I had my truck aligned up in NY and they couldn't quite get it, they freely admitted they were having trouble with it because they never see 200s and there was no master tech there on a Saturday. It straightens out on the freeway beautifully but the wheel is off driving around town and it's driving me crazy.

I would think another Toyota dealer would honor the warranty they gave me (90 days 1500 miles), just as a courtesy not to mention... dealers are all linked and that's why I went to Toyota.

I'm sure I'll be able to get this resolved but I don't want to deal with it. I'm getting to the age where regretfully I'd rather just eat money than deal with stupid crap.

Usually the golden rule works wonders with me, we'll see. I don't know if Toyota of Knoxville necessarily owes me anything, but it would be good customer service. It's not my fault that NY dealer I entrusted couldn't align it right.

What do y'all think?

 

You local dealer may help you as a courtesy, particularly if you have put a reasonable amount of other business their way, but it’s highly likely that the only party obligated to warranty the prior work is the dealer who did it. You may well luck out, there’s a clear case for customer goodwill given you were traveling and the local dealer may well take one for the team, but the 90 day warranty on the work is only owed to you by the supplying dealer back in NY. I’d say this is one of those cases where you will get better outcomes by remembering that you catch more flies with honey rather than vinegar.

 

Right. I'm good with this stuff, too. I've gotten crazy good results before.

I wrote a letter to the service manager at Acura and they goodwilled a clutch for my TL that was nearly a $3000 job.....

 

What issue are they having exactly?

 

Good luck. Keep us posted.

 

Dealers don't warranty each others work...they're independent businesses...why would another dealer pay their techs to do an alignment that was done improperly by another totally separate business? Just pay the local dealer to do it right. You could then call the dealer in NY and ask them for a refund, thats how I would handle it.

As an example, I had tires put on the old Pacifica and my trusted shop mounted them backwards, I don't know if you remember. I was leaving to go out of town and I had to pay my dealer to dismount and remount the tires. This would be like me expecting them to do that for free because the other shop screwed it up, I I paid them and I asked the tire shop for a refund which they immediately gave.

 

just out of curiosity why'd you have this done so far away from where you live? i would absolutely not expect a dealer to honor another dealer's warranty, they may be toyota dealers but one dealer doesn't necessarily have any connection to another... like maybe if they were part of some larger umbrella group like a herb chambers or something, and even then i wouldn't hold my breath lol

also why would you bring something as precious as a 200 series to a dealer for non-warranty work in the first place?

 

Unfortunately, I don't think anyone will feel obligated to honor someone else's warranty/mistakes.

I work on stuff all the time that's already had failed repair attempts by others before I get it and nobody can afford to clean up other people's errors. Lol

If your local guy can do it properly, I'd ask the other place to slide the money back on your card as a refund, -if and only if- the alignment wasn't done properly, just Imo. 🤓

 

Yeah like I said I'll probably just have to eat it, whatever.

But like I said, they had trouble with it... They needed a master tech who wasn't there and they said that's the first 200 they had seen in a long time. They had to get it 3 times before they thought it was right.

I probably would rather just eat it and pay and forget about it--- lord I turn into my parents more each day. I used to lambast my mother for doing that.

I bet I could probably get a free oil change or something out of it, that's better than nothing.

 

I wouldn’t eat it, I would call the NY dealer and ask for a refund. I just wouldn’t expect the dealer at home to eat it.

Did you pay for it with AMEX? You can always get AMEX involved if they won’t refund it.

 

How much was the alignment?

 

Why didn’t you take it to Lexus for the alignment? They’re probably more used to working on 200 series.

Believe it or not my local Lexus dealership is cheaper than Toyota on alignments! And unlike the Toyota dealership, they did not lie about the price of the alignment over the phone…

Mind you this is the same Lexus dealership that refused to do a transmission service on my car because they said it was too old. but they don’t seem to have a problem doing an alignment.

 

Right, I’m not expecting Knoxville to eat it. I’ll call NY on Monday and talk to the manager, see what they say. I would assume the NY dealer would do something on their end. I didn’t think the Amex protection covered car services, I thought I read that in the fine print years ago but maybe not.

Alignment was $159, and the reason I didn’t go to Lexus was because it was far away. It’s nice up there but not convenient like here lol.

 

AMEX covers anything you buy. If you paid for a service and didn't get that service performed completely AMEX will have your back on it.

 

I'll admit I'd just eat the $159.