me and my wife are looking to trade in a Toyota Highlander for a minivan, and the most affordable option is the Pacifica hybrid. For those that have had one of these cars, what has your experience been? Have they been reliable for you?
Four months ago, we received a letter from Toyota saying that our bucket seats in a 2022 Toyota Highlander were unsafe and to not use them. This is our family car, and those seats are the seats in which our children sit in. We ended up contacting our local dealer who put us in a rental car for three months until the recall was resolved.
We got our car back last week, and immediately noticed a foul smell. We noticed some very small droppings, but didn’t think much of it for a couple days. It wasn’t until a few days after receiving the car back, that something undeniably in the car. We found the car covered in massive rodent poop, our kids car seats were chewed up, and the bad smell we noticed initially had only gotten worse.
I ended up doing a little investigating and found six baby rats and heard a very large rat crawling around. I ended up taking videos of these for proof.
I wasn’t sure what I should do, so I called the dealer who told me to bring it in. I started working with the service manager, and he ended up taking the car to the back. He claims that he opened it up and never saw any rats which I find hard to believe since I took the car to him with a few hours of finding them. While at the dealership, he refused to get the general manager and assured us that everything was fine. My wife asked if the rats were gone for sure, and he said well, I can’t be for sure, but I didn’t see any. This whole process took 3 1/2 hours, and we walked away with essentially nothing except the service managers thoughts. During the entire process, he was not letting us speak directly with the general manager.
We ended up calling Toyota corporate and filed a complaint with them. After that call, I went back into the dealership and asked to speak with the general manager. She came out about 15 minutes later and was short with me. She started the conversation by saying “ I got your complaint from corporate” and you could tell she was agitated. That said, I was very nice and she lightened up as we talked.
In the conversation, we agreed that the dealership would pay for the car to be professionally clean and that they would reimburse us half for one of the car seats. After receiving the car from the cleaning company, the dealership would spray it with a rat bomb. It was certainly the bare minimum in my opinion, but I agreed to it without signing any paperwork.
My wife was frustrated that I did not demand more. We are still waiting on the car to come back to us, but I’m wondering if I should expect more?
When we get the car back, my wife has already expressed that she will not drive the car because she does not think it is safe, even after being cleaned. She is also worried about what kind of chemicals they are putting in the car that she (who has lupus and is compromise ) and the children will be breathing in for who knows how long.
Any advice would be welcome!
edit: the car sat in the Toyota dealership parking lot for three months.
This past week, I began learning Dowland's Fantasia No 7, and boy, has it been a challenge. Technically, there are some challenges in regards to plucking chords with separated string voicings if that makes sense, but overall, it's not too tricky.
What has been a total pain has just been memorizing it. I for the life of me cannot keep this tune in my head with all the complex, odd chord voicings that are unending.
Was this piece challenging for anyone else? I love it, but it's also driving me absolutely crazy.