Frustrated with Toyota and warrentee issue

Around the middle of October, I began experiencing problems with my stereo in my 2010 Prius level 3 which I’ve owned since December of 2009. At the time, my mileage had just turned 20,000 miles. The first problem I observed was that the reverse camera did not instantly turn on when the car was placed in reverse. There was a delay of up to 20 seconds before it came on. After a couple of days, the stereo audio began exhibiting delays of up to 20 to 30 seconds when the car was first started in the morning. The same problem happened if the car had time to cool off for a couple of hours. This was particularly noticeable as the weather began to cool. Within a couple of days, the audio delay began to take up to five minutes, and then 15 minutes and even up to a half hour at times. Oddly, the GPS and the reverse camera would work, but would take up to 30 seconds before coming on.

Obviously I should have made a bee-line to my dealership that I bought the car from on the first indication of trouble, but due to my heavy work schedule, it was a week and half later that I brought the car in. My service rep sat in the passenger side and clearly saw that the stereo had no audio coming out of it. And this was after the car had been sitting for just 15 minutes. He said, “We’ll get you a new radio orderedâ€. The previous evening, I came across this thread on this site:

"No radio for 30 seconds on cold start"

http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...ing/54302-no-radio-30-seconds-cold-start.html

The similarities were uncanny as the originator of the above discussion described what sounded like identical issues that I was having with my system. In the end of the thread, the owner said that the underlying problem was an amplifier that needed to be replaced. I explained this to my service rep and that the post was in reference to a generation 2 Prius. My rep told me “The amplifier is built inside the radio unit on the generation 3. So if it is the amplifier, it will be fixed when the unit is replacedâ€. I was told by my rep that the radio would be in within 3 business days.

Twelve days later, the replacement radio finally arrived and it was then that I learned from the same service rep that the replacement was not new, but was in fact a ‘rebuilt’ unit. By this time, the original stereo system had completely stopped working. Furthermore, the Audio tab on the MFD would show that the ‘Sat’ (satellite radio) was grayed out as was the ‘AUX’ (for my ipod) was also grayed out. Attempting to power up the FM or AM radio would result in the unit going into a perpetual reboot loop that could only be stopped by turning off the car. After the replacement radio was installed, my rep walked me out to the service bay where the technician was showing me that the replacement radio was behaving in the identical manner. It was then and there that I once again told my service rep about the online discussion I had read and that the radio was obviously not the problem. My rep asked me to leave the car there so they could look at it further. The dealership has a rental service and were good enough to give me a Rav4 to drive.
The next day I called my service rep to see if they had found anything. He said I could come and pick up my car. Upon arrival, my rep told me that he called somebody (maybe an engineer?) who told him “as long as power is getting to the radio, then the problem is the replacement radio was bad too’. I told my rep that this was a waste of time, but I nevertheless had to follow the program.

The following week, I called my rep to find out if he could tell me when the next radio was going to come in. He said, ‘Funny you should ask, somebody just handed me an invoice that says your radio is here’. I told my rep I’d be in first thing at 7 am. The next morning after sitting in the waiting room for 30 minutes, my rep walks up to me and asks me to follow him. Once outside and away from other customers, he says “I don’t know how to tell you this, but your replacement radio is not here. As it turns out, the paperwork I had in my hand was actually paperwork for the first replacement radioâ€. I just laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation of me getting my car into the shop that early in the morning and after having no audio for nearly a month to hear this. I actually felt sorry for the rep as he looked like he was expecting me yell at him. I told him he could make it up to me by making a call to get the next radio in quickly. This happened on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving.

The following Monday after Thanksgiving, I called my rep to see if there was update on the radio. This time the same rep tells me that Toyota was holding up the process as they were requiring the dealership to write a report before the company would send another radio. This time I let the rep know my patience was wearing thin. I asked him to look into the matter and to call me back no later than that evening to let me know when the radio was to be shipped out or to let me know what was going on. Four days later, I still had not heard anything back from my service rep. It was then that I decided to call the Toyota Customer Care number.

