Toyota customers slow to respond

Toyota has been in the national spotlight recently after halting sales of eight models of cars and trucks that make up more than half its sales in the United States, cars that won't return to on-sale status until the sticking accelerator pedals manufactured by CTS Corp behind the recall are fixed. And while the recall has since gone global, it is also having an effect on local dealers such as Toyota of Plano.

The dealership had between 225 to 240 out of 370 cars in stock affected by the recall. They received the formal announcement of the recall at the same time as the public.

The announcement has had an effect on customer traffic into the dealership, said Mark Allen, director of new car sales at Toyota of Plano. He said the short term has been rough going so far. With customer traffic on the decline, Allen said that only makes a bad situation worse.

"There are people who produce these cars and people in the dealerships who sell, most with families to take care of," Allen said. "All are just trying to make it through the bad economy, when something like this hits."

Amid these concerns and without some of its top-selling models on the market, Toyota recorded a 16 percent drop in sales in January from a year ago. But Allen expects Toyota to recover.

Allen said Toyota will be fine because the product is a good product. The fact that they did not take any money during the mass bailouts of the auto industry is evidence of that, he said.

"Toyota will get back on track," Allen said. "What we are doing for our customers is communicating with them. We have not had a lot of negative comments from our customers. We have confidence in the product."

Toyota of Plano already has received the replacement parts and has begun installing them on vehicles brought to the dealership. They plan to replace the parts on all cars brought in by customers before they make the fix to their existing stock.

Allen said he and other members of the dealership physically inventoried the cars that have the accelerator arm in question. He said not only are the cars affected by the recall physically marked, they're also identified in their computer system and on the key machines. Allen said none of those cars will be used in test drives. The extra precautions were set up at Toyota of Plano, not something that was passed down by Toyota, he said.

"We have gone above and beyond in this regard," Allen said. "This is our policy here."

For Toyota owners who wish to take their cars in for the replacement part, he said it could take up to an hour to change out. But he said that depends on how many people they have who need the service at the time and how many customers come in with regular maintenance issues.

Toyota isn't the only carmaker currently recalling vehicles, as Honda announced last week it would recall a total of 646,000 units of the Fit/Jazz and City models globally, including 140,000 in the U.S. The recall is to fix a defective master switch which could cause water to enter the power window switch and in some cases cause a fire.

Recalls in the automotive world are fairly common practice. Allen said most don't get as much interest - some of those recalls are for issues far more dangerous than those faced by Toyota right now. This is why Toyota has fallen under such scrutiny as the international leading automaker has been criticized for their slowness to respond to the brewing crisis. Allen attributed that to the fact that Toyota has not faced a large issue like this before.

"It has been a misconception. Something the Toyota Corporation took too lightly in the beginning," Allen said. "But as concern grew, Toyota's stance became 'People think this is a problem, so we will fix it.'"

And now that they can fix it, Allen said they have not seen many come in for the repair. He said initially a few people were walking in and asking, "What is this?" As the week progressed, they had more people calling than coming in, he said.

"People need to know that we are not scared of making the repair," Allen said. "We are willing to sit down and listen; we understand that they have a family that goes in these cars and they need to feel safe.

The models affected by the recall include the 2009-2010 RAV4, 2009-2010 Corolla, 2009-2010 Matrix, 2005-2010 Avalon, Certain 2007-2010 Camry, 2010 Highlander (except hybrid models), 2007-2010 Tundra and 2008-2010 Sequoia. Toyota has also been ordered by the Japanese transportation ministry to investigate complaints that brakes on the latest generation of Prius respond sluggishly on bumpy or icy roads.

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