I bought brand new 2004 Toyota Sienna mini van for 25000 dollars at this establishment (the tv ad says you become part of the Fletcher Jones family, or something to that extent... Yeah, like harry potter locked in a broom closet under the staircase)
I have never owned a van. I got home and over the course of that first week I noticed my wife and I had to slam the drivers side sliding door several times before it would close all the way. It got harder and harder to close. Finally after about 3 or 4 weeks we took the van to Fletcher Jones to get the door adjusted. We figured it was a minor matter. And the way they had fawned all over us like we were royalty while we were purchasing this expensive vehicle made us feel we were in good hands.
We came back later that afternoon to get the van. My wife and I were absolutely stunned, taken aback: the service rep told us flatly that "Fletcher Jones won't fix the door under our new car warranty because somehow WE had damaged the door!!!) Mind you, this new car had almost no miles on it yet, less than a month old. Not a single scratch on the car, on the door, anywhere. My jaw dropped, I was incredulous. He started referring me the number of their body shop where I could go pay to have the damaged door fixed. But I could just see his mouth moving and couldn't concentrate on the words, I was so shocked that this company which had so graciously taken my 25grand a couple weeks before was now calling me and my wife a couple of f-king liars.
"How could we have damaged the door?" I asked him. "The door doesn't have the slightest scratch on it..."
He replied that he didn't know for sure. That maybe we had slammed the door on something, and that his mechanics had said the "inside" of the door was bent, where you "couldn't see it."
Anyway, the truth of the matter is that the van came with a defective door. And these rat bastards would rather lose a new customer that buys a new car every three years by ripping us off for the couple hundred bucks it would cost them to do what? Replace the latch or something.
I think what really stunk the most about this is that my wife and I really like the van and we felt so royally treated by Fletcher Jones when they were taking our money. And then to have a bucket of cold toilet water tossed in our faces when we first returned for this minor defect. It was humiliating; we literally felt like we were covered with shit driving home that day.
A couple months later I took the van to a private mechanic shop; they said they could replace the latch, etc for around 300 bucks..in three years when I buy my next toyota van I'll be damned if it's gonna be a Fletcher Jones Toyota of Las Vegas. I could probably sue them in small claims, but I'm too busy to deal with that over such a piddling amount.
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