Offering owners of all Toyota models with sticking gas pedals a lifetime warranty is a low cost way for Toyota to boost sales and gain ground in the recent PR battle. The key to success of this marketing strategy is to hide the details of it on say page 320 of the owner’s manual; especially the part about the warranty being for the life of the owner!
Toyota’s behavior in recent years reminds me of how USA car companies (Ford, GM, Chrysler) behaved toward their customers in the 1960s and 1970s (based on news reports, shipping steel to them and personal and family experiences) that opened the door for Toyota and Honda to earn USA motor vehicle market share. For readers new to the Millionaire’s Coach®, my focus is on “behaviors that create, maintain and grow wealth, as well as behaviors that blow wealth”SM. Whether a new or a lifetime reader, you can all tell me what behaviors Toyota has been performing in recent years.
This is a good example of why it is so important to first determine your personal values and those of your enterprise, order those values in terms of importance and them check decisions and actions against them for compliance with your values. If there arises an issue where a decision and or potential action might appear to be acceptable according to one value but not with another, that is when the highest priority value rules. Be careful of deceiving yourself such as via one of the psychological defense mechanisms. It is a good idea have some neutral third party who can absolutely keep your confidences check decisions of high impact against your values to protect against deceiving yourself. If you think that can not happen in corporations, let me say two words: Enron, Toyota.
For more information on how to select values, a simple way to determine their priority to one another and more, see the Millionaire’s Coach® Billion Dollar Success Secrets.
For more information on how situations can influence individual and group decisions for growing or blowing wealth and how to become the situation that others respond to, see the Millionaire’s Coach® Billion Dollar Persuasion Power.
With regard to public safety on the streets and highways, I think it is also important to know that Toyota is not recalling all models with floor mats that trap the gas pedal. I have had the all weather floor mat jam the gas pedal to full acceleration in downtown rush hour traffic after an Octopus car wash attendant pulled the retaining clip out to vacuum and never replaced it (in fact they have done it at multiple locations and Octopus employees seemed not at all concerned when I told workers at the car wash exits of the consequences of doing that).
When I contacted the local Toyota service department the service manager told me to throw away the all-weather floor mats specifically sold to me for my Toyota by Toyota. I was told that because they are not standard equipment, Toyota was not liable for my having purchased them from Toyota for the model of Toyota for which they were specifically designed. In addition to not being excited of the prospect of stepping into my new Sienna carpeting from the muddy parking lot on a sunny winter day at Taos Ski Valley, I was flabbergasted to hear there was no refund available for the floor mats.
It appears to me Toyota is still minimizing and back-pedaling to save corporate pennies at the risk of property, personal injuries and lives of its customers. Hearing their response, I was feeling like I did owning Fords and Chevys in the 1970s. I disliked that experience so much then that I have never owned another Ford or Chevy for more than three decades now. (Subsequently my two brothers and two children who all grew up with me in a USA steel town have all bought foreign vehicles.) Walking to my car looking disgustedly at the Toyota No-Service printout, I saw something that made me feel that at least I got something for my time, trouble and $30,000+ dollars, a “Free complimentary car wash.” That is, until I got to my Sienna to find it looking just as dirty as it did returning to Albuquerque on salted highways from a snow storm and that muddy Taos Ski Valley parking lot.
Walking back inside to the service manager, I told him I never got my free car wash. He responded the car wash was broken, there was nothing he could do. Well, for one thing, he could not put on my Toyota No-Service receipt that Toyota gave me one when I didn’t get it. But I guess to Toyota, as long as they say something happened as it was supposed to happen, then it is alright regardless of what really happened.
So based on my experience, in spite of the billions Toyota is spending on advertisements touting their emphasis on owner safety, they still haven’t put their values where their mouth is. it all sounds and smells like profiteering BS to me.
Toyota has been increasingly behaving in ways that blow wealth. Everyone should learn these lessons. Determine your values, order your values and live and die by them. And remember- in a free market society you are never so big that you can force your customers to smell something rotten (literally and or figuratively) and make it all better by telling them it says right there on page 320 of the Owner’s Manual that is how it was made to work.
