Really disappointing experience at Toyota of Redlands.

This is probably going to end up just being a rant, so read at your own risk.

I've been looking into getting the power tailgate lock for a little over a year, and my wife decided to hook it up as a Fathers Day gift.

I had already obtained a quote from Toyota of Redlands, and my wife went and got another quote when she scheduled it, with both quotes being identical.

I've also been having trouble with my weather-stripping on top of my truck, the dealership already replaced the driver side, but now the passenger side is coming off, so I asked my wife to point it out to them when she drops it off.

Shortly after my wife dropped off my truck, she sent me a text saying that the quote had gone up, and they were refusing to work on the passenger side weather-stripping since it's only covered once under warranty. She said that they were re-quoting the power tailgate because the labor was going to cost more. I told her to have them pull the truck back around, and leave. It really felt like they were trying to screw over my wife, because they knew she wouldn't put up much of a fight since she had our 17 month old with her. They gave some excuse that the labor takes longer because the quote was for replacing the actual lock, not installing the power lock system - which I rebutted because when I got my quote it was by talking to the parts department, service department, and one of the service techs to quote out flag time; we all were there, and we were on the same page talking about the power tailgate lock system.

I was in the middle of surgery, so I couldn't just drop everything to talk to the service advisor, so I just said I would take it to another dealership, and contact Toyota Corporate. They then said they would honor the original quote "at their loss", and order the weather-stripping since the passenger side should still be covered by the warranty.

They also said to no longer use drive through car washes, because that's what ruins the weather stripping. First of all, I don't use drive through car washes - they always come flopping off when I'm driving through a pass that gets windy. Secondly, if a vehicles weather-stripping can't handle a car wash, that's a problem with the vehicle in my opinion.

Either way, I'm pretty disappointed with Toyota of Redlands.

That's the end of my rant.

 

Sounds like you called there bluff and they folded...

 

Installing the power tailgate lock is pretty straightforward to do yourself and takes about an hour.