Toyota Service Kinda Sloppy

[Wiz201]

Car had service on Tuesday, booked for two months as the guy was making sure a courtesy car was going to be available for me. I said I needed automatic only.

Fast forward to Monday evening when I collect courtesy car, duly bringing my license and insurance details as Toyota seem to insist on, and woman says 'are you alright driving a manual?' to which I shake my head and say, 'nope, can't legally drive one, nor would I even want to attempt it'. Fortunately they had a Yaris hybrid which immediately brightened my attitude as it was lovely to drive a CVT again.

I collect Mrs Norris Aygo on Tuesday afternoon noting that they didn't even wash the white stuff off the alloys when they had switched the winter tyres for summers.

Then one day later I get a flat front tyre. I don't know how it could have picked up a nail in one day in the tyre? I'm just slighty dubious it came from Toyota garage. Anyway I got the tyre fixed at kwik fit.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Think with any manufacturer, you get better dealers and poorer dealers.

For example after two disappointing sales experiences (2006 & 2009), I won't touch my local dealer in Birmingham. Instead I use one approx 20 miles away - better sales experiences and good service department from my experience.

[Lakeuk]

Customer service is the number one thing I look at, closely followed by cost. I've had various bad experiences from main dealers of various brands, one memorable one was when a local company lost their franchise in the town to a new dealership to the town but large in the region had won it. I booked in my car for a service and MOT with the new guys, said my brakes needed looking as didn't feel right and that I needed a courtesy car to get me to work 60mile away. Problem one, they couldn't find my courtesy car, keys gone, one of the engineer gone awol - turned out with traffic outside being bad (roadwords) the engineer had decided without permission to give another customer a lift to his work, engineer took a hour to get back making me very late for work, didn't even get a simple apology.

Next issue, get a phone call half way through the day "We've put you car in for MOT and it's failed because of the breaks", me: you don't say sherlock, when I said the brakes needed looking at which bit didn't you understand common sense. Needless to say I didn't use them again and it looked like I wasn't the only one as 12 months later they lost their franchise and closes up.

My nearest toyota dealer has given me excellent customer service, they recently were bought out by the vantage group, was a little concerned service would be impacted, there was a blip at first when the new owner tried to centralise all service phone calls which was a little rubblish in that they messed up my booking but my normal local service manager spotted the cockup and reconfirmed with me, after that it was back to being managed locally. Sadly the previous owner still owned the land and has sold it for a supermarket so the dealer is shutting up at that location, think they'll be using there nearest other sites, so will bit a little unknown whether the service is to the same standard.