[RahulNagaraj]

Thanks to Prabhu Raj for sending in the details. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this Team-BHP share page!

Dear Team,

I'm Prabhu from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh - though not a Team-BHP member, I am a regular follower of the forum and posts

I just want to share my recent experience with the Toyota Parts Connect website. I had ordered a few products for my Qualis by selecting the nearest dealer, also completed the payment on March 26th and received a confirmation for the same.

On April 4th, went to the dealer to check the status and they said they don't have the products and asked me to cancel the items. With no option left, I cancelled the order on assurance from the dealer that a refund will be triggered in 7 - 10 days.

So after waiting for 10 days, I called Toyota Customer Care to check the status & they said the refund is not initiated yet for an unknown reason and informed me that they will escalate the case and will get a call back in 24 hours.

Not even once in these 15 days did I get a call back from the team. Every time I call they say the same thing about expecting a callback.

I even requested to transfer the call to the escalation team or share the details of the grievance cell so that I can get in touch directly but they are not ready to share even that other the saying we are registering you will get a callback.

So left with no option I'm reaching out to you people to help me with what I should do next and at the same time want to highlight the customer support experience of Toyota Parts Connect so that at least someone will stay away from ordering through them.

Attaching all email details and screenshots also.

[adisan]

From the narrative shared, it seems that the OP has contacted only the call center support. The Toyota Sales Connect website has a Contact Us section which provides a form, and also an email address for raising complaints. It might help to try out these as well.

[amalji]

In case the person has paid using a credit card, they should open a transaction dispute with the bank with all these traces. That should get the dealer to act!

This is so unprofessional from both the dealer as well as Toyota customer care.

[greenhorn]

Apologies in advance because this comment is not going to help in this particular situation.

I had a very similar experience ordering from maruti suzuki site. The site lists a large inventory of hard to find parts and accessories, but once you make a payment, you had the phone number of a selected dealer to contact. The person i contacted said neither of my items were available, but offered to sell me something similar through their own sales channels if I could cancel my online payment. But he didn't have the part with him in stock. After making me run around for a while, I escalated and was told the part was not in stock. If i had ordered on boodmo i would have recieved the items by now.

My feeling is that someone at the company has read some consultant/analyst report that direct to consumer is the next big trend, and decided to build something/deploy corporate already built for some other global market without doing the required readiness assessments/supporting systems/change management etc. At least in my case maruti was very prompt in my refund. But like another bhpian pointed out, always use a credit card for online payments, (and this might sound counter intuitive) especially from larger brands. They're the ones with whom you can legitimately claim a chargeback. The fly by night ones will close out their accounts and disappear by the time you figure out you've been scammed


Edit: after reading the toyota connect site toc, I'm even more concerned - the site absolves toyota India of any responsibility - claims it's just a market place, and asks users to sort things out with the respective dealers for any issues

Toyota Parts Connect is web based platform for online parts sales portal between Toyota Parts Connect Distributor and Customers. In case any desecration /issues, the same shall be raised and settled with Toyota Parts Connect Distributor only and TKM shall not be responsible thereof.

https://www.toyotapartsconnect.in/policies#terms