1 hour ago, Just Weird said:

How would you expect the dealer to be able keep a customer's car that needed repair on the road when the part was not in stock?  Are you suggesting that the dealer should have dismantled a showroom car to fix yours? 

 

You certainly were fortunate getting a gearbox removed from a new car fitted to yours, if that did actually happen. I wonder how he justified that to the manufacturer when he had to replace it?   I reckon it didn't happen; no dealer would have any reason to do that and jeopardise a new car sale.

 

 

I am not suggesting that a showroom car should have been dismantled, but in a case like this - ‘just don’t drive’ meaning ‘unable to work’ - I would expect a dealer to look further than his or Toyota’s stock of parts. And as for assuming that I am lying about the gearbox: well, I am not. It DID happen and it was done with the blessing of the Toyota importer. 

1 hour ago, damascase said:

I am not suggesting that a showroom car should have been dismantled, but in a case like this - ‘just don’t drive’ meaning ‘unable to work’ - I would expect a dealer to look further than his or Toyota’s stock of parts. And as for assuming that I am lying about the gearbox: well, I am not. It DID happen and it was done with the blessing of the Toyota importer. 

It wasn't the dealers, or the manufacturers, fault if your wife was unable to work, was it?  When she bought the car she just bought a car, not any (unreasonable for the dealer) guarantee that he would always keep her mobile.

 

"I would expect a dealer to look further than his or Toyota’s stock of parts"

Why?  That's an odd expectation bearing in mind that dealers, obviously, are in the business of making money for their business, not others. Under the terms of his franchise do you think that the dealer is allowed to supply and fit non-Toyota parts sourced elsewhere?  

Maybe your wife on finding out that parts were not going to be in stock, initially for a couple of days, should have also "looked further than the dealer" if it was so imperative that her car was kept mobile?  Had she done that she would not have had this problem of your expectation of the dealer being the one-way street you seem to think it should have been.

 

"And as for assuming that I am lying about the gearbox: well, I am not. It DID happen and it was done with the blessing of the Toyota importer". 

That's a bit different, then, don't you think?  If you had said that when you made your claim about the gearbox swap, instead of adding it when confronted about a very unusual arrangement, I wouldn't have assumed that the story wasn't true.  You should have said that Toyota agreed to allow the dealer to do that gearbox replacement, it wasn't the dealer doing it out of the goodness of his heart as you implied and expected the Thai dealer to do for your wife.

If the car is out of warranty, getting parts or repairs at the dealership are unnecessary. As someone mentioned earlier, profit margins on sales are slim and dealer servicing can be expensive out of warranty, especially with an older model where parts may be as scarce as the dealer claims. This applies to most marques but especially to Toyotas since they are as common as muck.