Beware Toyota Leasing

Here is the cargo cover, the center of a swirl of controversy.

Beware Toyota Motor Credit Corporation. I mean it. I blogged some months ago about difficulties at the end of my RAV4 lease. It only got worse. And I'm going to gripe about it. Not so much because something unpleasant happened to me, but because I see my experience as representative of so many similar -- and often worse -- things that happen to the public every day. Yes, I'm protesting for all of us against the over-big, under-personal, impenetrable corporations with which we sometimes have to deal.

To elaborate on my inability to find the missing cargo cover:  I had removed it from the car almost first thing, realizing it was as useless as a -- well, I don't know what. I knew it would be in the way of using the car's trunk area, was not needed for hiding my loads due to the darkened windows, and if damaged would be a liability at turn-in time.  Rather than add to the stuff in our Wayland garage, I returned the cover to the barn at my house in Maine. When that sold, the movers included the cargo cover (along with the snowshoes and poles I mentioned in my other posting) with the belongings they shoehorned into my storage unit in Topsham, ME. True to form (they are a small, local, instantly responsive company named I-Haul), they carefully laid the cargo cover on the top of the pile, but unfortunately in the far back where we could neither see nor reach it until I had occasion later to bring along some family he-men to remove the up-ended, large furniture pieces that had been closing off the door opening.

So I took the cargo cover in hand and visited my two Toyota dealerships. By now it was about three weeks since I had had to turn in the RAV4. I was told it was too late to reunite the cover with the car, which I could understand:  a popular model and very well taken care of, it undoubtedly resold quickly. The general managers at both the dealer where I had bought the car (Lee Toyota in Topsham, ME) and Bernardi Toyota in Framingham, MA (where the car had been serviced the last two years of the lease) would have taken back the cover, but would not give me so much as a receipt for it. Neither man dared to contact Toyota Motor Credit Corporation. Seriously, the dealers' people freeze in their tracks, as if their eyes are caught in headlights' glare, at one's request to intervene with the leasing arm of the company.

They each suggested selling it on Craig's List. I advertised it there, but to no avail. These covers really are useless items.  I then took it to a shipping firm which also sells on consignment on E-bay and Craig's List.  The prices listed for cargo covers were too low for him to take on the job of selling it for me. This, for a part for which Toyota Motor Credit charged me $358?  

I did call Toyota Motor Credit's toll-free customer service number and was given a small discount, but was still charged nearly $1,000 for the cover -- despite the fact that it was now safely in my home garage -- and two moderate scratches. The woman I spoke with was pleasant, but had very little flexibility and less authority for settling any but a minor concern.

Paying this bill took more than half of my month's income, but merited no attention to my written pleas for moderation. At two points during the post-lease process I sent detailed, explanatory letters to Toyota Motor Credit. I wanted to create a paper trail, after my disappointment with the dealers. But one cannot create much of a paper trail if the correspondence is completely one-sided. Yup, they never answered either letter, even though the second was directed to the specific individual with whom I had spoken. Both were addressed to addresses on Toyota Motor Credit's own letters.

Probably the final put-down was that the official-but-offhand mailings from them, including the one acknowledging full payment of their bill by me (though threatening me that they might in future discover more things for which to charge me) were addressed to "M Sara" rather than to my real name, Sara M. Barnacle, which they had used consistently for billing me. Does it not seem that one arm of Toyota Motor Credit does not communicate well with the other?

I promise that this is the end of the diatribe. I loved almost everything about the RAV4, and now that spring is finally springing in Massachusetts I would love to have that moon-roof back. But another Toyota? Not. But to leave you on the promised UP note, here is my favored form of transportation, at least in my daydreams:

Someone else, a stand-in for me, canal boating in Yorkshire, UK.

the giftie gie us

To see ourselves as others see us -- the "giftie" Robert Burns famously recommended -- is not always pleasant as a plum pudding. And that special kind of sight probably is not the gift a blog gives one, anyway. We bloggers get to examine ourselves by presenting ourselves any way we want into the vast, yet infinitesimal, world of the internet.

It's Christmas Day as I write. The blog I intended ain't gonna happen. I was going to show my grandchildren what Christmas at Aunt Rachel's and Uncle Rob's looks like this year. But for some reason my trusty little cell phone camera only recorded one of the many pictures I took at the Feeney's charmingly Christmased condo.

Feeney poinsettia

This is the only picture that survived, and it is the most unrepresentative of the Feeney decor. NO dwarf Santa standing watch in the hall. No nine-foot tree. No lights, no candles. No stockings festooned around.

Here's another kind a giftie, from an earlier occasion:

Anniversary mailbox receives a touch of red.

