The Death of a Thousand Paper Cuts

"Leftie" wrote in message news:ywezq.1884$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe09.iad...

Nasty, cheap, out-gassing plastics, a rainwater leak that ruined the carpet, design flaws from excessive engine cooling in cold weather to controls too small to operate with gloved hands and a vent that makes an amazing, almost constant rattling noise when the car is moving, our 2010 Prius II has exactly one thing to recommend it: high fuel economy. They could have done so much better. I'm being reminded of one of Toyota's more crass "features" this week: the oil change reminder. We have the two year free maintenance package with our lease, and they will only change the oil every 10k miles, because that is the factory recommended interval with full synthetic oil. The oil change reminder light, however, comes on every *5k* miles. At first it goes out after a few seconds, but once the 5k milestone has passed, it can only be blanked by pressing the "Display" button - or by taking the car to a Toyota dealer for a customer-financed oil change, or telling the dealer to reset the #@!@@ reminder. There is no excuse for this, as this dash is used in the Prius only, and the Prius uses only synthetic oil. They just want to wring a few more dollars from their vict, er, customers...

The instructions for resetting the oil change reminder are in the manual. Takes about 10 seconds.

Also, the 5,000-mile required service does not call for an oil change, just a check of the oil level.

That reminds me of another complaint: the manual is too bloody long, with no condensed section of essential instructions. I'm familiar with "RTFM" and I did try, but I may have to wait for the movie. Scratch that: we did watch the "movie" that comes with the car, and it wasn't much help. Still, I'll find out how to reset it. And really, a reminder for "check of the oil level"???

Three year lease, $179 a month. It would have been $3k down, but Toyota paid $1k of it - after boosting the retail price with things like chrome panels, of course. Selling our old Camry wagon covered almost all the up-front cost. 13k miles per year limit, buy after lease option of $15k and some change. We thought the latter was a good deal, back when we thought we'd be keeping the car. We've never leased before, and only did it this time because it was the easiest way for us to afford what we though was a great car. Live and learn.

We didn't mind the car for almost a year, so that wouldn't have worked. The controls were always too small for me, but not for her, and we thought the interior plastics' outgassing would stop in a reasonably short time (the plastic still smells bad after more than a year). It did badly enough on ice that we were having second thoughts, but that was several months after we bought it. The cruise control was improperly set up, and the car would indeed unintentionally accelerate under certain conditions, but that was fixed at the first service stop. Part of why I'm posting this is to help people who want a "Greener" car but aren't necessarily fixated on the Prius. To them I'd say "look at the Civic hybrid", although I've had two older Civics develop rainwater leaks under the windshield, so may there are *no* good cars out there...

what does THAT mean?