camry transmissions

[Mr.Krinkle]

do you think .05% is a plausible no.?

anyone feel free to answer.

i wanted to get a poll going but i have no idea.

[El Scorcho]

I think if it's big enough to warrant a recall, it has to at least potentially affect a much higher percentage of cars. The transmission was also standard in the ES350, so depending on the number of V6 Camrys sold on average, I'd say the number of transmissions installed with problems could be much greater than originally thought.

[JT64]

do you think .05% is a plausible no.?

anyone feel free to answer.

i wanted to get a poll going but i have no idea.

With the possibility of selling 500,000 Camrys a year in the US alone (and with all those sales at stake), I think Toyota has good reasons to be genuine about fixing this problem in a customer-friendly manner.

Toyota is giving all the affected owners extended warranty to 7yr/100,000mi, rental car for 3-6 weeks during the repair, and Toyota pays for the monthly payment of the car while the car is being repaired. (Personally, I'd snatch at this deal if it is offered to me for any car!)

Add the price of a new 6-speed transmission/or parts to that, and dealership labor cost, this sounds like some $2500-4000 per vehicle affected. With a price like that, and Toyota's willingness to offer the owner all of the above, I think Toyota is confident the effected number of vehicles are quite limited.

Edited April 27, 2006 by JT64

[Polish_Kris]

Yeah, they will recall it and fix the problem, Toyota's reputation is riding on this.

[BrewSwillis]

Toyota has ungodly amounts of money. They will fix this problem by throwing a ton of money at it, and by doing something crazy like giving out a billion dollars worth of laptops for people's problems......and they will in the end come out being yet another example of how "Detroit" should be doing business. There will be no talk of bad product, and bad quality......all the talk will be of how Toyota fixed it (with hush money)!

....and they will continue to do this (millions of dollars of Ipod's for Lexus recalls) until their cash reserves are brought back down into the atmosphere, and they can no longer buy their way out of their problems. But I don't see that happening anytime soon......unfortunately.

[JT64]

Toyota has ungodly amounts of money.  They will fix this problem by throwing a ton of money at it, and by doing something crazy like giving out a billion dollars worth of laptops for people's problems......and they will in the end come out being yet another example of how "Detroit" should be doing business.  There will be no talk of bad product, and bad quality......all the talk will be of how Toyota fixed it (with hush money)!

....and they will continue to do this (millions of dollars of Ipod's for Lexus recalls) until their cash reserves are brought back down into the atmosphere, and they can no longer buy their way out of their problems.  But I don't see that happening anytime soon......unfortunately.

Imagine _you_ are the customer. Don't you want the company to buy you, give you free stuff to compensate, if they screw up?

Rewarding the customer if the company screws up is the good way to do things. Telecommunications, SBC, wireless, cable companies often do this.

Yes this requires a big wad of cash, and only big companies can do this. But some evil big companies don't give the customers free stuff when they screw up; they don't even apologize, and that's bad.

Small companies sometimes have no choice but to deny problems, otherwise they go out of business. We see this in companies like Mitsubishi, cash strapped telecom companies (SBC when they were trying to gain market share denied all), etc. When a company is in hard times and has no cash reserves, they may be forced to deny problems until they have the resources to fix it.

But, this is bad for the company's reputation, and it is bad for the customer. Do you want to be the customer of a small poor company that screws you over? I would rather buy from a big company that admits to its mistakes, and compensates for their failure by giving me something in return.

When I call customer service about something gone wrong, I expect them to apologize for my inconvenience, remedy the problem, AND give me free stuff.

Edited April 27, 2006 by JT64

[Intrepidation]

With the possibility of selling 500,000 Camrys a year in the US alone (and with all those sales at stake), I think Toyota has good reasons to be genuine about fixing this problem in a customer-friendly manner.

Toyota is giving all the affected owners extended warranty to 7yr/100,000mi, rental car for 3-6 weeks during the repair, and Toyota pays for the monthly payment of the car while the car is being repaired.  (Personally, I'd snatch at this deal if it is offered to me for any car!)

Add the price of a new 6-speed transmission/or parts to that, and dealership labor cost, this sounds like some $2500-4000 per vehicle affected.  With a price like that, and Toyota's willingness to offer the owner all of the above, I think Toyota is confident the effected number of vehicles are quite limited.

That's what I call customer service. I don't care how much people bitch about Toyota, this is a fine example of how customer service should be. This is also why people don't mind the recalls Toyta has because they actually show they are sorry, and don't just half-ass the customer. Does GM do anything nearly as good as this with their recalls?

Toyota has ungodly amounts of money.  They will fix this problem by throwing a ton of money at it, and by doing something crazy like giving out a billion dollars worth of laptops for people's problems......and they will in the end come out being yet another example of how "Detroit" should be doing business.  There will be no talk of bad product, and bad quality......all the talk will be of how Toyota fixed it (with hush money)!

....and they will continue to do this (millions of dollars of Ipod's for Lexus recalls) until their cash reserves are brought back down into the atmosphere, and they can no longer buy their way out of their problems.  But I don't see that happening anytime soon......unfortunately.

Don't be stupid. As much as I dislike Toyota, I admire them for caring about the customer. This is how they retain their loyalty.

Imagine _you_ are the customer.  Don't you want the company to buy you, give you free stuff to compensate, if they screw up? 

Rewarding the customer if the company screws up is the good way to do things. Telecommunications, SBC, wireless, cable companies often do this.

Yes this requires a big wad of cash, and only big companies can do this.  But some evil big companies don't give the customers free stuff when they screw up; they don't even apologize, and that's bad.

Small companies sometimes have no choice but to deny problems, otherwise they go out of business.  We see this in companies like Mitsubishi, cash strapped telecom companies (SBC when they were trying to gain market share denied all), etc.  When a company is in hard times and has no cash reserves, they may be forced to deny problems until they have the resources to fix it. 

But, this is bad for the company's reputation, and it is bad for the customer.  Do you want to be the customer of a small poor company that screws you over?  I would rather buy from a big company that admits to its mistakes, and compensates for their failure by giving me something in return. 

When I call customer service about something gone wrong, I expect them to apologize for my inconvenience, remedy the problem, AND give me free stuff.

Mitsubishi isn't that bad. Remember when the new Eclipse came out? They recalled it right away when they discovered a problem with it, had the ca fixed, and I believe gave the owners a rental.

[Snate]

Don't be stupid. As much as I dislike Toyota, I admire them for caring about the customer. This is how they retain their loyalty.

I'm sure it has much more to do with they want to keep the affected owners quiet...especially when you are company that depends so much on your image such as Toyota.

[Intrepidation]

I'm sure it has much more to do with they want to keep the affected owners quiet...especially when you are company that depends so much on your image such as Toyota.

Could be, or it could just be good customer service. If GM were doing this, we'd all be raving about how good natured and caring GM is. Like I said: I don't really like Toyota, but good service is good service.