After explaining the situation, the woman I spoke to told me that a ‘Case Manager’ would call me no later than the next day. On Friday I received a call from a Case Manager who explained to me that he was not going to be my case manager, but that somebody else would be and that that person was not in that day. He did tell me however that he researched the situation enough to learn that the original radio had already been checked out to be in perfect working order. (go figure). He also gave me the name of my Case Manager along with her extension to contact her, but that she would call me the following Monday.

By Monday afternoon I had not received a call from my Case Manager, so I called her myself. After speaking for 15 minutes about the situation she asked me if this was my first Toyota purchase. I told her that it in fact it was. Furthermore, I explained to her I had bought nothing but Honda cars for last twenty years and that due to my work (home health Physical Therapist), I buy a new vehicle once every four years. She told me that she needed to speak to the Service Manager at my local dealership and that she would be back in contact with me no later than Tuesday evening. Well…….Tuesday has come and gone and I haven’t received a call back from my Case Manager. I’m beginning to believe that Toyota really doesn’t care about following through and resolving this situation. I have no idea if I’m the norm or the exception to how customers are treated. But I do know with compete certainty that Toyota has proven to be inept in handling a warrantee situation in a timely manner. Any suggestions as to how to get this resolved?

 

e-gads, I misspelled waranty in the title of the thread. That's what I get for posting after my normal bedtime. :embarassed: Thanks Paul56 for the tip of talking to the GM. Something I had not considered.

Here's today's update. I decided to call my Case Manager this morning as I still had not heard from her. She told me that she was awaiting an e-mail from an Engineering department. Apparently she is trying to get an Engineer to travel to my dealership to look at the car for themselves. She told me as soon as she gets a confirmation, she would call me to make sure I can bring the car in on an agreed date. I asked her what she thought the appoximate time that one would be able to travel here. She told me that guessed either the week before or the week after Christmas, but that there was simply no way she could know. That's fair enough. She also told me that they (whoever 'they' are) were in agreement that the radio was not the problem and there was another problem with the car. I didn't mentioned that I was aware that the original radio had checked out in perfect working order according to the other Case Manager I spoke to last week. At the moment it appears that things are progressing in the right direction. I'll keep this discussion updated as things develope.

 

Here's an update as promised. An 'Engineer' came to my dealership and examined the car yesterday while the dealership gave me a Sienna Van for the day. The Service Manager called me today and told me that the problem was the cable harness for the radio. He went on to say that the amplifliers (I didn't know there were two) were replaced and that a new radio was removed from another Prius on the lot to rule out radio issues. The Engineer found that at times, the audio would work, but then for reasons unkown, would cut out. It was then determined that there had to be a short in the harness somewhere. The Service Manager went on to say that as the Christmas holiday was next week, he had no idea when the harness would come in, but he said in the meantime I could come and pick up my car.

When I picked up my car this afternoon, the MFD went into the characteristic perpetual reboot that it was doing whenever the AM or FM radio was powered up. Turning off the radio stopped the reboot. Today here in North Alabama, the high was 33F. About an hour after picking up my car, I plugged in an address in the GPS (as the GPS function has never stopped working) and just prior to arrival to my destination I heard the GPS voice began giving verbal directions. This is the first audio I'd heard in my car for at least six weeks. Then it occurred to me that the radio may be working, and indeed it was. It wasn't until the car had enough time to heat up the interior that audio began working again. This is identical to issues that were discussed in the discussion on this site I mentioned in the first post above. (I would post the actual link, but this site is prohibiting me from doing so as I need at least 5 posts and this one is only my third. I'd appreciate if somebody would post the link).

One issue I'm definitely going to discuss with the Service Manager the next time I talk to him is the over-powering smell of solvent in the cabin of the car. I'm guessing that black grease got on the interior somewhere and instead of cleaning it off with a soap-based carpet cleaner, somebody used an engine degreaser (and I know what that smells like). And the black grease really isn't too much of stretch of a guess either as the dealership left a paper carpet-guard on the driver-side floor that was covered with it. This may not be the dealership's fault and may be the doings of the Engineer examining my car. In either case, it's really annoying stepping into what is essentially suppose to be a new car and to have it smell just like an old piece of junk I had when I was a teenager.

