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.