Giselle Huang

Review of Toyota of Grand Rapids

This three star is only for the most recent experi...

This three star is only for the most recent experience I had at Toyota of Grand Rapids, for car service. It is not for the Sales Department, and I also understand that sometimes individual agents make big differences.
The main reasons for the three star:
1. Lack of honesty.
2. Lack of asking for consensus
3. Lack of professionalism.

I went in because my car s screen keeps turning on and off every 30 seconds, when I was simply listening to music on my phone connected thru Bluetooth.
I was received by an agent saying that he would have the mechanic look into it and asked me to wait in the waiting room.
After 1 hour (which is fine, I know it takes time to look into problems), a different agent called me and explained that this problem happened because my car s whole radio station s software needed an update, so they did the update and the cost was $140.
I was really confused, I never knew that I could be forced to update some software and be charged money for it. Then the agent said that this problem could occur again, if Toyota provides another software update, which could be 6 moths, or years, but he had no idea how often Toyota does that.
In trying to justifying Toyota's act of charging for software update, he compares this with iPhone s system updates (which I do not accept, for 1. iPhone s system update is free. 2. I can choose not to update. 3. Even with an old system, the phone still works ).
I asked: when a new update comes, do I absolutely have to update it? He gave me no yes or no, but was trying to use some fancy words to dodge my question. After repeated asking him, do I absolutely have to update it, otherwise the whole radio station would just not work, and repeated saying that I just want a "yes" or "no", and if no, tell me why this happened (for I didn't choose to update it, the screen just automatically started shutting off). He finally said yes, you have to update it, but now you don't have to worry about it, for we have just updated your system, which is the solution to your problem with the screen.
After the money was paid, I thanked the agent for his patience with my questions (for I understand that he was just an agent, if this was a Toyota decision, he had no control or choice over it). I started my car. After 30 seconds, the screen was automatically turned off again. So they did NOT fix the problem, what the screen needs is not an update.
I went back immediately, they refunded the charge (which deserves a star) and the mechanic came out to offer me some other possible solutions (which deserves another star).

This experience is not pleasant. I hope that they could work on:
1. Honesty, that they could stand behind their words. It is so sad when I feel that I can not trust them.
2. Offering sufficient explanations and getting consensus. Some of us don't know much about cars, and we need some explanations from the professionals and agree on the proposal, before the mechanics start to do anything to the car.
3. Professionalism. I understand sometimes it's hard to figure out why a problem occurs, and it's okay to say "I don't know why this is happening, we can try solution A, and then if A does not work, we can try solution B". But it's NOT okay to just give a random solution and did not even test if that solution worked.

I hope they can do better, I do not want to comment out of a criticizing spirit just because my experience is not the best. But I sincerely hope that they could improve on these parts, with working on their honesty as the priority.