How Quickly TOYOTA Hollywood Repaired My Car. - Jan 19th 2009 11:27

TOYOTA of Hollywood repaired my car in half a day. Japanese auto garages could learn a lot from them.

My car's engine check lamp began flashing on the way from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Because it was right after I refilled gas in South Las Vegas, I though the gas might have been bad.

I called AIG road service, but it couldn't help us enough. The road service only offered to call the towing service which could cost up to $75. They told me that we should find a car repair shop and the best solution while repairing by ourselves. When we tried to find TOYOTA dealers in Las Vegas with Tomtom PND, there didn't seem to be any dealers.

I wanted to have a TOYOTA dealer check my car (TOYOTA Corolla) because it can check the ECU (Engine Control Unit = a computer on the car) with PC which can exactly detect what is wrong on the engine. Usually, I think, car repair shops without dealership can only adjust the tuning of the engine. So I needed a dealer shop.

Fortunately, my car seemed nothing wrong except for the lamp at the moment. My wife and I decided to go to Los Angeles where a TOYOTA dealer exists near the hotel whose reservation I had.

As soon as we arrived directly at the dealer shop TOYOTA of Hollywood, a service agent asked me what was wrong. When I explained the symptom (and our travel schedule) to him whose name is Alex, he could understand me well in spite of my bad English pronunciation. Because it was after 5 PM, he scheduled to check my car early morning the next day.

He said to me that he tried to call me 10 AM, but I got his phone call before 9 AM the next day. He explained the report of the diagnostics by phone, I couldn't understand him because I am not good at speaking English by phone. I had him wait for me by my arrival.

When I arrived at the shop 10 AM, he showed me the report. There were many things to be repaired.

The most important trouble was the electrical breakdown of the air flow sensor, which caused the engine check lamp. Additionally the engine belt got almost broken, and the drive shaft boots had a crack. They need have been replaced as soon as possible, but not immediately. He explained symptoms and costs to me very carefully, but he never forced me to repair all of them. It totally cost $1600 to repair all, and he said it must have been really expensive and depended on me.

However we decided to do according to him because we wanted to use the car without anxiety and we didn't want to have any troubles in the desert between states of the US.

The cost seemed to the same to in Japan. But what surprised us was the time to repair. He offered that he could return my car by 5 PM! At first I thought that it took at least 2 or 3 days to repair all, and I suppose it is usual in Japan. But he said the incredibly period. It didn't affect out travel schedule at all. I asked him immediately.

When I came to the dealer after 4 PM, my car was repaired completely. The engine check lamp was turned off. I wanted to thank him, however he was not there because he had back problem and had gone back to home already. I appreciate his quick repairing.