Avoid Rockwall Toyota Dealership in Rockwall, Tx

So my aunt and uncle had their 2016 Toyota Camry start having transmission issues while visiting family in Dallas area. They took the vehicle to Rockwall Toyota and they said the battery spit acid on a bunch of wiring harnesses, specifically the transmission harness. They then said plainly, despite the vehicle having a bumper to bumper extended warranty, this is not covered under warranty. My aunt called me since I know quite a bit about vehicles and use to work as a automotive technician for GM for 3 years. I know from my experience, usually two main things cause the battery to spit acid... either it is damaged, or the battery was overcharged. You can google this and read the same.

So I called the service manager at Rockwall Toyota and spoke to him, his name is "Don", and asked him if they checked the alternator to ensure it did not overcharge the battery. He admitted that they in fact did not. He then said, even if it did overcharge the battery and has failed, this will not be covered under warranty. It is clear from his attitude they they had already chose to not warranty this vehicle, and despite testing and diagnoses and any findings from those, again, it will not be warrantied. The manager ended up hanging up with me, and then called me back about 5 minutes later, and said that the tech is now saying he did inspect the alternator/charging system, despite that this was never notated in any of the work order which had already been closed out at this time.

I ended up calling Toyota Motor Corp USA and filed a complaint again the dealership, and I think they are just now in "Cover our @**" mode. Whats more interesting is my uncle called Don McGill Toyota here in Houston where they purchased the vehicle from and spoke to the service manager there and after telling him all this, the manager agreed that it sounds like the charging system failed (assuming the battery has no damage to it, which it doesn't) and that we need to get the vehicle over to them and they can likely fix all this under warranty. Its just a night and day difference in customer service between the two dealerships. The manager at Don McGill Toyota clearly is not jumping to conclusions that "this is not going to be covered under warranty" before the diagnosis has even been done.

I called Toyota Motor Corp USA back again and told them that Rockwall Toyota admitted to denying any warranty claim, despite having not tested the charging system, and told me regardless of the outcome, still will not be covered. To be honest, the lady who I spoke to this time at Toyota Corp acted like Rockwall Toyota's answers were perfectly acceptable. I asked her, "so if you brought your personal vehicle into a dealership and told them you are having issues with your car, and they looked at your without running any tests on your vehicles and said "this is not going to be covered under warranty" that you think that is an acceptable answer?! She then went into this long explanation how its at the discretion of each individual dealer and this is a service issue, and has nothing to do with Toyota Corp.

Our family owns a total of 23 Toyota's currently. We literally drive nothing but Toyota's and have been for the last 20 years. Truthfully, none of us have ever had a problem with any of our Toyota's beyond regular maintenance which we always do. We have never had to deal with a warranty issue, and definitely never had to escalate it. I am very disappointed though with both the responses from the Rockwall Toyota and the last female I spoke to at Toyota Corp.

Just curious how you all would handle this if this happened to you?

 

One possible modern day attack would be to utilize social media. This platform is specific to Tundra owners. However, that Toyota dealership has a Facebook page and google reviews. Those are seen by a much larger crowd that this forum. Post pics along with your story and demand answers. Instagram works the same way if you have an account. It is sad that this is what works in today’s age but think of how many news feeds or stories go viral from a social media post?

Trust me, you will not be the only negative story on their site. Then once you and several others start to show a trend, you will likely see a comment or receive a phone call from someone attempting to fix things.

 

Lawyer time

 

What he said

 

After the repairs are made at Don McGill, I would follow up on social media the Night & Day Experiences. I would be praising Don McGill and expressing disappointment with Rockwall......

 

Any social media review, google review, yelp review will get their attention really quick

 

This is why California is so f$&cked up. Social media would do more than a lawyer could much cheaper.