I gave Roy a dark green mailbox, green because the dark red one (which would have matched our household color scheme) did not come in this larger size.  Being "Roy", he immediately saw it in glowing yellow and proceeded to make it so. And, being Roy, he reset the post before screwing the box to the platform, then took down the long-unused newspaper box and added its post to our garden stair. Our newspaper delivery drivers need a huge target, it seems -- the driveway.

Wayland has been bit by the "wellness" bug. Even Santa and his elves are put through a fitness workout. This is a giftie of good humor.

Outside the chiropracter's, I think.

My art-shot of our tiny, lit, evergreen reflected
 on the hood and windshield of the Accord.

In a small way, this shows the giftie of colored lights and the beauty
of many man-made objects and situations.  

And here, my Valentine gift bear, Henri Hatherill Pritchard, rides our Christmas train
around our tree. This year's magnificent tree had branches so low to the ground
that they touched the carpet full circle. We had to trim branches over
and over to allow Henri room to stay seated for the whole circuit.
Roy didn't have enough curved track to make a wider circle. Next Christmas . . . 

Roy, a great gifter, has taking to gie-ing me embroidered
cards with his own verses inside. And still occasional flowers. 

And then there are God's gifts, such as this glowing moon seeking us through gusting clouds.

THANK YOU

Color Her Scotland

As I said in an earlier post, my trip to Scotland was slated to be an art trip. Rather than rush from scene to scene, snapping pictures right and left, experiencing this new land primarily through a lens, we planned to slow ourselves down by learning Scotland through the elongated act of drawing by hand.

This is the study I was working on in the photo below

This shows me in heaven, above Castle Campbell.

Castle Campbell is near the town of Dollar, but backs up into a wild ravine cut into these lonesome hills. By taking the opportubity to study the ruin through sketching, I had time to notice all sorts of details of the past and present. Inside, we had seen the trap door just steps from the great hall that had once made it so easy for the laird to drop visitors who displeased him into the deep dungeon in the basement. Some of that harshness remains in the ruined stonework. On a lighter note, I studied the current caretaker's wing, with homely signs of family life in the back yard. As the Campbells' seat, this ruin had a tremendously bloody history, but that turmoil all drops away as one sits sketching in the sun, listening to the calls of birds and to the breeze rustling the grasses.

Melrose Abbey -- ruins in all shades of dusty pink, rose,
cream of orange, and caramel -- and its modern-day gatehouse.

This remarkable ruin is a ravishing pile of colored stones. The bells of the cattle, represented by my two brown dots, could be heard on the abbey grounds as they grazed their way across the far mountain pasture, adding musical depth to the memory of the afternoon. The gatekeeper's tiny office was graceless by comparison. The pretty town nearby was decked with flowers, in fact had won a national contest for its beauty.

Tom went for the rocks. Here he is at the edge of Moray Firth.

This was the eager traveler who needed to be slowed down. Unfortunately, his eagerness morphed into a compulsion to do large, finished drawings instead of sketches. I'm not sure if there are any works from his hand finished enough to commemorate the trip, but he did drink deeply of the essences of Scotland.

Here is the entrance to St. Fillan's Cave in Pittenweem,
which is also represented by a photo in an earlier blog. 

I was trying so hard to give the hillside its intruding weight that I went overboard and made it look like it's eating the village!  St. Fillan is said to have been able to light his cave enough to do his writing by the supernatural glow emanating from his left arm.

And here is the fishing harbor at Pittenweem.

Does there exist anywhere a more picture-worthy village?

Two views of Elgol School, at the end of a long,
lonesome road on the Isle of Skye..

You may remember from the caption to this photo, taken by Rachel and inserted in an earlier posting, that we visited Skye during the tag end of a cross-Atlantic hurricane. I had to draw this sketch from the car, through a waterfall down the windshield, while occasional gusts rocked the car. Rachel owns professional fisherman's rain gear, so she was well prepared for the day. When we flew out of Boston, we had been relieved that Hurricane Olivia had turned away from the coast of New England and headed into the Atlantic where -- we thought -- it couldn't interfere with our vacation. We were fascinated to see how she had traversed the ocean during our visit to Scotland and thus was able to visit her last gusts and mists upon us during our last couple of days there.

Rotten (sic) Wynd, Falkland. 

A quick sketch of the city of  Falkland, from the front yard of its palace. 

The building entrance fee was too expensive for us, so we missed any gems displayed therein. But we did climb the hill behind the city at sunset and drank in the glorious view. Oh, well, if I must confess -- we drove halfway up and climbed only the last few hundred yards due to encroaching nightfall. Even so, it was just a trifle eerie picking our way back down to the parking lot in the dark, after all the sensible visitors had left.

Thus closes this posting, with a strong recommendation to sketch your way through your next trip. Your memories will be amazingly rich.