Toyota of Richardson - Service Center

Toyota of Richardson responded

Please accept this as our response to Mr. Spinelli's review of our service department. These are the facts that we would like to share. Mr Spinelli contacted our service department on 6-22-13 , to inquire on replacement of an ignition key for his 2007 Toyota Corolla, he was quoted $56.00 to cut his key and program to his vehicle. When he arrived his story changed and he needed to have all his keys replaced because he had lost them. Due to the current technologies on anti-theft for keys, the vehicle must be present and the computer must reprogramed to accept new keys.Iif he had any of orginal master keys this would not be required, as he was told orginally. He was then quoted a much higher price due to the time it takes to complete and also towing charges to get the vehicle in. That is were the $320.00 came from. I am not sure where he found that this can be done with a paper clip, but this remedy is false. We tried to have the service manager explain this to him , but he was not willing to accept the facts. We pride ourselves on our customer service and take all negative comments very serious. Due to his unproffesional language and comments we felt it was necessary to state all facts.

RSpinelli responded

I initially called Thursday (6/20) and spoke to a gentleman named Durrel, Daryl, or Terrell (it is difficult to tell when they mumble over the phone) who quoted me the $40 for a replacement key (never mentioned I needed to bring in my vehicle to have it reprogrammed), but apparently whomever wrote this anonymous response did not check back as far as they should have. "Needed to have all his keys replaced?" Why do you insist on referencing "keys' in your response? I was not given multiple keys upon purchase and explained that over the phone Thursday and again in store Saturday. Toyota of Richardson service department employees may have misinterpreted "replacement" as "copy" and I fail see how that is my fault. I never received a $56 key replacement quote and I would have happily payed that if was actually offered. I guess this is another price to add to the list of $40, 280, and $320 quotes stated between the time I called Thursday (6/20) and left the dealership on Saturday (6/22). The only person I spoke with close to a manager title was Jeremi Chapman, who introduced himself as service supervisor and not the service drive manager, as labeled on this website. "Not willing to accept the facts" and being lied to are completely different things but I would not expect the person who wrote this to understand the difference. I am not sure what "unprofessional language" this anonymous responder speaks of because the most inconsiderate thing I did in store was walk away in the middle of Mr. Chapman's spiel about "I'm not going to lie to you.." and " because a person like yourself would not know about cars." He was incredibly pretentious (and misinformed) when talking down to me about the key I purchased online for 1/5 of what they charge in house ($55 I believe) after glancing at it for a brief moment when I pulled it of pocket our during our conversation. The $100 cost of towing on top of having my vehicle reprogrammed was never discussed til I arrived at the dealership. Assuming they use AAA as their towing service (due to observing how many AAA stickers I saw around the lot exterior), they never asked if I was an AAA member nor did they discuss AAA's keying and programming service which costs about half of what they charge ($160). I am sure if you are a member they charge much less. Also, why should anyone who reads this assume you are the final word on my stated paperclip method? Does every person in your department live and breathe Toyota cars? Why should anyone expect stealerships to let people in on some automotive know-how when they can extort them for 100's more than what a little research and DIIY determination can get them? Did some fairy come in the middle of the night and magically make my key work? If so, thank you magical creature for helping me in my time of need when the people I bought the car from wanted to take another few hundred dollars out of my pocket instead of helping a college kid out with a problem. The salesman I bought the car from (Rick Reamy) called me earlier today (6.24) inquiring about me calling on Thursday (how did he know I called Thursday and the person writing this didn't?) to ask if my issue had been resolved. I told him everything was taken care of and he sounded more relieved about me not raising xxxx over what happened than concerned my issue with the service department. As a final word to you, anonymous responder, feel free to look me up in your database and call me so we can sit down and discuss this in person. I feel very offended that your actual manager (or as I was told anyway), Glenn Barnette, has not contacted me yet concerning the poor experience I endured this past weekend. Does he trust his employees that much? Does he know you wrote such a poorly written response to my complaint? Are you so confident that I would lie about this situation to put your job on the line? Above all else, don't get me started on the poor spelling, excess adverb(s), and ending sentence(s) with a preposition.