The IT Nerd

… And I’m pleased to say that the problem has not returned. So I believe that the problem that my Toyota Matrix had is fixed for good. So let me tie up a few loose ends:

• The fellow from Halifax, Nova Scotia who had a similar problem has not had it return as of yet. But the last time I traded e-mails with him, he did say that while he is hoping for the best he does expect the problem to return at some point.
• True to my word, my car care needs are being handled by another Toyota dealer. While the dealer that I am now going to is somewhat less convenient (as their service center isn’t open late and their shuttle service ends at 5PM), I really have no reason to complain as they have attended to my car care needs thus far with zero problems. It is worth noting that I have had nobody from the dealership that was at the center of this mess contact me. I guess they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong or they don’t care that my business is going elsewhere.
• Some people have asked if I bought the Toyota Matrix from the dealer that I had problems with. The answer is no. We originally wanted to buy it from them, but they wanted us to pay list price for it. Plus they were not flexible on the trade in value of our previous car. So on the advice of a friend, we went elsewhere and got a great deal (if you want the name of the dealer and the salesperson we were dealing with, e-mail me and I’ll give it to you).  The problem is that they’re an hour north west of  Toronto. Not exactly easy to get to for service, which is why we went back to the guys that we had so much trouble with.

Finally, here’s some advice if you find yourself in this situation:

1. Take notes.. Lots of notes: Make sure that you document every interaction with the dealer and/or the manufacturer and ensure your notes are as detailed as possible. This will help you if you have to push things up the food chain.
2. If dealer claims to have fixed the problem and it comes back, give them one or two chances to make it right: Talk to the service manager or general manager as part of this and try to work with them as best as you can. The reason why you do this is that when you ultimately have to go up the food chain to the manufacturer, it will look to them like you have tried to work with the dealer to resolve the issue and the dealer is the the one who is dropping the ball. Keep in mind that in our case, we went to the dealer five times in total before we went to Toyota Canada.
3. Call the manufacturer if you can’t resolve the issue with your dealer: Car companies have customer service hotlines. Call it and explain what your issue is and use the notes that you created from step one to illustrate your points. Always remember to stay calm and do not yell at the person at the other end of the phone. Don’t forget to get a case number. Then call your dealer, ask to speak to the service manager or general manager and give them that case number so that they know that you’re pushing this issue up the food chain.
4. Call your lawyer: You likely want to have your lawyer involved at this point. Your lawyer can best advise you how to talk to the various parties involved and what your next steps are if things really get ugly. Plus they can act as the voice of reason so that you don’t do something that harms your attempt to get your car fixed right. One thing that you should also do is let all the parties know that whatever is discussed between you will be fed back to your lawyer. That way, everybody knows who’s involved (and perhaps they’ll move things along quicker).
5. Push for a loaner: If your car is going to be in the shop for anything more than a day, and it has been in the shop multiple times for the same issue, you should push for a loaner at no charge. You should also document what type of car you got and if having this car stopped you from going about your normal activities.
6. Know what your rights are as a consumer: Check to see if your state or province has a lemon law that may be of assistance to you. Canadians should also look into the Canadian Motor Vehicle Arbitration Process as well. Again, you should consult with your lawyer to ensure that you take full advantage of whatever rights you have.
7. Pack plenty of paitience.

First, let me update you on my issue with my Toyota Matrix (click here in case you need to catch up on this nightmare of mine). The car continues to work just fine as I type this. So I continue to remain optimistic that it is fixed and fixed for good.

I think I mentioned that my postings about this issue got thousands of page views. It seems that one of them was from another Toyota Matrix owner in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) who has an interest in my story. He has the same model of Toyota Matrix that I have with exactly the same options and he loves the car…. however:

And just the other day as it rolled past 15,000km all the warning lights came on for us too. The vsc control, the awd light, the engine light. Took it to the dealer, and the code was for ” Camshaft Position “A” Circuit Malfunction”. They checked the sensor, and the sensor was fine. checked the wiring harness ( was good), and cleared the code, and told me they suspect the ECU may have had a glitch. They said if it happens again, they will check it again, and may have to replace the ECU.  So we will see if it comes back, and I suspect it will, since really all they did was clear a code. Having a Camshaft malfunction, doesn’t sound like it would be an easy fix, if there truly was a camshft malfunction ready to happen, and the car was trying to warn me about it!

