Land Cuirser Engine Failure and Customer Relation

I would like to share with you my concerns and complain about service provided and customer relation of your dealer in Saud Arabia/ Al-Khobar section.

I have reached them with bringing my car Land Cuirser Model 2008 (JTMDU09J784013575)

Where it has unusual sound in the engine; and in short time they said it has to be replaced or fixed with all adjustments with spare parts under my account.

Unfortunately, I have tried to understand the reasons why the engine failed without any kind of alarm (light or sound), no leak, and no increase in temperature. My inquiry how is the most critical part of the car which is engine has not protected with any kind of alarm and it is the situation as I am sending you my E-mail. It is Toyota not any other car which I proud to own it!!!

Until know I have not be answered and I am frustrated where I kept my car on their shop waiting and seeking your support and help


My big family in all GCC countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait…) Bni Hajer builds incredible and unique relation with Toyota for decades and I am sure they share me their feeling and support.

Hi All,

I would like to make a complaint about poor Toyota service I received in Malaysia, I've sent in my car twice for Toyota service center personnel to check on my internal car clock for keep on slowing down after a couple of days even though I've adjusted it back to the right time many times, the 1st visit I make to one of the Toyota service center didn't result in a part replacement, the technician was saying he has 'reset' my clock and it was working according to him, later I found the problem came back again, 2nd visit on 27th May 2010 I make to another Toyota service center the technician mention he has 'cleaned the fuse & contact point', but the problem re-occur again in couple of days.(their invoice#150V115370)

Both experience give me an impression that even though customer may have pay a premium to bought a Toyota which 'supposed' to be providing good quality car & world class customer service, but actual dealing with them actually just give customer headache and wasting time on resolving a small problem such as a clock issue which could be fixed by a simple replacement, after all how much is a clock worth compared to our valuable time spend on multiple visit & their reputation in stake ?

In another attempt on 4th June 2010 to sort out this matter with their freephone customer service at 18008869682 to claim my fundamental customer rights to claim defective part under warranty, the lady who handled my case mention she'll check & get back to me soon which she never did, this again shows lack of responsibility & accountability, with above poor technician competency & poor customer service received I hereby advice whoever interested to buy Toyota car please think again and check how many people has complaint about Toyota before you go into misery just like rest of us, its' no wonder so many Toyota car defects and complaints has came up of late, this shows the company is heading for closure soon, so be warn that your new Toyota car may not get the warranty they promise once their company closed down due to bad management & bad customer treatment.

Rgds
Dissatisfied Customer

The car dealer service were unexceptionally unprofessional, they forced us to sign their contract without reading any details of the process what so ever, their cancellation percentage it’s certainly too much compared to other dealers. A Lack of communication and explaining all their circumstances carefully and clearly were a major problem.

However the above queries are what I presume that the car dealer DID fail to complete their customer service, therefore I strongly object and do not agree with their contract in any way. Below are the following of arguments based on the incident?

(1) They pressured us to buy the van which we were not ready to.
(2) I told them I only wanted to enquire about the price, but they took us in the room and ask for deposit which I gave $200.00. These in my opinion are signs of indoctrinating
(3) They forced my husband and convinced him in an unmannered way to sign the circle without informing him to read and observe the contract first, my husband began to read the form but they disrupted him and convinced him saying that the contract is, if the loan is not approved then we will lose the deposit which we did take their word and so my husband did sign it. At this point his disruption had taken all my husbands attention away from the contract and the information he was reading. In a way i believe we were both mis lead and unpleasantly convinced without giving my husband ANY time to review the contract to give him ENOUGH time to understand the contract COMPLETELY, my husband is not aware with the 1o% until now when we decided to cancel our enquiry.
(4) My husband was not aware of the 10% and also the cooling of period.

In my perspective i think that this car dealer has very POOR customer service. They did not explain their conditions accurately and FULLY.

