On the afternoon of December 19th, 2009, I drove to a cross country ski area 7 miles from my house. I parked and went out for a ski. On the way back to the parking lot, I smelled something nasty. Then I saw smoke and a fire truck. As I got closer, I noticed that the firefighters were hosing down my car. We bought our car at the end of August. It was a 2010 Prius, and yet it never made it to 2010. That was a bit of a shock, but it does not compare to the unprofessional, unethical, and, I would argue, illegal response from Toyota. After a joint inspection between Toyota and our insurance company, a representative of our insurance company informed us that it had been determined that the cause of the fire was a faulty inverter. Foolishly, this led us to believe that Toyota might honor the car's warranty. After a month of Toyota hiding behind a facade of phone operators at their so-called Customer Experience Center, we learned tonight that they have another agenda.
Toyota has lied to us about the timing of our initial call, and they have consistently stalled in giving us any sense of what their response might be. For example, after their designated 3 to 10 working day response time had elapsed, they informed us that the claim had gone to their legal department because it involved a fire. We asked why it had not gone to the legal department on the day we brought it to their attention. We did not get a response. After many more phone calls, we were able to get a number of the person in the legal department who was now going to take over our case. When we called, we learned that he would be out of the office for more than another week. He was going to return to the office exactly one month after the car blew up.
We were naive to think that 10 days might be the normal response for a faulty mirror, but surely a case of a new car blowing up would take priority and actually be handled in 3 or 4 days. Instead, it was more than a full month before we finally heard from Toyota. During this stressful month, when we asked to speak to supervisors, the people who are hired to run interference on the front lines simply said that there was no one available, but they would pass along a message saying that we had called, and they would get back to us within one business day. It turns out that almost every Toyota customer with whom we have shared our story, has their own story about the ridiculous Customer Experience Center, and the stalling tactics of Toyota. Clearly they have a strategy of wearing down individuals so that they can avoid honoring their commitments. My wife and I are school teachers. We need two cars because we both commute over ten miles to work. Because Toyota will not pay for a rental car unless they take responsibility for the fire, we have had to borrow cars from friends to get to work.
After numerous messages were left with the legal team representative in which our displeasure was increasingly made evident, we finally received a call tonight. Granted, the call was not on our cell phone that we have asked them to use, but on our home phone. We were not home, but in the message that was left, we were told that more investigations will have to take place to determine what caused the fire. Toyota, was going to stall further by saying that their representative only agreed with the insurance representative in terms of where the fire started, but they were still unsure of what caused the fire. The police officer who came to the scene had himself called the fire a case of spontaneous combustion, and he had rule out any sort of foul play.
With the message we received tonight, Toyota officially won the war of attrition. We need another car, and we will be accepting the settlement from our insurance company. We hope that they will go after Toyota so that we can get our $1000 deductible back, but also because Toyota's handling of this situation has been completely unacceptable.
Ironically, my wife and I have been loyal Toyota customers for over 20 years. I bought a Toyota pick-up in 1986, and it was my best vehicle ever. I swore to never buy another brand. I followed the pick-up with a Forerunner, a Corolla, a Rav-4, a Sienna Van, and then the Prius. So, I did not expect or hope to be in the position in which I find myself. Nonetheless, as you can imagine, we are finished with buying Toyotas.
I am also an environmentalist. I bought the Prius to help reduce the carbon footprint caused by a 30 mile commute to my job. I love the idea of more gas efficient vehicles, and it pains me to advise others not to buy this vehicle, but that is my advice. Toyota is reeling from their recall due to accelerator issues so they will do anything to avoid negative publicity. At the very least they should be warning customers about the possibility of their Prius self-combusting. Interestingly, we have read on-line of other incidents similar to ours, and we have now heard an account of another Prius self-combusting recently due to an overactive battery. Don't count on Toyota doing the right thing.
Even if Toyota had honored our warranty, we would have felt it to be our responsibility to warn other current Prius owners, and future Prius owners about our experience. In the week prior to our car blowing up, we let our young son continue to nap in the car after he had fallen asleep. What if the car had ignited with him in it? What if it had ignited during the night while it was parked in our attached garage? If Toyota had done the right thing, and replaced our Prius, we would have put several smoke detectors in our garage, and our son's days of napping in the car would have been over.
This diary seems appropriate for this blog because it demonstrates once again the helplessness of the average citizen when going up against a major corporation. Corporatism is destroying our culture bit by bit. I am thankful that blogs like this exist so that stories like ours can be told and not rejected by the corporate- owned media.
I was delighted to see the clever response of the band whose guitars were broken by baggage handlers for a United flight. They had a similar experience to ours when asking for United to take responsibility and to replace the broken guitars. They gave up, but they got their revenge by writing a song about the experience and posting it on You Tube. I recommend that you check it out. You will find the video if you search for "United Breaks Guitars". We are in the process of coming up with a video that relates our experience with Toyota. Be looking for it. We need to fight back against corporate greed and the unethical treatment of ordinary citizens.