The fact that he has the same symptoms that I had seems to indicate that the problems with my car may not have been a fluke. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. He’s promised to keep me posted on his progress and he plans to take my postings on my experience to his dealer.

I hope he has better luck than I did as I do not wish my experience on anyone.

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.

I just got off the phone with my lawyer to update him on the issues as well as Toyota Canada. More on that in a second. But let’s get you up to date. We swapped the Yaris that we had as a loaner for a Corolla on Friday afternoon. It’s the CE trim level which I suspect is the one that Toyota sells the most of. This is what we like about it:

• The engine sips gas, but has some balls behind it. That makes it great for highway driving, but friendly for your wallet.
• It handles well and has a decent sized trunk.
• It feels solid when you’re driving it.

But, here’s the downside to this vehicle. We noticed the following after we got it:

• The passenger airbag off light in the center console is on when there is a passenger in the front passenger seat. It should turn the airbag on in that circumstance.
• Sometimes, the passenger seatbelt light in the center console is flashing when no passenger is in the front passenger seat.
• Sometimes, the passenger seatbelt light in the center console will flash and the airbag off light in the center console will be on when there is a passenger in the front passenger seat and the seatbelt is fastened.
• A couple of times, the SRS malfunction light would pop up on the dash.

It sounds like this car has an issue with the airbag system which doesn’t exactly do much to enhance my confidence in Toyota products at the moment. I mentioned it to Toyota Canada today and I will bring it up with the dealer when I speak to them. As an aside, the Corolla is built in the same plant as the Matrix. That’s something to think about.

In terms of where things stand with the Matrix, it clearly seems that Toyota Canada is looking at the electronics as we were asked by Toyota Canada if we had put any aftermarket stuff into the car (the answer is no). I will get an update later today, but Toyota Canada is having the dealer look at the wiring in the car in great detail. Also, they’re not convinced that the part that is on order is going to solve the problem. I have the feeling that this could take a while.

Perhaps I will receive better news this afternoon.

UPDATE: I actually received some good news. The dealership isolated the problem to a problematic wire in the wiring harness. The Toyota Canada rep says they replaced the wire, but more likely they replaced the harness. They are going to drive our car for a couple of days to confirm that it is fixed, but they have been unable to reproduce the problem since making the change. Also in terms of the Corolla, we were told that if we’re not comfortable driving the car given that there seems to be an issue with the airbag system, they’ll swap it for something else. At this point if we get the car back Tuesday or Wednesday, we’ll just live with it and let them deal with it when we return it.

I’m actually starting to feel that there may be a light at the end of this tunnel after all.

This keeps getting better and better…..

I had a call with my lawyer this morning in regards to this circus and upon hearing that my wife and I had not received a call back from Toyota Canada, he advised me to call them back and ask the following question: “On the advice of my lawyer, I am calling to see if my case has been assigned and when I can expect to hear from the person it is assigned to.” I did that  and was told that it had been assigned to someone and they will get back to me shortly. I told the person that I would feed that information back to my lawyer and thanked them.

10 Minutes later I got a call from Toyota Canada. Coincidence? I think not.

The customer service rep first apologized for the delay in calling me back and for this issue. Then she went about telling me that a part was on order and explained why they are replacing this part and they are working on getting an ETA on the part. I took the opportunity to say:

A) This has been going on for months with no resolution.

B) There seems to be a “lets throw a part at the car and see if it fixes the problem” approach to this which is lame.

C) How much longer is this going to take before I have a fully functioning car?

