| Description of the problem | The battery on my wife's 2007 toyota rav4 went out without warning, & so on the advice of the folsom lake toyota garage, i jump started her car to get her home. The next morning i did the same, so that she could drive it to the garage to get fixed. When she started to drive the car however, the steering lock would not allow her to turn the wheel & she ended up driving towards the middle of the road. She immediately stopped, & told me, & so as i thought she meant that the power steering simply wasn't working, i said that i would drive it to the garage for her. When i started off however, the car steering lock stopped me turning the wheel, although only for a second or two, before the steering began to work correctly, & so i very slowly & carefully drove the car to the garage. The garage checked the car & said that it was just a faulty battery, but when i pointed out that if a faulty battery could cause the steering lock to engage while driving, this was a safety hazard, they said that when they asked toyota, they simply said that it was working as designed, & so there was nothing they could do. Consequently, i called toyota, & they told me that as the car has an electronic power steering module, the steering lock could engage with a bad battery. When i suggested to the customer services rep that they needed to address this issue as a safety hazard, she wasn't interested in helping, & point blank refused to give me contact details for her boss, or anyone at toyota north america or japan, only the customer services dept., i. E., people like herself. I find it insulting that toyota not only appears not to care about the safety of their customers, but also doesn't appear to want to hear from their customers, e. G., when i took a survey after my call, & entered some very low numbers for service care, the call was deliberately cut off by toyota. So much for japanese service! |