 

I have not posted a review of them on any public site. I can tell you about my experiences with free oil changes. I bought 2 Tacomas from but their deal on Tundra fell through because is a $1k difference. I had a customer loyalty card worth about that. When I was shopping for Tundra I negotiated best deal and then brought up the customer loyalty discount. They balked and I walked. Now for their service department. In a nutshell it sucks. Twice after tire rotations I got in truck next morning and tires were low. Last time I even told them that the BFG door sticker states 46. Next the oil changes. Once they left a rag under the filter drain on Tacoma and oil dripped all over driveway. Anyone that does changes on top mounted filters knows to put some sort of can under there. Last change on Tundra they tightened filter cap to like 130 ft lbs. It took a 30" cheater bar and neighbor holding my legs to remove it. Broke plastic cap and one cheap filter wrench. Also left one bolt out of skid plate and one was not OEM. I also had a serious battle over not cutting pedal on Tacoma. In the end they did not cut it but charged Toyota for it. Another time I had a leaky rear shock and had it replaced under warranty. Even though I pointed out that the shocks were 5160s on my Tacoma they ordered the wrong one. That was not the worst part. They did not realize it until they had shock off. Wasted 2 hours of mine time. I had a 7:15 appt.. Did not even start until 8. Service writer said that shop did not open until 8. Complained to service manager and he disagreed. Now I have complained on a public forum. Funny thing is after I gave them a bad grade (0) on first survey I have never seen another survey on their service dept.. Also had a major drawn out battle with finance manager on second Tacoma. I had to threaten to cancel purchase and get sales director involved.

 

Uhm, can you tell us how you got from Texas to California in your logic? Also, it was someone from Arkansas making the comment about lawyers? Just wanting to figure out how you came to the conclusion? And no, I only live in CA because of work and am not defending the state.

OP, sucks. I understand the difference from my time in Wichita. Eddy's Toyota would fight tooth and nail to avoid doing any maintenance/warranty work while the dealership in Hutchinson would bend over backwards to make their customers come back.

 

There reviews on Google are already not good... I believe around a 3.1 out of 5, which in my opinion is not great. I fully intend to write a negative review about this. I suggest you do the same. I will also copy and paste this to the Better Business Bureau as well. I doubt this will do much, but I'll sleep better if I cost them even 1 vehicle sale.

 

This is exactly why I no longer drive Fords. Had multiple similar “not covered under warranty” experiences with Ford and my dealer. Wrote letters, filed complaints and nothing worked.
I’d file a complaint with the BBB, do the social media blitz, etc. But sometimes, you just can’t get anywhere and be thankful for Don McGill Toyota. Fortunately you have a choice! To me, customer service loyalty is priceless - a lot of businesses just don’t care anymore about their customers.

 

I would have stopped going to that dealer a long time ago with all the bad experiences you had

 

The BBB isn't what it appears to be.

It is more of a marketing company.

Businesses pay money to join the BBB and they pay money for their ratings...it's all kinda BS.

 

(1) Dealers that deal with customers (or potential customers) fairly and honestly are the exception rather than the rule. If you find a good dealer, stick with them until they change.

(2) People love their Toyotas because (a) they reduce transportation expense and inconvenience through reliability, AND (b) they minimize bad dealer experiences; if you never need to go to a dealer, then you don't have bad dealer experiences.

(3) Every manufacturer, even Toyota, makes vehicles that occasionally have a mechanical failure. Bad dealers then increase the opportunity for an OEM to lose a good reputation. How the manufacturer generally responds to such fall-out will affect their chances for long-term success. Witness General Motors...too much success can lead to a condition of subconscious arrogance and contempt for the customer and, ultimately, failure; the customer is their only reason for being in business.

(4) Historically, Toyota has been difficult to deal with on warranty issues because their vehicles have been reliable and they know it. But, when they finally do realize that an issue is/was their fault, they usually step up and take care of it quickly. I am both surprised, and not, at this case history. Toyota is handicapped by a bad dealer, and a bad dealer's report that the problem was somehow the result of owner neglect. They can get away with a few of these, but not as a way of doing business if they want to continue their success.

 

It is crazy how service can vary so much between dealerships, and even crazier that Toyota didn’t jump to help you when you called. I would think they’d be pretty quick to police this kind of thing.

I’ve dealt with three Toyota dealerships here in Houston, and my experience varied wildly.

