The Problem with Toyota and owning a Prius - Corporate culture

[diva77]

There are brake problems with older Priuses as well. The problem with Toyota is that they structure the warranty for the Prius so that if you bring it to a place other than a Toyota for repair, you lose your warranty. This creates lack of transparency on behalf of the company when there is a problem.

They have been brushing off complaints about the brakes for years. The service people make light of braking complaints when you bring your car in.

This is what corporate culture is. Don't ask, don't tell. If a brake problem exists at a corporation, act as if the customer never asked about it and don't tell anybody there's a major problem with your entire stock of vehicles.:grr:

[MindPilot]

1. That's not exactly accurate.

This is from the perspective of someone who spent 20 years as a Ford technician.

First, the warranty does not preclude getting regular service done at an independent shop or doing it yourself. The problem arises when there is a problem, say for example you did all your own oil changes and now the the engines is toast. You want it fixed under warranty, but you can't document that you did those oil changes, so of course lack of maintenance could be cited as a cause for failure.

The other issue is intermittent problems are very hard to diagnose. If the problem does not occur in front of my face, it is near impossible to figure out. We don't make light of your brake problem, it's just that I drove the thing for 10 miles, checked it all over and it looks fine, unless I have a service bulletin from the company telling me what to fix, there's not much I can do.

[kctim]

2. Come on

you can't blame the "evil corporations" for everything with an attitude like that.

[MindPilot]

3. Thanks to "evil corporations"

we no longer have to blame religion for all the ills of the world!

[diva77]

6. think about tobacco companies; a lot of parallels here with Toyota's behavior

I don't understand why somebody unrec'd this post

[diva77]

4. sorry, but the bs recall about the problem being the floormat says it all to me

seems more like they were trying to get away with not addressing the real problem rather than what you said, but I appreciate what you're saying

the problem is not so terribly intermittent that they couldn't determine that it WASN'T the floormats

[diva77]

5. oh, and 1 other thing - only Toyota mechanics can be certified to fix the Prius

so the car is no longer under warranty if you have it repaired elsewhere - due to the hybrid engine design

[cognoscere]

7. Is that true?

So if someone is out on the other side of Bumfuck,Iowa and the nearest Toyota dealer is five hundred miles away, you have to have it towed there? Oh oh oh oh what a feeling, Toyota.

[MindPilot]

8. Warranty makes allowances for emergency repairs.

They will also cover towing to the nearest dealership for covered repairs.