The rep assured me that Toyota Canada was doing everything possible to deal with the issue and this was going to get fixed.

You’ll excuse me if I didn’t exactly jump for joy upon hearing that.

In any case, after I got off the phone I fed this info back to my wife who wasn’t happy at the news but we decided to live with it for now. That was until our dealer called ten minutes later with the wonderful news that the part was backordered until the 17th of February.

WTF?!?

So my wife (who is now beyond pissed at this point) and I got back on the phone with the Toyota Canada rep who said “It’s not Feb 17th, it’s expected in Feb 3rd.”

My friends, that’s one hell of a disconnect between Toyota Canada and the dealer.

My wife then took the opportunity to express her displeasure at the customer service experience thus far, and I took the opportunity to to point out that we both had better things to do than to chase this issue and we wanted our car back working properly in the shortest amount of time possible. The Toyota Canada rep then said that she would call us back today to confirm the ETA as well as speaking to the in house mechanics who were handling the issue with the dealer to ensure that “parts are not being replaced for no reason” which I think translates to “figuring out WTF is actually wrong with the car.”

I must admit, I am still less than impressed with the response as there doesn’t seem to be any co-ordination between the dealer and Toyota Canada. Plus it seems that they both are reacting to us rather than being proactive and doing everything possible in the shortest amount of time to fix the issue with the car. That doesn’t bode well in my books.

But at least there was some sort of apology today from Toyota Canada. That I suppose is some amount of progress.

UPDATE: The rep from Toyota Canada called back as she promised. She confirmed that the part in question will arrive on Feb. 3. She also told us that they (via their in house mechanics) have instructed the dealer to take the part from our Matrix that they think might be malfunctioning and put it into a new and similar car to see if they can reproduce the issue. Interesting. Also of note, the rep mentioned that a “district manager” was also involved as well as the in house mechanics. It now seems that Toyota Canada has decided to put resources behind resolving this issue. That’s somewhat reassuring. But the only true reassurance will come when the problem is fixed in the shortest time possible.

UPDATE #2: Our loaner is being upgraded to a Toyota Corolla which I will pick up this afternoon. Interesting…. Also the dealer is apparently working on the car as I type this and asking me some very specific questions (I had to communicate with my wife to get the answers to some of them). Seeing as the parts are still on order, one has to assume that they are playing a game of “swap the parts” from a similar car that Toyota Canada asked them to use to see if they could replicate the issue. It also proves that Toyota Canada may actually be serious about solving this issue. That is starting to inspire some confidence.

Frequent readers of my blog will recall that over the last few months I’ve come across my fair share of customer service issues. One with APC (where one of my customers was involved), another with D-Link are the ones that come to mind quickly. Now I’m in the middle of a third. This time it’s not with a company that makes computers, it’s with a car company. Toyota.

My wife and I bought a 2009 Toyota Matrix last March and it was working fine until the AWD, VSC (Vehicle Stability Control), Traction Control Disable, and Check Engine lights popped up onto my dash last October, all at the same time. We took it into the nearest dealer and reset the computer as the part the computer was pointing towards was perfectly fine. The problem returned less than a week later  and the dealer replaced the “A” vehicle speed sensor. That was fine, until the problem returned again in January. They replaced the “B” vehicle speed sensor. That was cool.  Too bad the fix only lasted a week when the problem returned again. This time it was worse. The car would now rev to 6000 RPM and surge forward randomly. My wife almost rear ended a E class Mercedes Benz the first time it happened. While my wife was en-route to the dealership, I phoned the service manager at the dealership and described the situation to him. I also made it clear to him that I wanted it resolved. The car spent a week in the dealer while they waited for an ECU as they thought that this was the issue. This was great for three days until the lights returned. The car is currently sitting in the dealership waiting for parts since Monday. The only info that I have from the dealer is:

• It is waiting for parts. That may take “a few days.”
• The parts that they ordered were on the advice of Toyota Canada whom the dealer is consulting with.
• They are not sure if these parts will fix the issue as they’re not sure what’s actually wrong with the car.
• There is no timeline as to when I can expect to get the car back.