Lifetime Warranty with Select Toyota Models
Offering owners of all Toyota models with sticking gas pedals a lifetime warranty is a low cost way for Toyota to boost sales and gain ground in the recent PR battle. The key to success of this marketing strategy is to hide the details of it on say page 320 of the owner’s manual; especially the part about the warranty being for the life of the owner!
Toyota’s behavior in recent years reminds me of how USA car companies (Ford, GM, Chrysler) behaved toward their customers in the 1960s and 1970s (based on news reports, shipping steel to them and personal and family experiences) that opened the door for Toyota and Honda to earn USA motor vehicle market share. For readers new to the Millionaire’s Coach®, my focus is on “behaviors that create, maintain and grow wealth, as well as behaviors that blow wealth”SM. Whether a new or a lifetime reader, you can all tell me what behaviors Toyota has been performing in recent years.
This is a good example of why it is so important to first determine your personal values and those of your enterprise, order those values in terms of importance and them check decisions and actions against them for compliance with your values. If there arises an issue where a decision and or potential action might appear to be acceptable according to one value but not with another, that is when the highest priority value rules. Be careful of deceiving yourself such as via one of the psychological defense mechanisms. It is a good idea have some neutral third party who can absolutely keep your confidences check decisions of high impact against your values to protect against deceiving yourself. If you think that can not happen in corporations, let me say two words: Enron, Toyota.
For more information on how to select values, a simple way to determine their priority to one another and more, see the Millionaire’s Coach® Billion Dollar Success Secrets.
For more information on how situations can influence individual and group decisions for growing or blowing wealth and how to become the situation that others respond to, see the Millionaire’s Coach® Billion Dollar Persuasion Power.
With regard to public safety on the streets and highways, I think it is also important to know that Toyota is not recalling all models with floor mats that trap the gas pedal. I have had the all weather floor mat jam the gas pedal to full acceleration in downtown rush hour traffic after an Octopus car wash attendant pulled the retaining clip out to vacuum and never replaced it (in fact they have done it at multiple locations and Octopus employees seemed not at all concerned when I told workers at the car wash exits of the consequences of doing that).
When I contacted the local Toyota service department the service manager told me to throw away the all-weather floor mats specifically sold to me for my Toyota by Toyota. I was told that because they are not standard equipment, Toyota was not liable for my having purchased them from Toyota for the model of Toyota for which they were specifically designed. In addition to not being excited of the prospect of stepping into my new Sienna carpeting from the muddy parking lot on a sunny winter day at Taos Ski Valley, I was flabbergasted to hear there was no refund available for the floor mats.
It appears to me Toyota is still minimizing and back-pedaling to save corporate pennies at the risk of property, personal injuries and lives of its customers. Hearing their response, I was feeling like I did owning Fords and Chevys in the 1970s. I disliked that experience so much then that I have never owned another Ford or Chevy for more than three decades now. (Subsequently my two brothers and two children who all grew up with me in a USA steel town have all bought foreign vehicles.) Walking to my car looking disgustedly at the Toyota No-Service printout, I saw something that made me feel that at least I got something for my time, trouble and $30,000+ dollars, a “Free complimentary car wash.” That is, until I got to my Sienna to find it looking just as dirty as it did returning to Albuquerque on salted highways from a snow storm and that muddy Taos Ski Valley parking lot.
Walking back inside to the service manager, I told him I never got my free car wash. He responded the car wash was broken, there was nothing he could do. Well, for one thing, he could not put on my Toyota No-Service receipt that Toyota gave me one when I didn’t get it. But I guess to Toyota, as long as they say something happened as it was supposed to happen, then it is alright regardless of what really happened.
So based on my experience, in spite of the billions Toyota is spending on advertisements touting their emphasis on owner safety, they still haven’t put their values where their mouth is. it all sounds and smells like profiteering BS to me.
Toyota has been increasingly behaving in ways that blow wealth. Everyone should learn these lessons. Determine your values, order your values and live and die by them. And remember- in a free market society you are never so big that you can force your customers to smell something rotten (literally and or figuratively) and make it all better by telling them it says right there on page 320 of the Owner’s Manual that is how it was made to work.