I PURCHASED A NEW LEFT OVER TOYOTA FROM THE YEAR BEFORE FROM LAWRENCE TOYOTA IN NJ...THE CAR HAD 16 MILES ON IT FROM BEING TEST DRIVEN OVER THE PAST YEAR ... THIS CANT BE HELPED AND I THOUGHT NOTHING OF IT... WHEN THE PAPERS WERE DRAWN UP THEY PUT DOWN USED CAR BECAUSE IT WAS LAST YEARS MODEL AND HAD 16 MILES ON IT...IT DIDNT MATTER TO ME AND I HARDLY NOTICED...BUT THIS CHANGES THE INTEREST RATE FROM 2.99 TO 5.99 WHICH I FIND OUT WHEN I GET MY FIRST PAYMENT 30 DAYS LATER...I COMPLAIN AND IM TOLD THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO...I ASK TO RETURN THE CAR AND THEY OFFER 3500 LESS THAN I PAID 31 DAYS AGO...SO I WRITE TO TOYOTA CORPORATE OFFICE...THEY SENT ME AN AMORTIZATION SCHEDUAL TRYING TO SHOW THERE IS NOT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE IN THE PAYMENTS... THEY LIKE SPENDING MY MONEY... BUT WHEN I NOTICED IS THAT THE PAYMENT THEY HAD WAS LESS THAN I WAS BEING CHARGED...EVEN AT THE SAME 5.99 INTEREST RATE...4 MONTHS LATER TOYOTA MOTOR CREDIT AGREES THAT THERE IS A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM AND I AM BEING CHARGED TOO MUCH PER MONTH BY ACCIDENT BUT IT IS NOT ABLE TO BE FIXED FOR ME ONLY FUTURE CAR BUYERS...THEY ARE SO SORRY...SO I MAKE A COMPLAINT WITH THE BBB AND STATE THEY ARE MISCHARGING ME BECAUSE THEY MADE A MISTAKE AND I AM FORCED FOR 5 YEARS TO MAKE THE WRONG PAYMENTS OF I RUIN MY CREDIT SCORE...THE BBB INVESTIGATION UNCOVERS THE PAYMENTS EVEN THOUGH ARE HIGHER THAN I AM SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING ARE BEING MISAPPLIED ALSO...MEANING I AM NOT PAYING OFF PRINCIPAL BECAUSE THERE IS SOMETHING ELSE WRONG... THIS GETS BETTER WITH TIME... I REQUEST ME TO RETURN THE VEHICLE WHICH IS NOW 7 MONTHS OLD WITH 7000 MILES ON IT AND I AM OFFERED 7500 LESS THAN I PAID...I RATHER GO TO COURT... THE BBB CONTACTS US BOTH AND ASKS US TO ARRAINGE A SETTLEMENT SINCE TOYOTA IS BEING SUED BY EVERY OWNER IN THE WORLD ABOUT BRAKE PROBLEMS...I GET A NEW OFFER ON MY CAR WHICH WAS APPRAISED BY THE BBB FOR 17450 OR ONLY 12000 FROM LAWRENCE TOYOTA AND THAT WAS GOING TO BE THEIR BEST OFFER...I EXPLAINED I WAS GETTING SHAFTER PLUS I PAID 400 A MONTH FOR 8 MONTHS 3200 WHICH DISSAPEARED... I WAS TOLD SO SORRY
PEOPLE THERE ARE MANY CAR DEALERS OUT THERE AVOID LAWRENCE TOTALLY AVOID TOYOTA IF YOU CAN ALSO I LIVE IN THIS HELL EVERY DAY...CANT STOP THE PAYMENTS AND CANT SELL THE CAR WHICH IS WORTH LESS THAN I OWE.

This is a letter I am writing to Toyota Canada and Toyota International about an awful experience March 25-27, 2010.

Lied to and Humiliated by Toyota Scarborough

We are writing to complain about the humiliating service we received March 27, 2010 at one of your company’s Canadian dealerships, Scarborough Toyota, 1897 Eglinton Ave. East, Toronto, Canada. My husband had leased our first car through this dealership in November 2006, just before we got married and had an unpleasant experience with regards to the lease negotiations and the price obtained. Since then we had been back to our dealership for a few services (oil changes etc.) and there had been a change in management, so we felt more positively towards them.


Earlier this year, we received a notice about the loyalty program and were asked to come in to discuss an early termination of our lease (due to expire in November 2010). Since our marriage, we had moved an hour away from the dealership so we took off work early to go and see the dealership sales person. We test drove the Camry 2010 and liked it. However, we were not really sure about purchasing a new lease due to our personal circumstances. Over the course of the evening, we expressed our reservations while our sales rep continued to push very hard that we should get the lease so that they could deliver the car before March 31, 2010. This was the first negotiation my husband and I were doing together on a purchase of this size, so clearly we were inexperienced, and should have left at the first sign of discomfort. However, we continued with the process – our first mistake. We weren’t thrilled about the price, but were feeling it was fair.


