“I have never felt more helpless.”
Toyota Altis 1.6x 2021 - Massive Warranty Fraud by Toyota Indus Motors and Toyota Sargodha Motors
I’ll try to make this short, but some details are rather necessary. (For those who want a shorter read, see the 10th paragraph directly.)
In Feb 2021, we bought Altis 1.6x from Toyota Islamabad Motors and it was among the first batch of the ‘X’ variants of Altis.
On 24th December 2022, my parents were on their way back from Sargodha to Rawalpindi. After entering the Motorway M2 using SIAL INTERCHANGE, they noticed a yellow light on the cluster and the thermostat meter fell down below the zero mark (Picture that my dad sent me on WhatsApp immediately is attached).
Taking it to be an electrical malfunction and considering the young age of the car, I advised them to stop at the nearest Rest station and contact the motorway assistance team. The hour was near sunset and fog was on its way.
After merely travelling for 5-7 Kms, the car stopped in the middle of the motorway . Our driver was able to manoeuvre the car to safety saving his own and my parent’s life.
Not being able to figure out what had happened, they called the motorway assistance team. They took around 1-2 Hours to reach just to tell us our engine had ‘SEIZED’. The team said they could try to fix the issue by changing the engine oil, and charged us 4500 for the oil to see if it would work. They even tried refilling the radiator. But obviously if it had worked, I wouldn’t be writing this post.
Shocked to our guts, we referred to our Warranty card which said Toyota is responsible for a 3 year or 100,000km warranty (Our car fully fits the criteria). I advised my parents to get a Tow truck (Charged 25k) and take the car to Toyota Sargodha Motors which was the nearest available ‘authorised’ center to claim warranty and figure the problem out.
Two days passed as it was the weekend, and on Monday a random supervisor at Toyota Sargodha Motors denied our warranty ‘without giving any reason’ and offered us a ‘Kabuli Engine’ from their own dealership worth 3.5 Lacs. We obviously denied getting a Kabuli engine from an authorised dealership in a car worth 50 lacs.
I immediately contacted Toyota Indus Motors via Email, and they responded after a day saying my issue will be resolved. It is important to note that this was 26/27 December (Monday/Tuesday).
They took one and a half week to get me aligned with their ‘Technical team’.
MOST IMPORTANT POINT: On the next Wednesday, a person named Shehbaz came from Lahore to survey the vehicle. He told me that the car had overheated which led to the engine seizure. The person told us that the cause of overheating was that there was no water in the radiator. I am attaching a picture with this post which will prove that the radiator bottle still had water even after reaching Toyota Sargodha. He said a water stain could be seen on the inside of the bonnet, and made an assumption that ‘probably’ the radiator cap was left open. It is important to note we have always maintained our car at Toyota since the start. In fact, we had the last oil change 2 weeks before at Toyota Sargodha Motors. We have been driving different cars for 25 years and we are careful enough not to open the main radiator airtight cap unless extremely necessary (You are supposed to see the transparent bottle that shows low and high levels of the coolant and keep the other one airtight). Our driver doesn’t get the car key except when he is with us. Even if the car did get heated, the thermostat meter had malfunctioned and it didn’t show that the engine was getting overheated for any reason. And this person was checking the car after roughly 2 weeks, how is a water splash supposed to stay there after 2 weeks? (And here’s the funny part: Roughly 1 week after this inspection when we opened the bonnet again, there was no stain. HIGH POSSIBILITY THAT THEY HAD MARKED THE STAIN THEMSELVES. But I won’t blame them for mere ‘assumptions’.) After getting the last oil change from Toyota (just 11 days before), we didn’t even open our car’s bonnet so how is a radiator cap even supposed to get lose all by itself?
After a lot of mental stress and calls from Toyota Indus, we couldn’t take more. We had been without a car for 1 whole month using public transport and other means. Toyota never gave us a straight denial until almost 1 month after the incidence. This is the reason they had attached to the email:
“Please note that your vehicle has been inspected by our IMC Technical Team and it has been concluded that the cause of damage is not due to any manufacturing defect in the product but may have been caused due to any external effects and alterations. As a result, it cannot be covered under warranty. However, as a token of goodwill, we would like to offer you 10% discount on the total repair cost of vehicle if the vehicle will be repaired at Toyota’s authorized dealership.”
I am attaching a picture of the total estimate they gave us (PKR 490,000/-). They are literally offering us a lollipop of 40,000 out of the real 5 lac fraud.
Hand on heart and as Allah as a witness, I can assure you that not a single mechanic has touched our car apart from Authorised Toyota Dealerships. We have always spent more than required just to have the mental peace.
We have brought our non-functional car back from the dirt house of Toyota Sargodha and parked it at our home to have the mental peace. We are now sending the company a Legal Notice and filing a complaint at the Ministry of Ombudsman.
After 20+ years of a relationship with Toyota, this is what we get. And this is what probably all of you will get as well if you choose Toyota. I urge all of you to get yourselves out of this Toyota mentality, as spending millions on a corolla isn’t worth it anymore.
