GeorgiaHybrid, what about TSBs for vehicles that are within their 36k warranty. Isn't the dealer the only one who's going to do the work on these? It just seems that while the vehicle is under warranty it makes sense to bring it to the dealer.

 

Physicsdude,

Any warranty work or TSB’s that need to be done are fixed at the dealer. I do keep track of them as I have an ALLDATA subscription for each of my vehicles. I also talk to the tech that performs the work (and check behind him) to make sure everything is done correctly.

That might sound paranoid but when you consider the LAST time I trusted a dealers tech, the right front wheel came off my Olds Cutlass back in 1978 while running 55 or so on I-59. They tried to claim it was MY fault because that tech had never had a problem before. Yeh, right, he was 19…….

Ever since then the upkeep on my car is my responsibility. I keep up with it just as I do my personal safety. I don’t trust the police to be there when something happens and I don’t trust the dealers’ tech to not make a mistake.

Remember this:

You really aren’t paranoid if they ARE out to get you……

 

Good points, I like your style. If I do it myself though I'd probably screw it up even more. So maybe the best approach for me would be to watch the work as they did it. Do they let you do that at the dealer? Also, do you think if I called them on the phone and asked that a master tech do the service they would comply (if I said I would take the car elsewhere otherwise)?

 

It depends on the dealer. Some of them will allow you in the service bays for a short time period (to show you something) and others will not. Some will claim their "insurance company" will not allow it (never had a problem with ours) and others make it a policy to not allow customers to talk to a tech.

Either way I doubt that you will be allowed to stay in the service bay and watch the work being done. You will not be familiar with the dangers in that shop and I will not mention how much you will drive a tech crazy by being there. You also need to understand that even the best mechanic can have an “oops” that he will fix but would rather you didn’t know about (bolts broken and drilled out, wrong re-assembly order, etc.).

Try to find a dealer that will, at the minimum, allow you to talk to the tech doing the work. If they are a master tech, they will not have a problem explaining what they are doing. If an 18 year old kid walks out and says " Dude, I've been wanting to check out how one of these hybrids thingies work for a year!” find another shop.....

For simple service work, I doubt that ANY dealer will let a master tech do the work. At better than a $100.00 an hour at a lot of shops they would be WAY to expensive. Just get to know your service advisor, explain to them EXACTLY what you need and what you expect them to do. Tell them to skip any "extra" service not required and try to get the same service tech each time. That way if there IS a problem, the blame list is very short (one person….).

 

Our local toyota dealer has a hybrid certified tech. He does all the work on the hybrids including any repair work. He does the engine make ready on the new hybrids including a test drive. He also does the routine maintenance on the hybrid engine that includes the oil and filter change. He also works on any gas powered toyota's if less than 10 years old.

A Certified Hybrid Tech, meaning he has been to and passed the toyota hybrid schools. I'm not sure how other toyota dealers work with their hybrid customers.

 

good info about the hybrid techs, I will investigate my dealer a little more.

 

Some dealers will allow a customer to request a certified toyota tech to do their mechanical repair work. That may not work for regular oil changes, other then maybe for the hybrids.

 

I never buy a maintenance plan for my cars. It was the '07 Camry hybrid where they took me and my wife into a office to meet with a nice dressed fellow behind a desk. He tried his very best to sell us a maintenance plan that also covered oil changes. It took a while to escape him, but I told him that I rather do my own oil changes.

After all lots of the stuff on the car is under warranty for a good while, especially the hybrid system. Most in the forms seldom have any problems even if the car has lots of miles on it. Some water pumps, struts and the 12 volt battery is about all I can remember and some that has around 100,000 miles. I don't keep my cars that long anymore. Toyota may have a improved water pump now that it's electrically driven.

I do know that something like a maintenance plan which is ok, but is a high profit item for the dealer. Evidently the person that sells the policy gets a nice commission from each one he sells. I must be getting old. I remember buying a compact Chevy in the late 80's that had a $300 factory rebate. The dealer tried his best to get me to let him have the rebate money in exchange for some type of maintenance plan. I said, sorry I do my own work on the car.

It's ok to buy one if you want if the price is reasonable. They wanted $1000 for the plan back in late 2006 when I bought my first Camry hybrid. Over the years no doubt the price would go up like everything else.

Like the sales manger said, it's really expensive for us to continue to run this big dealership. They don't tell you the large amount of cars they sell each month and the big profits the dealership makes on each car sold. Toyota sends them another check for how many vehicles were sold for each month, another check for how may are sold at the end of the year.

About replacing the brakes. I spoke with our local tech and he said he has never had to replace any hybrid brakes due to wear. This goes back when the dealer here sold a few newly just released '97 prius. I understand from these forms that the hybrid brakes use the regen to recharge battery till the car slows to about 8 mph then the regular brakes take over till the car is stopped. The disk brakes take over if your brake very hard or do a panic stop. I had 38500 on my '07 when I had the tech add a little pink coolant to the radiator overflow tank. I had him look visually at my brakes. He said the fronts and rears looked good as new.

Back to the maintenance plan..

