issue, and had been escalated to Toyota. The optics of getting a loaner car that was made by Toyota that had an issue that could be called a quality issue in those circumstances just suck.
So, how do I rate the players in this game? Let’s start with Toyota Canada. It took a while for Toyota Canada to get involved, but when they did they really seemed to push things along and seemed to get results. The only thing that I would say is that Toyota Canada may want to look at how they initally respond to customer issues. From the time you file a complaint to the time you get a call back, a few days will elapse. That’s way too long. They may want to consider what I said in this posting:
The fact that it takes “a few days” for somebody at Toyota Canada to call me to discuss this issue shows that there’s a real lack of customer focus. If I were in their shoes, I would call the customer back within one business day or less to not only get their side of the story and flesh out the details, but to also explain what the next steps in the process are and to set the expectations of the customer.
Keep in mind that by the time a customer has bypassed the dealer and gone straight to the manufacturer, the customer is usually pissed. That needs to be managed better by Toyota Canada.
As for the dealer. There is no chance that we will ever return to the dealer in question. Not only because of the fact that this took five trips to them to fix this issue, and everything that I listed earlier, but the fact that we got the sense that we aren’t exactly welcome at that dealership because we pushed things up the food chain to Toyota Canada. I’m not impressed with that, but I guess they’re entitled to feel that way and we’ll simply take our business elsewhere. It might have been better for all concerned if the dealer got Toyota Canada involved much earlier as it is clear that Toyota Canada was able to give the dealer the info they needed to find the issue and (hopefully) fix it. It also would have given me a better impression of them as well. As an aside, I have received a few e-mails asking me whom the dealer is. I’m not going to tell you as I’m pretty sure that I might get sued if I did divulge the name (but IANAL). But if friends ask me where they should get a Toyota, that dealer will not be one that I will be recommending.
In closing, I still think that Toyota makes great products. I also think that I had some sort of weird issue that took a long time to fix because it was difficult to diagnose and it took the manufacturer to push the dealer to get it fixed. I think that the dealer handled this badly which reflects badly on Toyota Canada. But hopefully, that’s all in the past and my wife and I can look forward to enjoying our Toyota Matrix. However if the problem returns, Toyota Canada will be getting a phone call from us, and we will not be happy campers when they pick up that phone. Not to mention that my lawyer will be on speed dial.
Oh, I’ll point out one other thing. The pages relating to this issue have recived over 2600 page views combined. That means that a lot of people were very interested in this issue. Any Toyota Canada employees who see this might want to keep that in mind that blogs like mine that describes issues like this affects the perception of your company.
UPDATE: I left a voice mail with Toyota Canada as to the fact the car was low on gas when my wife picked it up. They’re sending us a $50 gas card. A very classy move on their part that I applaud.