Check Light Again

The Toyota District Manager is responsible for sales. The District Service Manager is responsible for service and warranty.

My recommendation is to speak with dealership personnel in the order listed to express your concerns - service advisor that you worked with, service manager, general manager, and then dealer principal. If you are reluctant to speak with the dealership, you can contact the customer relations number in your warranty booklet, but the Customer Relations Analyst will direct you to speak with the people in the same order that I suggested. If you have already spoken with dealer personnel when you contact the Toyota 800 number, then the CR analyst can ask for a District Service Manager to investigate.

Ray -

How do I go about finding the name of the District Service Manager? Is there a directory somewhere or do I just ask the people in the service department? I went online last night and checked with Consumer Protection for my county, and this company had 31 complaints on file for the past five years and only settled 16 of them. The others were closed without being settled. The other dealership, a much larger one, had a total of 12 and they had all been settled. I have to admit, I don't have a lot of hope that they will fix my car now. So I am looking ahead to find out what, if anything, I can do next. Thanks for your help.

As I mentioned before, there are steps you need to take before a District Service Manager (DSM) will get involved. Many DSMs will not speak with a customer unless the customer has taken the steps I outlined because 90% of the time, the dealerships can and does handle the customer's concerns to the customer's satisfaction.

After you have taken the steps at the dealership that I mentioned, then your best bet is to contact Toyota Motor Sales USA's customer relations number -

1-800-331-4331. The Customer Relations (CR) Analyst will open a case file for the dealership and CC the DSM and Southeast Toyota distributors' Customer Relations department. The dealership is supposed to then contact you to resolve the issue and the DSM is supposed to monitor how the case is handled. The dealership is supposed to report back to the TMS CR Analyst how the case was resolved. If you are still unsatisfied after those steps have happened, then you can re-contact the TMS CR Analyst and ask to meet the DSM.

I do not know the dealership you are dealing with, but in my experience, most of the complaints that reach the BBB or Consumer Protection agencies from dealerships tend to be about sales practices, and most service departments do try to do a good job. FYI, the warranty on your vehicle will be honored at any Toyota dealership in the U.S. so it is not necessary to go back to a dealership you are dissatisfied with. If all you want is to have your car fixed properly, I'm sure the dealership should be able to handle it to your satisfaction. If you want the dealership punished somehow for this incident, that is not going to happen. Dealership customer satisfaction scores are closely monitored by the distributor's management and dealerships that continually have low scores will have to improve or lose the franchise.

The dealership called late ll/08 and told me that they had been in touch with Toyota. Toyota techs told them to change a certain part. The part had to be ordered and it will be about a week before they get it. This will be covered under the extended warranty because it is part of the VVT system. They say the car is safe to drive in the meantime. So, I hope this solves the problem.

I find it disgusting that Toyota so often takes so long to supply various parts.

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Toyota's parts distribution system can supply 95 to 97% of parts within 24 hours of order placement, one of the highest fill rates in the industry. Unfortunately, it's that 3 to 5% that take longer that sticks in people's minds.

Indeed and Toy is still probably better than any of the other manufacturers in their distribution. But, there COULD be some improvement. A week is inexcusable.

A part that took a week to arrive at the dealership probably came from Japan. This is sometimes the case in very new models in the first few weeks after introduction, when parts are redesigned, or when there is a sudden, unforeseen demand for them.

I got one part for my Supra in THREE DAYS!!! They said ti would take a week but it shipped much, much faster! And it came from Japan!

I do remember waiting 10 days for the gears for my diff to come from Japan...in 1974...on a Corolla 1200...

If it took that long for the parts to arrive, then they were probably still making it.

3 days from Japan is reasonable, however that begs the question. Surely, there should be at least ONE North American distribution point for ALL Toyota parts.

It would be nice if there was at least one North American parts distribution center (PDC) with every part Toyota makes but it is not practical. Not even U.S. nameplates stock every part for every vehicle. Toyota's master PDC in CA stocks most parts but it is not practical to stock every part. First of all, there are over a hundred different models sold, each with thousands of parts. While there is some parts overlap across models and series, each model has at least some unique parts. Multiply that by 10 years of models, and there are many millions of part numbers. Toyota, like all manufacturers, monitors the frequency of sale of each part number and stocks accordingly. Some part numbers sell once or twice in a ten year period, and those parts are not stocked because it is not cost effective. Other part numbers, like oil filters, sell by the millions each year. This same frequency of sale determines what parts are stocked in regional PDC's and at dealerships. To complicate matters further, the design of many parts are changed or upgraded over time and existing inventory must be scrapped.