TOYOTA PRIUS

slasheroo

Having been a Toyota fan for many years I now have awarning for any prospective buyers of the new Prius.My windscreen cracked after being hit by a stone and so I thought that as I had windscreen cover there would be no problem.
contacted my insurer and was booking into Auto glass 50 miles away quite quickly and arrived for my appointmment only to be told that the windscreen they had in stock was the wrong one for my car,no problem I thought ,I will go to my ;local Toyota dealer and pay for it myself [£1117] in order to get me back on the raod.Not that easy ,no stock of the seal in the UK and will have to wait until November.Again I thought a I spend £120k every three years with Toyota that they would give me a coutesy car as it was a Toyota problem that no spares were in the UK .Again no problom then as I was pretty sure they would do that after all no stock for any car is a no-no and should never happen,particularly as there was a 3 month wait and my car was not legal for the road ,how wrong was I ,I emailed Toyota and they replied twice after I questioned their decision not to loan me a car but after my third email it went quiet and I have not heard from them since ,not good for a loyal Toyota customer who spends so much with them .As they do not want to talk to me I will not be giving any future business to Toyota and in the future I will ignore them just as they have done with me .I just wanted to tell any prospective buyers o ths car that in order to avoid a long period off the road with no help whatsoever from the manufacturer ---DONT BUY A PRIUS--

daveyjp

Availability of spare parts is not something unique to Toyota (a few years ago we had to wait weeks for a turbo to be supplied for a newish smart, a low volume brand, but the engine was in hundreds of thousands of Renaults and Dacias).

The issue may also be compounded by the fact this is a new model Prius, which wasn't originally going to be available in the UK.

Mr.Generous

£120k every 3 years? How many do you buy?? Surely the dealer treats you like a god and will sort you out? If not buy something else. 

SiliconChip

Mr.Generous said:

£120k every 3 years? How many do you buy?? Surely the dealer treats you like a god and will sort you out? If not buy something else. 

Given that virtually every Prius that I see is a taxi I suspect the OP is the owner of a taxi company who runs a fleet of maybe 4/5 Priuses.

WellKnownSid

It sounds like you are off road due to an accident rather than a fault with the product itself?  I'm not sure this is a valid use-case for a courtesy car.

HampshireH

Surely this is down to your insurer not Toyota.

You have a policy which covers windscreen replacement. Does your policy cover a courtesy car?

Can't see why this is Toyota's issue your windscreen broke or the relevance that you'd spend a fortune with them and they aren't providing a courtesy car.

Arunmor

Better the devil you know (potentially).  Have a chat to Citroen owners at the moment or do you see Chinese makers carrying a huge inventory of spares?

facade

Parts availability is a problem for most vehicles.

It is a combination of no-one holding local part stocks, instead they order in and rely on "Just Too Late" to provide them- eventually, and the B-word which means parts from European stocks have to be imported with reams of time-consuming paperwork, rather than just overnighted like before.