Date from which 3 year warranty starts

Are you only worried about the difference of about 26 days?

If there is a problem that needs warranty repair, just bring the car in before May 19th and you'll be covered.

The dealership's finance guy should have all the proper paperwork copies on file. I wouldn't take the word of a receptionist or salesman.

 

In service date means the date the car was actually sold by the dealer, not the date the title was issued.

 

Did you register the VIN at http://www.toyotaownersonline.com/index.html? The dealer may be counting the time after a dealer trade which is incorrect. I wouldn't worry about it unless you have a current problem.

 

I am wondering if the difference in the in-service date vs. the title date is due to the car having been in service for one month as a dealer service loaner, a demo, or being driven by a member of dealer management for a one-month period?

 

It is possible that it was a demo or something similar.

What I meant by my comment is that it is possible that there might be a temporary title or paperwork issued to allow the car to be driven while waiting for the official title to be issued by DMV, but for warranty purposes, the date that the car is sold is the in-service date.

 

modhatter,

The "In-service" date is definitely NOT the date of title issuance (since DMV sometimes takes a few days to do that) & it should theoretically be the date it was put into service (registration transferred & car actually put on the road) by the original purchaser (& not short-change the first purchaser by one month if it was to be used within the dealership as a service loaner, a demo, or staff transportation---UNLESS the dealer was going to drastically reduce the price & sell it to the first purchaser as a used car).

Ideally, the date the certificate of origin (the manufacturer's title) transfers to the first purchaser should be the "In-service" date, but there have been a number of cases where the dealer may change the "In-service" date either forward or backward a few days from the delivery date. This usually happens around the end/start of the month & is done to help boost the sales figures for a poor month he just had or the upcoming month he anticipates to be a poor one.

You should go by your Toyota dealer & have them do a printout/build sheet or whatever they call it. It will have all kinds of statistics on your car (when it was built, when it was shipped, ship that it crossed the ocean on, port it arrived in, dealer it was allocated to, colors, option package, key code & maybe a few more things I may have forgotten) as well as the official "In-service" date that the dealer reported to Toyota.

Troy from Warranty Shack (an extension of the Toyota dealership he works at) can also get that date for you (all he needs is your VIN). You should call or e-mail him right away. In post #1137 (I think) of the 1223-post thread on the extended warranty are his 2 phone numbers (the dealerships main # & his own extension #---use his & leave him a voice mail so he can call you back right away).

However, if you e-mail him, he usually answers in between 10 minutes to an hour at the most, but many people who haven't gotten a timely response have forgotten to look in their spam folder because that's where his first e-mail usually gets trapped. Once you put his e-mail address (which should be in that same post #1137) into your address book, his e-mails to you should appear with your regular e-mails.

Don't forget to tell him how many miles you drive each year so he can save you some money by helping you to figure which of his extended warranties best fits your needs (I should have listened to him, but I thought I knew better---now my 7-yr warranty will expire in only 5 years when I hit 100,000 miles in a couple of more months).

Ken (in Bolton,Ct)

 

I had one dealer tell me that "in service" means the date it's manufactured ... which would kill several more weeks, sitting on the dock ... getting shipped ... transported 1/2 way accross the country, as well as time sitting at the dealer. Either way, it sure cuts time of the 36 months.

 

The sleaze depth is unbelievable. Enough people must believe this for it to be profitable.

 

I always figured it started whenever it was easiest for the dealer to deny warranty work?

 

On my car's title it listed both the purchase date and the date of issue (later).