Buyer Beware: Huge paint defect on brand new Yaris

[voodoo22]

We picked up our “new” Yaris on Friday and everything seemed to go well. We went over the paper work and the salesman went over the car with us and then we drove off. I thought nothing of the fact that we looked over the car and took delivery in the dealerships underground garage until we parked at a shopping centre to pick up some things. When we came back to the car my wife notice a scratch on the centre dash panel, just below the stereo. You couldn’t see this in the underground garage because it wasn’t bright enough. No big deal, we’ll get that replaced.

Then the next day we wanted to go out for a drive and my wife noticed something on the passenger side door. A paint chip. It was really small, but the paint was completely chipped off and metal was showing.

Upon further inspection I found many more all along the passenger side of the vehicle, on the trunk and so far I’ve found one on the driver’s side. I don’t see any on the hood or bumpers, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem there.

These pits or chips are so small you can’t see them even in normal outside light unless you look extremely closely. The reason my wife noticed them was because the car was perfectly clean and sitting under two brand new parking lights in our apartments garage. There are dozens of these spots on the car. We’re devastated. This was our first new car and we were so excited, but now we’re both stressed out.

We called the dealer Saturday after we noticed the problems, but our salesman isn’t in until Monday. I’m taking the car in Monday after work and I really hope they do not make this issue any worse.

My wife wants a new car. Why not? When you buy a 5$ mug and it’s defective you get a new one right? My father used to paint busses. He lives in another city and is unable to look at the paint himself, but he said it sounds like something called fish eyes. He says the only solution is for the car to be repainted.

We’ve owned the car for 2 days and already it needs to be repainted? The fact is it was delivered to us in this defective condition. Even if they repaint it for free, and give me a rental car, there’s going to be overspray on the car, anyone inspecting the car will know it’s been repainted and so any future trade in or selling price is instantly devalued. People will assume the car has been in an unreported accident. I would.

I cannot stress enough that when you pick up your new car go over it with a magnifying glass before accepting it. I walked around the vehicle and inspected the interior closely, but the lighting in the dealer’s underground garage hid the small damaged spot under the stereo and under any normal circumstance you could not see the extensive damage to the paint without a very bright light, and putting your eyes right up on the vehicle and practically squinting. Even when you do this, you cannot tell for sure that this speck of dust is not a speck of dust, but in fact a pit in the paint where no paint exists and bare metal is exposed. I tried taking pictures of the defect, but you have to use a macro mode option on the camera just to have some chance of seeing the specks of metal and even then it doesn’t show up on the picture, but you sure can feel the depression in the paint when you rub your finger over it.

I don’t know what the end result will be for us. We only have one car and I have a daily 102 km commute. We cannot go without a vehicle.

I hope that no one else has to go through this horrendous experience which we are currently going through.

Take care.