Concord Toyota — Local services in Concord

TLDR : Do not blindly trust Toyota technicians and their work. I made this mistake and it cost me dearly.

For context, the period between the service and the latest incident was during the pandemic. The truck was minimally driven as everyone was working from home.

My warning to Toyota owners: Take note of your warranty and set a reminder to visit the dealership a month before the warranty is out. If they perform faulty service and it goes out of warranty, you are out of luck. Be sure to exercise your warranty privileges. My experience was that they will not correct faulty work otherwise. A Toyota representative can comment on this and say otherwise but this happened to me.

The story : I took my vehicle here for service for a few years since I originally purchased the vehicle approximately ten years ago.

I took my truck in for a simple battery issue, resolved, battery was bad. While my vehicle was there, they advised me that my clutch and clutch throw-out bearing needed to be replaced, as well as a bit of other work. Sure. Approved. (~$3,800 total). But that is okay for the peace of mind of having a perfectly healthy and serviced vehicle. After all, this is Toyota, so I have peace of mind. Not long after, the truck start squeaking again, but that's okay because vehicle squeak, belts squeak, etc. I trusted Toyota's work so I knew that my vehicle was healthy. This is when I should have returned to the dealership. I accept fault for this. I should not have trusted Toyota so boldly.

Two and a half years later I am living elsewhere in the country. I take my truck in to a different dealership for a typical battery replacement, and this dealership alerts me that my clutch and clutch throw-out bearing was bad and that I needed both replaced. (~$2,000)

What? That was done two years ago and was quite expensive. On top of that I had only been driving the truck about once a week and it has been garage-kept since 2022. The warranty is only a year so I'm outside of the warranty period. Well darn. What do I do? Well, call Toyota.

I call the dealership who originally performed the work (Toyota Concord), describe the issue, leave the phone number for the diagnosing dealership (a different Toyota dealership near where I live now) so that they can share information and work out if anything can be done. A bit later I get a call from the service manager at Toyota Concord. We have a call for close to half-an-hour and during the call I find out not only did he not call the other dealership to ask about the diagnosis but he has no plans to do so and he has no interest in even speaking to them at all. I still feel that this was unreasonable and lazy.

In the end, they refused to do anything unless I drove across the country to let them see the vehicle. Reasonable from a corporate perspective, but from a human perspective who is going to drive ten hours to have their truck evaluated by the people who caused my current issue? Not me and I would expect not most reasonable people who value their time. I expected Toyota dealerships to work together as they are under the same corporate umbrella. Nope.

The service manager told me that unless I had specifically noticed the issue, connected that it was a clutch issue, and went in saying, "I have a clutch issue," then he can't trust Toyota technicians who he doesn't know. I didn't follow this reasoning at all but it seemed to make sense to the service manager. Who knows what he meant by this.

The lesson I learned is that there is no shared trust between Toyota dealerships, which surprised me as they all must go through similar training programs. That is not the case. Toyota service managers do not trust technicians that they do not personally know. To me, this is surprising. Dealerships are separate and working between them is painful, you should elevate directly to corporate if you have an issue with a dealership.

That said, this issue is still being resolved so I'll update this post with the outcome once it is all handled. This was an expensive lesson in trust....

We purchased Camry Hybrid 9/9. Toby was an excellent online salesman. He was very responsive. Very satisfied and recommend him.

However, the financing part leaves us a bitter experience. We arrived at 6:30pm and didn't get done till 8:30pm. We submitted loan applications online and was approved. Therefore, we weren't expecting to be there long. We were told have a seat and the finance department will be right with us. He never came out to meet us, Toby took is back to his office at 7:50pm. The moment we sat down, he presented a laminated flyer on level of warranty offer. He said it's is required that we get the extended warranty, the GAP and Phantom Footprint. He knew we wanted the GAP as we told Toby. We spoke about the amount for a good 15min about the cost of it. He repeated saying that he can't give discount on Phantom Footprint because it's part of the car sales. I finally asked him "it's mandatory that we get the extended warranty?" he replied " just kidding ". We said do don't want it. His attitude changed immediately. He proceeded to say he can't do anything about Phantom Footprint. We finally finished signing all documents and left. Not please with what had happened!!

I did some research on the Phantom Footprint. It's not required! It's not mandatory. Read reviews on Concord Toyota, there are alot of negative feedback that the financing department

he tried to scam us was scandalous misinterpretation and false information Illegal

I called the dealer today and was told Joe G. will call me back to handle this situation. I don't care it's $5.00 or $100.00 or 50cent. I am not willing to out the money as we were illegally scammed. I will be spreading the words about our experiences.

Update: October 15, 2024 They had an auto response to all negative reviews to reach out to General Manager. I did and got a run around. General Manager said Sale Manager will call me back. The Sale manager said the General Manager will call me back. They said it's non-refundable. I have reported them to Federal Trade Commission (FTC): For issues with auto dealerships, such as false or deceptive advertisements And Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV): For unlawful activities .

I highly recommend everyone that have been deceived by their Salesperson and...

My salesman Fernando was very professional and not pushy. I threw lots of questions at him and he answered them with grace and patience. He did his best to be helpful. Fernando made purchasing my Camry a very pleasant experience. The finance manager was also very pleasant. Going through all the paperwork was tedious, but he was pleasant, helpful, and exhibited a wry sense of humor which helped. He made me laugh. I needed a new car and the people made it painless.

UPDATE There was hidden damage in the front driver's side fender. It is attached by a series of tabs. The CARFAX was clean, but who knows how the damage happened. The tab holding the fender at a stress point was cracked. After driving the car around town and then home, the tab vibrated out of the screw and the fender popped out, popping the clips below out. I texted the salesman, with photos, who spoke to his manager, and I made an appointment to bring the car in. They screwed it back in, but screwed the tab over the liner. The tab was cracked further, the fender popped out again, and it was obvious that the tab had a chunk broken off. I texted the salesman who never answered me. I went to the dealership and spoke to the General Sales Manager asking for a permanent repair. With another appointment, they screwed it back in, this time under the liner. The general sales manager assured me that the fix was permanent. They did nothing to fix the broken loop. It held for a longer period of time but popped out again. I called and left 4 voice-mail. I never got a call back. I contacted Toyota Corporation, who looked into the matter. The dealership told them that they made 2 complimentary repairs- I told the case worker that they DID NOT repair it but only screwed the broken tab back in. He kept telling me that the "repair" was done twice- it was NOT a repair. He told me that the car passed the certification process, but I insisted that this was hidden damage. He said that I would need to pay for a repair. I am not paying them to do the same non-solution again. BUYER BEWARE! Toyota certified vehicles do not warrant body issues, concealed or not. If you are looking to buy one of their cars, scrutize the vehicle carefully. Ask questions. Also, if you have a problem, don't be surprised to get the...