Toyota is facing a lawsuit claiming that it sold a prepaid service plan to a vehicle owner that it did not deliver on, reports Car Scoops.
The legal claim was filed by Teresa Solis, a California woman who purchased a certified pre-owned 2019 Toyota RAV4 in 2020. When she purchased her car, she also opted for the ToyotaCare Plus maintenance program, which would allow customers to pay for service appointments in advance.
Covered under the plan are seven routine maintenance visits and three significant service appointments at 5,000-mile intervals. Solis was told that without the service plan, routine maintenance would likely amount to $100 per visit, and visits for bigger repairs would cost around $400 each, coming to a total of $1,900.
Solis’ plan cost her $1,025 and was paid as part of her purchase loan, but now that her plan has expired, she’s being billed for services that were supposed to be covered by ToyotaCare Plus. The program ended up paying between only $800 and $900 in services–less than half of what was promised, and less than what Solis paid to join the program.
Though Solis had four services remaining in the plan to claim, her lawyer argued she still would have lost out. Of the services she did receive, they cost only half as much as what Toyota initially quoted her when selling the plan.
“You’re calling it prepaid maintenance, which implies that, ‘I’m prepaying for this maintenance and I’m not going to overpay’,” Stephen McDaniel, CEO of the compliance firm F&I Sentinel, explained to Autonews.