Oh yeah, I’ll also point out that we have called Toyota Canada on the advice of our lawyer and have a case open with them. However, it will take “a few days” before somebody even calls us back as they apparently need time to investigate our case.

The dealership gave us a loaner (a Toyota Yaris). I shouldn’t complain, but after being in the Matrix, the Yaris is several steps down the food chain. Having said that, Toyota Canada dealers only have to give loaners to people who purchase their extended warranty. We did not so we’re guessing that because we’re up to our fifth visit to the dealer about this issue and I have complained to Toyota Canada, that’s why we have a loaner.

Here’s why my wife and I are ticked off:

• Toyota claims to have the best quality in the business. According to the Toyota Canada website: “You purchased Toyota because of our reputation for quality – and because you have better things to do than worry about vehicle reliability and dependability.” Clearly the quality is absent from this vehicle.
• Having to wait for days to get parts in this day and age is unbelievable. It’s inconceivable to me that there isn’t a parts warehouse someplace that allows them to ship parts to dealers for next day delivery.
• Not having an idea what is wrong with the car and simply throwing parts at it seems a really lame way to try and fix a problem. According to the Toyota Canada website: “The philosophy behind Toyota Quality Service is the provision of accurate, efficient and reliable servicing at every Toyota Dealership in Canada.” I haven’t seen this in action to this point.
• Any updates that I’ve received about the car have been from me calling the dealership and not from the dealer calling me. Being reactive to your customers issues is not a great way of making them happy customers. I guess that because they gave us a loaner, they feel that they can just ignore us.
• 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.
• The closest that anybody representing Toyota has come to apologizing for this circus is when the service adviser at the dealer said “You are justified in feeling frustrated” which is a textbook response from most customer service courses that I’ve taken. Now I understand why they won’t say the words “I’m sorry” but I did write in this posting the following: “One of the things that I’ve always believed is that you have be upfront by providing the public with information and apologize when you screw up. You need to express regret and sympathy or you just come out looking like you’re protecting your backside.” They could try that with us and see how far it gets them.

So, where do we go from here you ask? First we’ll wait for Toyota Canada to get back to us and see if they step up to the plate and deal with this. If they don’t resolve it, our lawyer has advised us that our next step is to apply to the Canadian Motor Vehicle Arbitration Process to deal with this issue. But it doesn’t have to get that far. All Toyota Canada needs to do is to step up and put the resources in place to get the car fixed correctly in the shortest amount of time possible. That’s what I would do if I were in their place as an unhappy customer is one who tells their friends about their negative experiences with a given company, which affects their sales and public perception.

It’s too bad that customer service seems to no longer exist. Perhaps major corporations will learn that it’s easier to keep customers happy than to go find new ones, and customer service is the best way to do that. After all, there are going to problems with stuff that you sell, what puts you at the top of the heap is how you deal with those problems. In this case, this is not being dealt with very well. That’s too bad because this is my first experience with Toyota, but given how this has gone thus far, it may well be my last. Of course that can be avoided if Toyota Canada does the right thing sooner rather than later.

I’ll keep you posted as to what happens next.  Oh, if anybody from Toyota Canada is reading this, please fix my car.

UPDATE: I recieved a call from the dealer saying that they’re still waiting for parts and I’ll be called again tomorrow with an update. Also, I should just keep driving my loaner. This is the first time that the dealer has called me with an update rather than I having to call the dealer to get an update. Interesting….

UPDATE #2: A reader sent me this story that Toyota is recalling 1.3 million Yaris cars worldwide. Apparently in severe front-end collisions the mechanism that tightens the vehicle’s seat belt expels a gas that could cause a sound-insulating foam pad nearby to ignite. The recall covers 2006 and 2007 model years. We have a 2008 as a loaner so we’re safe (I hope). But this news doesn’t exactly make me feel any better. Thanks for the tip!