After weighing my options, I decided to accept the job offer that required that I move from San Jose down to Southern California - Thousand Oaks, CA., specifically.
A few days after I moved down to SoCal, my 93 MR2T driver side door lock jammed on me. Since I am unfamiliar with the area, I did the brain-dead thing of dropping it off at the Thousand Oaks Toyota dealership. Here's the amusing (and not so amusing) chain of events that follows.
I brought my MR2T in to the dealer, and the service writer told me that it'll be $98 to look at it to get an estimate, which is an hour worth of labor, so if the repair can be done in 1 hour or less, that's what I'd get charged. If not, then he'll call me for permission to go ahead and do the full damage.
I said okay, dropped off the car, and the shuttle service dropped me back at the office. As soon as I sat down, the phone rang, and the service writer asked me if there's something wrong with my ignition, since the car won't start now.
I told them that since the door lock was jammed, I suspect they've triggered the alarm, and they would have to lock the door with the key and unlock the door with the key before they can restart the car. I was told that they've done that, and that wasn't it.
So he calls me back later and said that the actuator motor for the power doorlocks is jammed in the lock position, and they have to replace the motor, which came out to $600+ for parts and labor to get it fixed. I was a bit perturbed, and thought that I'd figure out another way. So I asked them to put it back together, and I'll pay the $98 and think about it later. He said okay.
Then I get another call 5 minutes later, and said that they still can't start the car, and wonder if my ignition has just died. I said that I've not had any problems starting the car in the last year. I told them that it's probably the security system. So he says that they'll look at the security system.
I get another call back 10 minutes later and said that my wiring system is all screwed up, with half of the wire cut and running to the middle of nowhere, and they don't understand how the car was operating at all. So at this time, I was a bit agitated, and told them to leave the car be, and I'll go in and look at it.
So I get to the shop, and he shows me how they pushed the car some 300 yards into the bay, and now they can't start the car. Moreover, after they put the thing back together, the door is now locked again, so I still have to crawl in from the passenger side.
I told them that I'd like to give it a try. So I pulled out my other spare key, put it in the passenger side, locked the door and unlocked it again. At this time, the technicans said "Oh, you have to do that?" So I said, yes, and I think this is the standard Toyota alarm system for this car, and this is how it works.
So I then crawl into the driver seat from the passenger side door, and put my foot on the clutch and turn the key, and sure enough, my car started up right away. So the service writer seems to have felt rather embarassed, and he tells me that if I just go ahead and drive the car away then, he won't even charge me the $98 for the estimate. Since he knows what's wrong now, if I decide to get it fixed, I just have to call him to order the part and schedule a drop off time, and he can get it done right away. So that was nice of him to let me off without charging me the estimate, but it was still funny that neither he nor the technicans knew how to deal with the alarm system on my 93T.
I then spent the next two weeks crawling through my passenger side door to the driver side door, and looking for a reputable shop in my spare time. I went to a shop that was recommend to me, but they were overloaded. They told me to call back on Monday the following week to see if they had some time to work on my car. Anyways, long story short - I decide to play grease monkey myself, and proceeded to tear my car apart. Since the door was locked, I had to take the driver seat out, rip out the door panel (not all that easy with the door closed) to get to the lock.
After about 40 minutes, I got to the lock, and managed to unlock the door. Then it was 10 more minutes before I figured out that I couldn't unlock the door because this tension spring broke.
So I'm looking at this thing - thinking that the service guys at the dealer was either incompetent or greedy. Neither would be a flattering choice. I proceeded to cut away the broken part of the tension spring, and pulled out another loop of the same spring, and re-attached the spring. The result is that I now once again have a functional driver side door lock. Cost of fix = $0, but a lot of time wasted.
I was thinking about writing a letter to Toyota - but I can't really complain, because the service writer didn't charge me in the first place. If he had charged me, I could have had a basis for complaining and asking for a refund, but since he didn't charge me - no harm, no foul. The only "harm" was that I had to crawl in through my passenger side door for the last 2 weeks, and the dealer had left me thinking that the door lock motor was jammed/fused to the locking position.
Anyways, I am quite happy that I managed to fix the problem without spending $600+. I will have to continue to look around to see where I should take my car to be serviced in the future. I am going to try to avoid this particular dealer if I can.
