A little history on this 2014 IS250. Vehicle was sideswiped on the drivers side by a drunk driver a couple of years ago. Previous owner had vehicle repaired and everything looked good....until recently. Owner tried using the the heating feature for the driver's seat recently and the seat would not get warm nor would the light on the button on the console light up. She decided to try to cooling feature and the lights do come on(all the different speeds levels lit up), but no air comes through the seat.

I removed the seat and checked all the connections underneath. There seem to be three wire bundles one of which is the yellow bundle with yellow plugs which I believe are the airbags(yes, I did disconnected the car's battery before this troubleshooting)and the other two wire bundles with plugs are properly connected. I'm thinking something wasn't properly installed when they repaired the damage to the left side of the vehicle. The seat was replaced with a new until because the original seat had the air bags deploy in the accident.

I checked fuses and relays as best I could without having a factory service manual. I was having trouble locating the correct fuses/relays for the seat heater and cooling fans. All the power seat features work like they should.

How do I verify the proper seat was installed (what if they cheaped out and installed one without these features. Is that even possible?).

Seat has the type of material that has the "holes" in it that I assume are only used in the ventilated seats?

Anyone have a picture of this type of seat with ventilation and heating to compare with this vehicle's?


Any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

I don't have a picture on hand of my car but I also have heated and ventilated seats and my seats are perforated (has the small holes). I'm not entirely sure if the models without ventilated seats have the perforated leather as well but regardless I can confirm that for my 2015 IS with heated and ventilated seats the leather is perforated.
Side note: if I do remember correctly the fan for the ventilated seats is visible from the bottom and it just looks like a decent-sized fan slapped onto the bottom of the seat. Below is a picture I found showing the fan and its location so you can check.
Also, I know you already started looking at the fuses but I'd say check them all even if the fuse itself may not be directly related it doesn't hurt to check them all. It's going to be time-consuming and annoying but hopefully, it'll give you your answer. If that fails then I would tell you to check the grounds, I doubt it since bad ground would probably show signs other than just the seat heating/cooling function but you never know. I assume since the car came with the features the issue can only be either the seat or fuses UNLESS there was other damage/parts replaced without your knowledge, in that case, it's going to be tough locating the issues.

 

Is that looking at the rear of the seat because I see the little vent thing on the carpet floor that if I remember correctly points towards the rear seats.

 

This photo would have been taken if you are in the back seat looking towards the front of the car. This is directly under the front seat so you would put your head in the rear passenger footwell and look under the front seat. I assume the passenger seat in the car wasn't affected during the accident so check that as well inorder to compare against the driver seat.

 

I verified tonight that the replacement seat does not have the ventilation fan and most likely no heating element. I found the receipt that the owner was given by the auto body establishment and it stated that the driver seat was "repaired", whatever that means. This was repaired in 2019 and I'm wondering what recourse if any I may have at this point. Maybe all I can do is report them to the state that we live in.

 

I mean you could go ahead and go back to the shop and see what they say. But I assume it's one of those shops that don't keep good records and will deny everything and be useless. Other than that, go ahead and report them as well as leave a bad review in detail about how they ripped you off from expensive features just to save themselves some money.
Additionally, I don't know if the seat airbags went off but if they did then "repairing" would require new airbags and then the seat to be restitched but many people don't believe in doing that because if the seat is stitched back together incorrectly or poorly it might affect the airbag upon deployment. So repairing the seat already isn't the best option in my opinion because I'd rather be safe in an accident than die because I wanted to save $150.
The good news is that I see you live in CA and there are countless junkyards that have 3IS so you can probably find the seat you need for a decent price.

 

They did replace the seat because the airbags deployed when the car was hit. So what they did is just found a seat with no Heating and Cooling capabilities and just bolted it on there and probably did not tell the young female what was going on so that they could save money. I've been looking on OfferUp for any is250's that may be being parted out, but I wasn't too sure if junk yards readily have this model available. Are they seats in the IS350 the same as the IS250?

 

Ah okay, that makes more sense in regards to replacing it. As for your question about if the 250 and 350 seats are the same, yes they are. From my understanding, they are identical and should be plug-and-play without issue.
Though I will note that I have never done a seat swap from a 250 to a 350 first hand but from what I know as well as being in both a 250 and a 350, they are exactly the same.