Dear Claudienne,

I am the owner of a 2005 Land Crusier Prado which I procured from Toyota Jamaica Limited during that same year. I use this vehicle very infrequently, so much so the odometer now registers at a total of 4,000 km. Approximately six months ago, I noticed cracks appearing on the dashboard in the area above the small air condition vent to the right side of the steering wheel. At the time of writing you this letter, there are cracks all over the dashboard. What I am saying here is that the dashboard is disintegrating.

I have written to the managing director of Toyota Jamaica advising him of the situation. They basically said that they will offer me a 10 per cent discount on a replacement dashboard. Toyota Jamaica is using their warranty provision in the contract for sale of these vehicles to absolve themselves of an obligation here, but it seems to me that a dashboard, a very critical fixture on a motor vehicle, should stand up a little longer than four years.

I know at least three other owners of Land Cruiser Prados whose dashboards have begun to disintegrate. It is a problem with the type of material used to manufacture the fixtures.

Toyota Jamaica should not be allowed to parade these so-called high-end vehicles at high costs with a dashboard that is disintegrating.

I should appreciate your looking into this matter.

SB

Dear SB,

The service manager of Toyota Jamaica said that your observations about the dashboard of the 2005 Land Cruiser Prado have been reported to Toyota Motor Corporation, the manufacturers in Japan who deal with warranty matters.

He said that Toyota Jamaica issues a Field Technical Report to the manufacturers on “anything we find wrong with the vehicles”. He said that an FTR on the problem with your 2005 Prado dashboard was done. The 2005 dashboards were made from “some type of plastic”, but the dashboards in the new model Prado (2009 and 2010) are being made from a different type of material, the service manager explained to Tell Claudienne.

The service manager said that you were in breach of the Toyota warranty guidelines that required you to have your Prado serviced by a Toyota dealer. He said that Toyota Jamaica had no service history on your Prado as it was never serviced by the company.

“There are warranty guidelines to cover customers if something goes wrong. But if they don’t service the vehicles with us they are giving up the rights to the warranty,” he explained. He said that if the Toyota dealership had serviced your vehicle, you would have been offered a bigger discount, even though the three-year warranty limitation had expired.

He said that Toyota also had a goodwill warranty but a condition was that the dealer must have a service record of the vehicle.

We also consulted with the Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC) on your claim. The CAC said that it was not compulsory to service your vehicle with Toyota provided you have records that show that the vehicle was serviced at a reputable place.

The CAC said that although your Prado was hardly driven, it is now over the warranty limitation “and at this point might not be entitled to anything. At this point, any entitlement is discretionary unless it can be proven to be a manufacturing defect,” the CAC said.

Good luck.

Have a problem with a store, utility, a company? Telephone 511-2436 or write to: Tell Claudienne, c/o Sunday Finance Jamaica Observer, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5; or e-mail: edwardsc@ jamaicaobserver.com