This wasn't really mine to start with - it was a company car to replace another Lexus in 2009. I bought it from the company as part of my "severance deal"
later that year, and owned it until 2016. This thing had a 3.5 litre V6 engine, plus a hybrid electric motor that added another 140-odd bhp when you
needed (or wanted) it - it doesn't look like it, but this motor could shift!
It would glide at low speed through car parks or tricky junctions on electric power alone - and I soon realised. long before electric cars really took off, that pedestrians and cyclists would wander out because they couldn't hear it - it was like driving a "creeping deathwagon" so I learned to be careful!
The Lexus dealer operated a "Saturday Car Wash" scheme - turn up on a Saturday morning, have a coffee and a pastry, browse around the cars in the showroom, read the newspapers, chat to other customers, and wait while they hand-washed your car for free - all good promotional stuff, a nice pleasant way to build customer relations. The washing wasn't booked - it was first coe first served, but that was OK, I quite enjoyed it.
Then some folk (not me!) started complaining that they were hanging around for ages, and wanted a booked-in system. So they introduced one, which was better if you didn't want to hang around, but there was a downside (as there always is...)
You see, in the old system, they washed a car, brought it back, took another one, and the faster they washed them,the more cars they got - so they took their time to wash each car correctly. In the new system, they had 20 minutes to wash a car - so they would wash it in 10, then have a 10-minute rest - and the car always came back with bits still dirty when it dried out. Never happened in the first system, always happened after they changed it.
Now a washed car looks nice. A dirty car looks dirty. A half-washed car with dirty patches just looks stupid, and if you have to wash it again when you get home, theres no point in going, right?
So I stopped going, didn't get tempted by new cars in the showroom, didn't get casual chats with staff when they had a minute...
In 2012, I scraped it along a fence in the snow, and getting that sorted properly wasn't an easy task - you can read more about that in the "Lexus Insurance Repair" tab on the left there. Suffice to say that I will never again allow a car to be repaired by the mechanically incompetent and visually-impaired morrons at Direct Line Insurance or their bodyshop, UK Assist (or whatever they are called now). I ended up giving up on getting it repaired properly after my wife died and I just couldn't be bothered with a few paint marks. I ended up paying to get them polished out a few years later by a proper paint detailer.
This was a brilliant car, very comfy and reliable, with the legendary excellent Lexus customer service - I had never experienced a main dealer garage like them.
Until...
I had the car serviced in February 2014, and told them that it was braking unevenly – as if the brakes were “grabbing” or pulsing (or, I said, it could be the engine surging against the brakes). Within an hour and a half, the garage had diagnosed that both back calipers were sticking or seizing, had been for some time, and had worn the disks away, so that the whole lot needed replaced at a cost of over £500. At the same time, the front disks were “lipped” and needed skimmed, at a cost of over £100. So here's a bill for £600-something on top of the service cost...
Fair enough, these things happen. So I sit down with the service manager using the daft wee laddie technique again, and ask him, "so how does that damage happen?"
He gives a nice explanation of how disk brakes work, and what happens when they stick, and why it's important to make sure that you spot any issues early...
So I ask "so if they were sticking, how long would it take for them to wear as bad as that?"
"Oh, at least a couple of months..."
"So if I had brought it in say, 3 months ago, I could have saved the wear on the disks and pads?"
"Oh yes, definitely..."
You can tell that I've spent far too much time being cross-examined by barristers during my expert witness days, eh? They know how to break things down into simple questions to make you look like an eejit.
So then I told him that I brought the car in 3 months and 3,000 miles ago, specifically so that they could investigate a droning noise a which I described at the time as “like a wheel bearing, but it doesn’t get worse on corners, so it might be a sticking brake”. I waited 3 hours while the car was test driven and examined, and it was returned to me with an “all clear”. The noise was still there.
The day before I took the car in that first time, I was giving my daughter a lift. She is the least car-tuned person you could find, and even she heard it and asked about it. The day before that, I took Jim in the car to the TVR meeting, and he asked me “What’s that droning noise” – so it wasn't my imagination!
But the Lexus garage said it was OK...
So now, I tell him, despite that precautionary visit as soon as this noise became evident, to pre-empt any further damage and minimise costs, I am now being charged the full replacement cost? He shows me their earlier report sheet which says "No fault found". I point out that's not the same as "no fault present", so they have to accept some responsibility, surely?
Do they fuck.
I have no option but to settle the bill I am presented with, if I want my car back. That's it.
So much for Lexus customer service!
This really soured my Lexus experience - this was my second Lexus in 10 years, replacing a IS220 Diesel, and they had always been excellent until they got this new Service Manager who had been promoted from their Toyota branch. Lexus was never the same for me after that, and I ended up selling it privately and buying an 8-year-old Range Rover - but thats another story.