Open Letter to our Toyota Marketing Friends

I know you monitor this site to get a sense of how some Prius customers (and wannabe customers) are thinking about the car. I would like you to consider this and, perhaps pass it on to your management.

I have been a loyal Toyota customer for over 25 years. In that time I have spent nearly $500,000 on your products. The truth is that your products are so good, that in that entire time I have had virtually no contact with you for service issues.

This changed last year. My 2006 Prius experienced unintended acceleration. It occurred several times. The last time happened at a red light with my foot firmly on the brake, and nothing even near the gas pedal. The story is on another thread in this forum.

I took the car to a local dealer who couldn't reproduce the problem and said that they couldn't fix it. I called the Toyota customer service 800 number. They, in very polite terms, said I was lying. I filed a report with NHTSA, which didn't investigate.

Now after over 30 deaths and countless accidents, you acknowledge that there is a problem. The cure is a floor mat or accelerator pedal fix. Steve Wozniac had a similar problem to mine. Toyota called him a liar too. He went to the press. He can because he is one of the Apple founders.

Last week we learned that internal Toyota email revealed there was great joy that $100 Million was saved by telling the floor mat story instead of doing a substantive recall. It was also learned that a former NHTSA official, who was instrumental over the years in "avoiding" Toyota investigations, is now employed by the company. Both the House and Senate aren't buying that the unintended acceleration was a floor mat or sticky accelerator problem.

All of this is strikingly familiar to the Ford Pinto problem years ago. It is also similar to the expose of the General Motors memos where they decided it was cheaper to pay death benefits than fix a gas tank problem. Toyota was supposed to be different.

I've seen the commercials with all of the apologies. I'm not buying it.

The reason I am writing is that I feel betrayed. I traded in my 2006 Prius and bought a 2010. How could I have done that? I did it because I firmly supported Toyota's effort to be the world's best producer of green cars. Actually, because I have always believed that Toyota builds the best cars in the world.

I still think so. But now I realize Toyota isn't really customer-friendly. You are paid to convince us that we should buy your cars above other brands. It worked on me. However, now I feel deeply disappointed that your company is no different than GM or Ford back in the days before Ralph Nader.

This site is full of people, including me, who have invested enormous amounts of money (the largest purchases of our lives) in your products. We need to believe we did the right thing. I am seriously doubting my decisions to invest in Toyotas. This saddens me because I really love my 2010 Prius. The problem is that I no longer trust that you, Toyota, is on my side.

You lied to me. You lied to the press. You lied to Congress. You even lied to Steve Wozniak. It took over 9 months to get any belief that I really can't read my air conditioning display. I learned here there is a TSR. I will try to see if my local dealer will fix it. Based on my recent experience with Toyota, I doubt it.

All of us here have a huge investment in trusting Toyota. Our lives and investments depend not only on the quality of your products, but the public perception that they are safe to own.

Toyota is the largest car maker in the world. Recent events suggest you are behaving like the former top car maker, GM. Is being the biggest an irresistible temptation to disregard your customers after they purchase your cars? I am beginning to think so.

What are you going to do to restore my faith. What will you do to help me believe my $65,000 investment in a 2010 Prius and 2009 Tacoma was wise? How are you going to restore my faith in the quality of your vehicles?

 

My letter was not a statement that I don't like my Prius. Hell, I traded in my dangerous 2006 for a 2010 V.

If I got the facts wrong about Steve's complaint, that doesn't in any way damage my credibility or the validity of my concerns.

 

You are a moderator? If you weren't in the earthquake in Chile, does that mean it didn't happen? Please! If you take the time to review the NHTSA database (do a search on Toyota Prius and "acceleration" -- you have to search one year at a time), you will find 100 plus complaints per model year of Prius unintended acceleration.

I would have ignored your comment if you weren't a moderator. Whether or not you ever experienced unintended acceleration has nothing to do with my post. (see? I can use bold too).

The fact remains that I did experience unintended acceleration and so did a lot of other Prius owners.

