One of the worst experiences of my life. $18,000 c...

One of the worst experiences of my life. $18,000 car died in about 2 trips to work, driven a total of about 30 miles. Read below of details.

I purchased a used vehicle from Toyota of Lompoc for $18,146.76. I drove the vehicle for a few days, about 2 trips to and from work, for a total of about 30 miles before the car died. A messaged popped up on the screen that said EV system failure, turn off your engine. When I turned the engine off and back on the check engine light was on.

After finding out the local Hyundai dealership didn't have any service availability, I called Toyota of Lompoc to ask what to do. I brought it in and they read the error code and cleared it. At this point they told me this was all they could do, that they couldn't really diagnose or work on hybrid vehicles from other manufacturers. They DID NOT bother to tell me that by clearing the error code they were essentially preventing Hyundai from being able to diagnose it.

I had the vehicle towed over 50 miles away to the nearest Hyundai dealership that had availability. It was there that I found out they couldn't read error codes that Toyota of Lompoc had cleared. I picked it back up after they had failed to diagnose it (in large part due to Toyota of Lompoc clearing the error code) and drove it home. It made it that 55 mile trip.

The very next day when I was driving home from work, I received the exact same error message and check engine light. This time I was able to get the car in to the local Hyundai dealership after just a couple of days. Their response was that the water/coolant pump for the EV system was no good. The pump at maximum wasn't running up to spec and worse sometimes when they tried turn it on it would completely fail to turn on. The total cost for this fix? Over $1,800 dollars.

When I told Toyota of Lompoc about this, their response was...and I am not joking here..."Well we can save you some money if you can bring it into us". They quoted me a cost of $1,400 and offered to pay half, effectively billing me $700.

Toyota of Lompoc sold me a broken car and claimed they couldn't even diagnose it much less fix it. They wasted 3 weeks of my life having the car towed all over central California only to then turn around and tell me they actually can work on it.

If they are willing to lie or at the very least warp the truth about their ability to work on a vehicle they sold me, why would they not also be willing to bend the truth on the condition of the vehicle when it is sold? What is more likely, that a major component failed with 30 miles of purchase and had never had an error before...or that the component was intermittently failing prior to the sale of the vehicle and the dealership simply cleared the code prior to selling the car (the exact same thing they did when it broke down)?