One other thing to add in here is that the Service Rep I had been working with is no longer employed at the dealership. I talked to the Service Manager about it as I was concerned that he may have been canned as a result of me getting the Toyota Customer Center involved with the issue. He assurred me that his leaving had nothing to do with my case. But he did say that in the twenty some years as service manager, he had never seen a situation as that with my car. Apparently, the the company where the radios are sent to and rebuilt ones are received from refused to send out a second replacment radio which essentially placed the dealership in limbo. At any rate, my calling the care center was the right thing to do as the process was clearly stalled.

 

Satellite Tuner Connection cause of Stereo failure

The issue has finally been resolved, but not without a series of problems. A lot has transpired since my last post, so I try to keep to the main points.

- I received a post card in the mail stating that the ‘Part’ that I had ordered had arrived at my dealership. This caused a bit of confusion as I had in fact ordered some wheel covers which I had already obtained. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I thought there was a possibility that the post card was referring to the cable harness that was supposed to come in. I called my (new) Service Rep and he confirmed that it was in. His lack of follow up when the harness first arrived caused a delay in the repair by a least a couple of days. But in fairness, this was around the Christmas holiday and things were likely hectic and the maintenance department may have been short staffed.

- I brought the car in on the Wednesday after Christmas and the dealership were good enough to loan me a 2011 Camry.

- The following Tuesday (just after New Years) I was called and told that the car was ready for pickup. Upon getting into my car, I plugged my iPod into the USB port to find that the port was not working. Therefore the car had to stay another day. I should mention here that the dealership had not only washed the exterior of my car, but the interior had been shampooed as well. Interestingly enough, I had not said a word to anyone at the dealership about the strong smell of solvent that was overpowering in the cabin the previous time I picked up the car. Maybe somebody at Toyota had been reading this thread?

- The next day on Wednesday I picked up the car and found that the USB port and iPod worked fine. I was told by another Service Rep that the cable underneath the center console was turned around backwards. And that the Technician did test his iPod on my car, but he had used the Auxiliary (round hole) input instead of the USB port. And the reason the USB port was not tested was that the technician did not have a USB cable available to test the port.

- 20 minutes after leaving the dealership, I discovered that my environmental control in Automatic would not adjust the fan control down to low. It was stuck on blowing at 80% power. The cabin of the car got so hot that I had to roll windows down for a few seconds at a time to cool things off. I called and set up an appointment and brought the car back in the next morning at 7am. The problem was a vacuum hose that has a thermometer sensor on the end of it had become disconnected while the dashboard had been removed. Since then, no noticeable problems have been discovered.

- I think this may be of interest to some reading this is that I learned through this experience that the box under that driver’s seat is the tuner for the satellite radio and that the box under the passenger seat is the Amplifier. So if somebody tells you that your Generation 3 Prius radio (level III and above) has a built in Amplifier like my first Service Rep told me, they’re clearly mistaken.

- I’ve posted enough times on this site to finally post the link to the discussion that I’ve made reference to that is very similar to the stereo issues I’ve experienced: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-prius-care-maintenance-troubleshooting/54302-no-radio-30-seconds-cold-start.html The actual problem discovered in my cable harness was the connection to the Satellite Tuner (under the driver seat). I was told by one of the Technicians that the Engineer discovered that pulling on the cable connection to the Tuner would cause the radio to work and when he released the pressure, the radio would stop. This is similar to the above post in that the problem was the connection to the amplifier.

- Despite all the problems of getting this issue resolved, in the end Toyota did come through and I feel that as a customer I was treated overall fairly. The people involved both at my dealership and through the Toyota Customer Care Center could not have been any nicer and in many circumstances, apologetic to the delays and problems in getting the stereo fixed.

- If a moderator to this forum is reading this thread, please change the topic header to ‘Satellite Tuner Connection cause of Stereo failure’