Cracked Trunk Trim Piece - Not Warranty Covered?

What happened to 3 year 36K mile bumper to bumper warranty? Dealership claiming it's abuse or intentional damage? Lodge complaint with Toyota America corporate.

 

Add our XLE AWD to the afflicted! Taking it up with dealer.

 

Wife took our XLE in today and dealer service refused to repair under warranty. If anyone has gotten Toyota to cover please contact me. We may need to organize here.

 

Do you know how it happened?

 

No idea. But she's very gentle with car doors and hatches.

 

From the looks of it, she took the car to a cross-country rally.

 

Maritime winters are haaarrddd....

 

The whole part flexes. It's empty back there so cold temperatures, brittle plastic moment, and the wrong pressure in the wrong spot or a bad vibration....

Maybe it's fine most of the time, but any issue with the plastic from manufacturing or imperfection that's possibly bad.

 

Glad I have the auto open/close....
Sucks this happens

 

Just noticed there doesn't seem to be a Toyota Emblem embedded in the trim piece like on mine. Do Canadian models have different trunk trims?

 

The logo is above the brake light which isn't pictured. CAD and US models are the same except for some mild options in the trim levels like heated seats and the likes.

 

Ultimately, if there is a flaw in the design/structure/manufacture, Toyota will address it. They tend to be very good about flaws that show up in production over time. It will be up to the owners to know though, either through looking it up or seeing a notification in the Toyota app, or their dealership telling them if a fix does show up beyond "replace", since this doesn't seem to be a safety issue. If it were a safety issue it would be under a recall.

Heck it might even fall into an extended warranty situation like they have for things like oil consumption on 2AZ engines in the past. For an extended time people could take their affected VIN to the dealership, and they'd do an engine component replacement on piston rings or whatever it was, plus new head gasket for free for excessive oil consumption due to a less than ideal part in the original manufacturing run.

The issue is going to be how dealerships handle this before any sort of TSB is released. But even then, in the past they'd reimburse folks for the work assuming it had been done at the dealership, paid for, receipts etc.

 

Maybe they’ve lowered the bar of late…

don’t get me started, about examples.

 

Toyota Canada seems pretty pitiful and more out to actively screw their client base so I doubt about them doing the right thing. It took them being dragged to court to fix the Rav 4 hybrid cable for the back which was costing people 7k or so.

 

Dealer refused to cover our crack under warranty. Surprise, not.

 

Ah, perhaps you should have washed the car before taking it there. They might have suspected abuse and neglect.

 

We did! All that got deposited on the short drive to the dealer!

 

After taking a closer look with my readers, it looks like contact damage. Depending on what your deductible is, may be insurance will cover it?

 

The whole piece has a lot of flex to it. If anyone is brave enough you can give it a light squeeze and you'll find there's a lot of play/flex since its empty in behind there. At least, on my prime SE anyway.

I've seen enough posts about this online to think that it may well crop up as a problem in the future for more people as the plastic ages and becomes more brittle and sensitive. Especially in colder climates where its easy for plastic trim to get brittle when its cold. One bad pressure point with your hands could crack it pretty easily in -30C for example.