In fact, our sales rep provided us with a verbal promise and a written note that if we brought him another quote for the same deal with proof in writing, he would beat that price by 5%. When we asked if we could get it in writing from the manager, he said it would then be legally binding and said something about “anti-competition clause/law”. This lead to further confusion on our end that. When we went in to discuss the bill, another manager tried very hard to sell us the dents and dings package telling us that we would be in “the minority who wouldn’t buy this package”. We felt really stupid. At that point, we didn’t even know if all the paper work we had done meant we had bought the car or not. Not understanding completely clearly that the signing that paper for the deposit meant that we had “purchased” the car, we went home. It was 9:30 pm, we’d been there for almost 4 hours and were exhausted.


For the next 36 hours, we discussed the deal and decided we did not want to take the car at this time. The four-hour process had been exhausting. We also wanted clarification on the price, which we received over the phone with our sales rep the next day. Although the price was fair, we had felt strong-armed into the deal due to our inexperience. So, we went back to the dealership to talk to our sales rep, discussing our reservations about the process, and he said he would recommend the dealership return the deposit. We insisted on speaking with the manager present – our sales rep said only the sales manager was present, not the “refund” manager, and asked us to come back after two days. We left the dealership to speak in the car, and then realized we would not be able to make the 2-hour return trek to the dealership on a weekday to discuss the “possibility of the refund”.


So in we went back to the dealership and insisted meeting the sales manager. This proceeded to become the most humiliating conversation we have ever had the displeasure of having. We politely explained our experience over the past 48 hours, that we were very uncomfortable with the deal and could we please cancel it. Instead of trying to help us out, the manager humiliated us by saying that our reason for wanting to cancel the deal was not reason enough! He insisted our discomfort could not possibly be the real reason; it had to be something else, the price most likely. It was the worst 30 minute conversation we have ever had. He basically explained to us that he would not, could not cancel the deal because he did not want to lose business. He did not care that the Toyota brand would suffer if its customers were upset with the negotiation process. He said no one could have sold him anything he didn’t want to buy and that his dealership had been around for 30 years so we could do nothing to ruin its reputation. We even said we were inexperienced and yes, we should have walked out earlier. Showing no empathy, he said the contract was “written in stone” and that even if we had come with a better quote/price, he would not have changed the contract, which means, in effect, that we were lied to verbally (*the note was scanned and sent to Toyota).

To be fair, we don't think the sales rep is a bad guy, but we do think the manager was the one putting pressure on him to make the sale. Anyway, what the manager basically said was we had to purchase the car, and to try to sweeten the awful conversation he would throw in some all-weather mats or a boot liner. $100 mats for 2 days of not being able to sleep? Wow! And being lied to by the only car company that we have been defending to our friends and colleagues for weeks!


You see, we are a family of Toyota drivers. There are five Toyotas within just our immediate family, and both our fathers are looking to replace their Toyotas. The dealership knew this and we thought if we had a good experience there, we would recommend them to our family.


Instead, we are considering letting our deposit of $1000 go because we the whole experience has left such a bitter taste in our mouths. The dealership can keep our money because if this is the way Toyota cares about its customers, we would never like to buy our cars there again. We were loyal to Toyota during the recent recall crisis and this is the way Toyota has repaid our loyalty! We weren’t explained the process properly; we explained our inexperience to our sales rep and manager with no one trying to help us. Instead, we were treated disrespectfully and frankly, we feel like we don’t ever want to do business with Toyota again. Just seeing Toyota on the road since yesterday afternoon makes us angry. Oh, and to add salt to wounds, the sales manager’s patronizing tone and attitude was just awful; why would you tell your customers that you feel sorry for those couples who don’t have children (we don’t have children) because they want their freedom and don’t know what joy children are?! Clearly this manager needs to learn some communication skills.


In his speech while being appointed President, Mr. Akiyo Toyoda said: “Rather than asking, “How many cars will we sell?” or, “How much money will we make by selling these cars?” we need to ask ourselves, “What kind of cars will make people happy?” as well as, “What pricing will attract them in each region?” Then we must make those cars.” Well, we are sorry to report but Toyota dealerships are not following their President’s vision.


$1000 may be a lot of money for us but clearly, to Toyota, our brand loyalty is not even worth that much. We are very disappointed with Toyota because if that’s the way the company wants to do business, it is going to lose many more customers.