I'm sure the dealer does lots of maintenance checks with the plan. I do my own liquid checks under the hood ever few weeks. It's easy to see if the pink radiator fluid is half up in the container. Same for the pink inverter fluid and brake fluids. The plastic coolant tank was slightly low and this happened only once before trading the car. I dropped by the dealer to have them brought back up to the normal line.

I'm getting too old to change my own oil. I may take it to walmart like my wife takes her Ranger pickup. I normally use the mobile one 0W-20 oil and can buy it at walmart and then pay them labor to replace it. I buy the filters from the toyota dealer. The toyota dealer filter is what I use and cost about $6.

I just bought a new '12 XLE hybrid and I had slowly put 2000 miles on it. I don't drive but 10,000 miles a year usually to town and back to shop and sometimes eat out. I will say the '07 TCH I had was the most trouble free car I have ever owned. I feel this '12 TCH will give me as good of service.

Say, this '12 navigation has a tire pressure screen that shows each of the 4 tires air pressures. That's a nice feature to check see if your tires are ok, plus it will warn you if the tire is down very low.

Being this '12 TCH has so many new features and completely redesigned body, engine and hybrid system that it should have a really good resale whenever that time comes.

 

We just bought a new, fully loaded, Camry Hybrid XLE on Saturday. We paid cash for it. I told the salesman I did not want to buy an extended warranty from them, a clear-coat or any other stuff. Nevertheless, I allowed myself to be sold on a 5yr/75k prepaid maintenance plan. After reading this thread, I began to think I'd made a serious mistake and inquired about canceling it. I called Toyota directly and learned that once the plan is actually in their system, you can cancel it right away and they will send you a check for whatever you paid for it. But the guy said they couldn't do anything at the moment, because they hadn't received anything from the dealer yet. So I called the dealer and talked to the finance director. I told him I would call Toyota to cancel the plan if they wouldn't. The finance guy didn't want that to happen of course, since Toyota would take their profit away once I canceled. So he offered to tear up the original agreement and write a new one for $200 less -- $1,560 instead of $1,760. He said he'd send me a check for the $200 difference, as I'd already charged the $1,760 to our credit card. I said OK, and thought it was.

But then I called the local Toyota dealer to get the current price of 30, 45, 60 and 75K scheduled maintenance(s), plus intervening oil changes (synthetic oil every 10K miles). The total came to $1,879 over the life of the plan -- beyond the first two years when all the oil changes are free. (I don't know what happens at the first 15K service.) So the savings with my newly discounted agreement would come to $319 -- if we drove the car 75K miles in five years. But that's very unlikely. We're retired, don't commute and we might drive it 60,000 miles in five years, at the outside. (I've still barely put 40,000 miles on my 5-year-old RAV4.) If that's all we drive the car, then I wouldn't be doing the 70K oil change or the 75K service before the plan expires and I'd actually lose about $100 on the deal. I won't dicker with the finance guy again, as he'll try to sell me something else. I'll just call Toyota to cancel once I'm "in their system."

I know, I know, I should've done my homework on this before stepping onto the dealer lot. I researched the heck out of the dealer's cost for the car and got it for invoice, plus their regional advertising cost and their flooring costs. I know that you can haggle on these latter costs, but they were already discounting the car $2,470 off MSRP, so I didn't -- especially after referring to my spreadsheet, wherein I'd discounted these fees and the $550 dealer holdback but built in a 4% profit for the dealer. Even with the fees, they beat my spreadsheet bottom line. So I couldn't complain.

I will buy a discounted extended warranty for the Camry online. I have a 7 yr/100K warranty on the RAV and I think it's worth it (I paid $800 for it in '07). It's good at any Toyota dealer. That is apparently not the case with the prepaid maintenance plans which are only good in the states where you buy them -- for example, my agreement says "for use in California only." So if you're thinking of buying one from some dealer in Kansas, and you don't live there, "fuggedaboudit."

I hope this info dump helps.

 

Maintenance to me it changing the oil and filter and now toyota recommends ever 10K miles. Other maintenance to me is rotating and balancing the tires ever 5000 miles.

Reading in the toyota maintenance book that comes with the car they do mention lots of checks they do underneath the car when it's up on a lift. CV joints dust covers to make sure they have not cracks or holes in them. Steering box and assembly. The hybrid is electric so not sure what they inspect there. They mention ball joints, guess to make sure any are tight. They don't have to lube them like they did with the American cars like in the old days.

Other maintenance I mentioned earlier is the visual liquid check, oil level check at least once a month, maybe twice would be better. This is part of the routine paid maintenance with toyota.

I don't recall anyone in the forms having any problems with their hybrids other then the basic maintenance, but that a owners decision which is best for his car. Me and my wife are retired and drive out car rather easy over smooth highways and rather smooth city streets. We average about 10,000 miles a year going for groceries and eating out some, few trips to El Paso and Las Cruces which are 80 miles from Alamogordo where we live.

I see I repeated some my stuff in the earlier post I did not far above this one..

Say, enjoy you new hybrid, I know I do ever time I drive off in mine.