I love Toyota

If anyone has been following this story here is a recap. Coming home from my daughters Birthday party the ball joint broke on my Toyota Sequoia. It was pretty scary and could have been much worse had we taken the freeway home instead of local roads. Here is a youtube of the incident. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utL0z2SWiNs I was concerned about this so I posted about it on my facebook, youtube and twitter accounts. (I have two facebook accounts (personal and company) with about 2000 friends/fans each and my twitter account has over 7000 followers. )


Two days later I got a call from a very nice lady at Toyota. She told me that someone had seen my situation on line, and that the ball joint, on my Sequoia had a recall out on it. She asked me if I had seen the notice, and I said no. She then told me that Toyota wanted to cover the damages. I told her that would be great but I also explained that I had over 220,000 miles on the Sequoia. She said it did not matter but I was skeptical. She then told me that I needed to take it in to check and make sure the work was done correctly. I took my Sequoia to a local Toyota dealer, that she set up the appointment for and they told me my repairs were done not using genuine Toyota parts. (I am getting ready for the other shoe to drop at any moment) and then they tell me they will change the parts for no charge as it is a recall. WOW.

So I get the parts changed and asked when they were going to reimburse me for my out of pocket expenses. They said it would take 8-10 weeks. I was still doubting this would really happen. Then last week I got an email from the nice customer service lady saying they needed a copy of my title or registrating to show that I still owned the vehicle. So I think okay when are they going to tell me that I am not getting any money back?

Then yesterday I got a check for $2493.27 that covered %100 of the repair. I was estactic and amazed. Good things like this never happen to me. I am usually the nice guy that never finishes first. I have to give major props to Toyota for standing behind their product and also for keeping their word. They did not let this get into some department that would cancel the payment on some techicallity that I could do nothing about. I have to say I LOVE TOYOTA.

I will be singing their praise for a long time after this incident. They treated me with respect and fairness.

Does everything have to be regulated?

I was thinking over the weekend as I was driving and saw a disabled big rig with 3 reflective triangles set up (Two that were blown over) just how ineffective these were and the only reason that people used them is because they were regulated or mandated and they would get a ticket if they did not have them. There are a lot of better products on the market to warn drivers of a disabled vehicle but everyone just uses the triangles because of the law.

It got me to thinking about other things that we should just do because we know it is safer. The seatbelt law is a good example. We should just wear our seatbelts because we know it is safer. We should not be wearing them out of fear of getting a ticket. What about the new cell phone and texting laws. Everyone with a brain understands the danger of texting while you drive. Distracted driving is a huge problem and I think it will get worse before it gets better. I have also heard the arguement of talking on the phone while driving and have seen many discussion on this. Some say that you are just talking and if it is hands free there is no difference between that and talking a passenger in the car. Someone else might say that the passenger can see the danger and knows the situation and understands when to shut up and the person on the phone does not have that ability.

Back to my basic tenet that is why do we have to be told to be safe. None of would go home and eat rat poison and there is no law against that. Why can't we just do what is safe without someone having to make a law to force us to be safe. Our we so stupid that we cannot protect ourselves? Does the Government know better then we do what will make us safe so we need to listen to them.

BTW they did not have the part for the Toyota. I will take it back this week and give you a report later.

Follow Up on the Ball Joint Problem with my Toyota

So if you remember last week on the way home from my daughters birthday dinner we had an incident where the ball joint broke on my Toyota Sequoia. I have received many messages since then from people who have told me that they had seen the same thing happen on the freeway and almost always the vehicle ended up rolling. Going 65-70 MPH that is not a fun ride. We are still just very happy that we are okay.

So after posting this information and having it tweeted I get a call from Toyota on Wednesday offering to pay for the replacement of my ball joints. I guess it was on recall and I did not notice that they had sent me information in the past. I have to say I was very impressed with Toyota's proactive stance on this. I did not complain to them and they contacted me first from information that they found on the web. I will submit the paper work tomorrow and let you know what happened. I have to say I am very happy at this moment with the effort that Toyota is making to do right on this. I am a fan of Toyota.

On the other hand and for another time I am not overly happy with United Airlines. I fly over 100,000 miles a year and have done so for over 10 years and everytime I have a situation with them they seem to do what ever they can to hide from responsiblity but I will save that for another blog.

I really am lucky to have had a box of Duro Flashes.

Wow another week another adventure. Our 3rd daughter turned 17 on Saturday and after spending a day at a swim meet at La Mirada and most the afternoon getting squirted by swimmers with latex tubes we finally got away and went to dinner. We had a nice dinner at the Spaghetti Factory and then we went home. Home was only about 10-15 miles away.

So we take off driving down Chapman with my wife and 3 of our daughters in the car and then we here a loud bang and the car pulls hard to the right. I thought we had blown out a tire and I pulled into the median and then when traffic was clear pulled over to the right hand side of the road and got out to inspect the damage. It looked like either a tie rod broke or more likely that and ball joints on the wheel broke. My tire was on it side underneath the car. Don't ask me how we got from the median to the other side of the road like that. Also don't ask me how we did not sustain more body damage etc. We also consider ourselves very lucky because 2 minutes later and we would have been on the 57 freeway going north at about 70 miles per hour. We were very lucky. The tow truck got their within 5 minutes of the call and we had some one come and pick us up. Good job to the tow truck driver James who was very good and did a great job. They took the Sequoia back to the body shop and I will get a quote tomorrow. In the mean time I went and rented a Suburban so I could take my booth to the National Sheriffs Show that starts tomorrow.

What a crazy weekend. Mostly I am just happy everyone is okay.

Here is a video of the Duro Flashes set up behind the Sequoia (the tow guys said it made it very easy to find us with these and also a pic of the tire laying under the car. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utL0z2SWiNs