I’d straight up post a link to this thread on their Facebook page, and also post it to the different Texas based Tundra / Toyota Facebook groups. That would get their attention pretty quickly I would think.

 

@T-Rex266 @ColoradoTJ @Tundra4Pinay maybe we should have a “dealership reviews” thread. It would help members who are buying, and would probably bring new members here if other people were searching for reviews on a specific dealership.

 

I haven't left a dealer without a bad taste in my mouth. Even when I get a good price I still feel like the farked me somehow. Then comes the service department. Some are really difficult to deal with.

 

They do move around.

Maybe do the inverse of the "One 'Aw S***' equal one hundred 'Atta-boy' " rule, i.e. maybe a couple of good reports by known members gets them off the "Doo List".

 

I don’t think it would just be bad reviews and complaints. It would just be good to share info.

It may be a better idea to just put threads in the separate region boards though, since people generally just need local info.

 

Or, better, a new "Dealer Experience" forum with reporting regions aligned with Toyota's sales regions.

 

They've gone downhill in recent years. Had some people I know work there, in the service dept actually, and they left due to management.

 

I’m in the DFW area. I never knew Rockwall even had a Toyota dealership, but then again this is a huge metropolitan area and I’m too far away from that part of the metromess anyway. Even so, I think I’ll avoid the Rockwall dealership if I’m in the area and need to go to the dealer.

As an aside, I think a thread, maybe even a sticky, of dealership experiences is a great idea. Not sure if it would make more sense to have one big dealership thread or multiple ones in the respective state subforums.

 

I went to dealerrater.com and that is how I chose who would service my truck. All of the local Toyota dealers here had horrible reviews on that site. You can search based on sales/service, service only, or for sales only. Not sure if/how that could be used with this site... But just letting everyone know of another source, along with google reviews.

 

I think the dealer review idea is great. People can also list their sales/service associate/managers name whom they dealt with and if nothing else, we can avoid the few bad apples. In the long run, this process would naturally filter out at least poor sales associates as the dealership would take notice people are intentionally avoiding certain associates which would futher reflect in the total sales as well. I believe this would also reflect in a service associate's total services as well. I will say when I worked at Lonestar Chevrolet, I do remember the service manager getting into it with a customer and ultimately she demanded to speak to the general manager over the whole dealership and surprisingly, the GM did not side with the service manager and put him in his place. I would bet the GM at Rockwall would find this thread interesting as its clear there are now multiple customers who will not be back for service/sales. Plus who knows how many people will read this and avoid them as well.

 

Would a thread like that bring flak to the forum though?

 

When I bought my 4Runner I found the dealer I bought it from through the 4Runner forum. I think it would be a great idea.

 

It's one thing to appropriately review something but it might not be a great idea to actually "potentially" defame certain specific individuals. Might be better to have a "Good Dealer Experience" thread. We all now how bad certain dealers can be so why not just focus on the positive. Call out the good dealer experiences based on region. Identify individuals who went above and beyond who made the dealership experience one that you would not only go back to but also recommend. Maybe post up tire sale/service coupon links. There are plenty of dealership horror stories out there. my 2 cents

 

I called the service manager when I bought the Tundra and told him that I bought at a different dealer and the bad experiences I had in the past at Rockwall. It is so convenient on my drive home that I said I would give them another chance to get it right with the free oil changes. Other the air pressure incident all was well until I went to do my first oil change. I am just glad I had the metal cover ready to go on. When I went in to get my skid plate bolts the service manager said he had a meeting with the guys and that they all had torque wrenches. I said apparently you did not teach them how to use them. He offered a replacement cover but I was thinking heck I have a metal one why do I need a plastic one. When I got home I thought crap I should have just taken it and thrown it in the trash can.

 

I think Toyota of Rockwall turns GMs regularly. The sales director I bought my last Tacoma from was relocated to Eugene just after we closed the deal. He was going up there as GM to turn it around. Next thing I know he is back in Rockwall as GM. His signature (not original of course) was on my customer loyalty card. Shortly after I bought the Tundra he was shipped off to a dealer in east Tx.. My ex knew the owners at one time. Not sure if they still own it or not.