Toyota ate cost on prius repair out of warranty!

That is good to hear that Toyota covered the repair for you. This is my first Toyota and I was wondering if they would have allowances for instances such as yours.

Honda covered a repair out of warranty on my wife's 2007 Honda when a power door actuator failed at 38,000 miles. Much less expensive than your Safety Connect but the same principle.

I never had a US car company provide any coverage outside of warranty on any of the cars I have owned over the years. Even when it was common knowledge that there were problems with certain items such as transmissions, head gaskets, etc.

This is the reason that I now have a Honda and a Toyota in my driveway.

 

Good to hear a positive experience on warranties!

Everyone is always eager to share bad experiences and not everyone bothers to share the good ones.

 

What? Something broke on a Prius that might have cost $1600 out of warranty?

Can't happen, must have been someone's imagination!

 

It can happen to any car. A person who can't afford one $1600 repair out-of-pocket can't really afford a car, they just have to hope for the best.

 

Hmm...good for Toyota. You could argue the safety connect transceiver is not a part that would be affected by the mileage of the vehicle, and your vehicle being only a year old...it was clearly the right thing to do.

Also, defective Safety Connect systems are not something Toyota wants on the road.

 

Defective Safety Connect = no yearly revenue for Toyota so it was in their best interest to replace.

 

Kudos to Toyota and good for you. I'm thinking Toyota may be overly sensitive to safety related repairs, warranty and publicity.

 

well you could try the Toyota repair at auto md for more hospitable assistance they can help you out any car problem you have.

 

That's a pretty absurd statement. :focus:

 

Richard has this old-fashioned viewpoint that taking on debt to buy a car means you could not afford it.*

:cheer2:

* Occasionally people use debt for a car purchase because their money is making more interest elsewhere, but that is overall not common.

 

I guess it's all about opportunity costs. (Econ 101)

 

Glad to hear Toyota stepped up to the plate. Many manufacturers will accommodate customers in situations like this (provided the customer makes a request).

 

my experience as a dealer in europe with toyota warranty is that they will really go beyond to cover stuff that they dont really have to... and there is also long standing policy if something breaks out of warranty, toyota will match any parts discount dealer suggests - so if dealer gives you 25% off the work, toyota will add their 25% as well. This is standard and always approved... and for a lot of things they will cover even out of warranty if it is deemed essential.

 

You guess wrong, because opportunity costs can only be defined as a $ ROI. E.g., 'enjoyment' or "because I want it" is not in the calculus.

 

It's good that they chose to cover it since they probably didn't have to unless it was included in safety equipment that gets longer coverage (like seat belts and air bags), but the $1600 was probably an inflated value of the repair.

 

Well I hope I'm that lucky tomorrow with a Cruise Control which has quit working! I'm out of warrantee, only 22 months, but coming up on 43K, so we will see. I may need to call Customer Service as well, depending on what they find. It will not "energize", so will not engage either. It is the standard CC not the radar. Hope it is something simple, but everything else works, and it is not a fuse, sooo...... Got a # for customer service??

 

Well here is is Friday, several days later and a final disposition to my problem. Went to the dealership w/o an apptmt on Monday, didn't work! I could leave it but didn't want to do that. Came back Tuesday morning and they diagnosed it for me. It was the switch on the steering column. Simply quit working. They said they would order the part and told me it would be in tomorrow,(Wed.). No call Wednesday, no call Thursday, till I finally called them mid day. In the mean time I had called Customer Care in California. In the end the best that either Toyota or the dealership would do is a 50/50 split of the charges. I guess I'm suppose to feel good about that, but considering it is a part which never should have gone wrong,......I'm not amused! I think both the dealership & Toyota should have taken care of this, because I've only had the car 22 months! It really isn't the dealers fault, it was a defective part from Toyota motors which just took 43K to manifest it's self. If the miles were still under 36K guess who would have stumped for it! Not me! Will post my thoughts on Toyota on the post I made regards "Lost Cruise Control".

 

Actually, 50/50 is reasonable for out of warranty if it were true. However, the problem with this is that they can make up any cost/value of the repair they want and 50% of an inflated price may actually be no real assistance at all. It could just be a shell game to appease you.
It's possible that dealerships may also print similar inflated values on warranty or extended warranty invoices to make the warranty coverage or extended warranty service contract appear to be much more valuable than it really is.
"Wow! It would have cost $6K to replace the nav screen if it were out of warranty. Guess, I better get the extended warranty then!"

 

Web1b, you are exactly right in your assessment. I have a meaningless bill statement, in that it only reflects my costs of the repairs, not the total costs divided by 50%. If I want to get imaginative, it looks like I ended up paying for the part, + a small amount of the labor, + some shop charges, and tax, but WHO KNOWS? All this is speculation by me. I'm glad my Pri. is as "unsophisticated" as it is! No Radar Cruise, no navigation, no solar panel roof. I think I would have bought an extended warrantee if any of those had been on this car that I ordered. As someone quoted about a finance mgr. who was trying to sell them an extended warrantee: "remember you are buying a computer on 4 wheels"! Hyundia, and Kia are looking more inviting every day!