Also, the Prius is a car, not a religion. It's truly ok for a Prius owner to have a problem with the vehicle and its manufacturer. Part of my own failing is that I just "believed" Toyota cared about me as a customer. This, upon reflection, was based on the fact that I never had a bad experience dealing with the company. The fact is I never had any experience dealing with the company because in the last 25 years none of my Toyota's needed any serious service.

It's a good thing they make such great, reliable cars. Otherwise, their horrible customer relations would have buried them.

For the record, I love my 2010 V AT. I drove a 2010 Camry hybrid when the recall work was being done and it made me appreciate my Prius even more. I love my car. I don't trust the people who made it.

 

I think the underlying issue is that Americans (and others, I am sure) form emotional attachments with their cars. This attachment extends to the manufacturer too. My father would only buy GM cars. He wouldn't even consider a Ford. This brand loyalty is what car manufacturers spend a fortune to build and maintain. So here we sit in a forum where many of the members have spent a very large amount of money on a Prius. The purchase extends beyond the car itself to the manufacturer.Face it, I doubt many of us would buy any car if we had questions about the quality of the company who made it.

This is where it affects you and everyone else who owns a Toyota. You may not have had unintended acceration problems on your Gen II. I did. You may not have had a brake problem on your Gen III (I didn't). Regardless of whether your car experienced the problem, it should be pretty important to see how Toyota treats the people who did.

I didnt freak out about the unintended acceleration problems I experienced beyond my very strong safety concerns. I recognize more than most, that anything involving software will experience problems. No one writes perfect code. It stands to reason that the Prius will have some bugs. Most are probably just annoying. Some can turn out to be unsafe.

I didn't trade in my 2006 because of the problem. I traded it in because the manufacturer not only couldn't fix the issue, they insisted that it didn't exist and that I was lying. They brushed me off and told me that if I wasn't happy, I could file a report with the NHTSA. that's not what I expected to hear.

I expected Toyota to tell me that this problem sounds serious and that they have had others who reported it, but at the time they were unable to reproduce it, but were working to find the problem. That response would have given me faith in the company's interest in me and my car.

I can understand why Toyota wouldn't say that to me. Their lawyers would advise that they were implicitly admitting liability. Also, the company makes millions of vehicles a year. A few hundred unhappy Prius owners look unimportant in that context.

Here's the thing. While it is true that the libability risk might be a bit higher if the company told owners that they believed that there "might" be a problem, the risk would be offset by customer confidence that Toyota cares and was actively attempting to help. Even if the outcome was that they were unable to solve the problem (which is the current case), all of us Toyota customers would know that the engineers at Toyota were on our side.

This is similar to a problem Microsoft had. In the '90's the general perception was that Windows had lots of security holes that Microsoft couldn't or wouldn't fix. The company went on a campaign to actively address and respond to all discovered security issues. It let the public know what was going on. It coorperated with government and corporate groups to solve computer security risks. Now, the general perception is that Microsoft is highly trusted and people feel safe and know that the company will promptly address new issues. Issues come up every month, probably just as many as in the 90's. But now the public believes that the company is on their side and is working very hard to keep computing safe.

This is a lesson for Toyota. Appologizing may be a very Japanese way of dealing with fault, but it doesn't do much for Americans. Companies earn our trust by consistently acklnowledging issues as the occur and taking immediate steps to mitigate or correct the problems.

Some have asked why I bought another Prius after experiencing unintended acceleration with my Gen II. I have asked myself that question many times. The honest answer is that I didn't lose all of my faith in Toyota. If another manufacturer had a hybrid that had all the features my 2010 V AT had, I might have bought it. But Prius stands alone right now. It has no serious competition as a designed-to-be hybrid. I guess that is brand-loyalty inertia. It takes time to completely destroy 25 years of faith in a company. That's why I got the 2010.

This inertia will run out; faster for some, much slower for others like me. Toyota has to understand that the bottom line effect of an expensive recall is small change compared to the cost of a major loss of brand loyalty.