I recently purchased a used Toyota Highlander and, - ahernandezfatima
I recently purchased a used Toyota Highlander and, knowing it’s an older model, I’ve been diligent about getting it serviced and cared for properly. Unfortunately, my recent experience at Toyota Torrance left me deeply disappointed and concerned for my safety.
I brought my vehicle in because I noticed an oil leak, despite having just gotten an oil change, a new oil filter, and ensuring the car was safe to drive at a Toyota dealership in North Carolina less than a month prior. I scheduled an appointment and was assisted by the assistant manager NESTOR LOPEZ. From the start, the interaction was unpleasant—he was dismissive, unhelpful, and made me feel as though my concerns didn’t matter.
Despite my appointment, I ended up waiting over four hours. When I returned, I was told that they “couldn’t find where the oil leak was coming from,” that my car was “a mess underneath,” and all they could do is clean the bottom and add a $15 dye test. For this, I was charged $235. I asked about my safety driving the car with an active oil leak, and NESTOR LOPEZ simply told me to “drive it 500–1000 miles and come back to recheck”. He brushed off my questions and showed no concern for my safety or the fact that I had just paid Toyota North Carolina a significant amount for related work only weeks earlier. His attitude was rude, and his comments about “that’s North Carolina, this is California” were unprofessional and dismissive.
The worst part is this: the work they claimed to have done was never done. When I got home, I checked under the hood, and nothing had been cleaned as they said. A trusted family friend, a mechanic, inspected it and immediately found the real problem: two pipes soaked in oil from a transmission leak. He also discovered that my transmission fluid was completely empty—a serious safety hazard that Toyota Service never even checked. This means I was charged hundreds of dollars for nothing, left with a dangerous and unresolved problem, and treated with complete disregard by the assistant manager, NESTOR LOPEZ, overseeing my service. Had I not had someone else check my car, I could have easily destroyed my transmission or been stranded on the road. I trusted Toyota because I believed going directly to the dealership would mean quality care and genuine concern for my safety. Instead, I left feeling dismissed, overcharged, and extremely unsafe. It is unacceptable that an assistant manager would provide such poor service, fail to ensure even the most basic checks (like transmission fluid), and treat a customer with such disregard.
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