Battery drain/elctrical problems

April 2009, I bought a 2009 Toyota Venza which I totally love. About 2 weeks into ownership the battery went dead. I had it jump startd and all was well. In the time since I bought it, the battery has gone dead 5 times. Numerous trips to dealer and can’t find anything. The final straw was when I was having car washed and the battery went dead. I had to call tow truck to drag me out of car wash an take car to dealer. This time they saidit was a bad battery. DUH!!! Now my dashlights are flashing dim to real bright and my TRAC light comes on so I can’t put car into gear. I have had it with Toyota dealership in my town. One last time I will be dropping car off there on Monday morning. They will provide me with rental and keep my car until it is fixed. Has anyone else had this type of problem? Can you think of anything that would cause these problems?

The problem may be due to a faulty ground connection from the battery to the car chassis or it may be a fault in the connection to the main distribution panel under the hood. By tapping on suspected areas it may show up the trouble. Giving the service shop all the details you can think of about what things are effected will help them in locating the trouble.

Thanks for your post. The service writer at our local dealership has a problem with women telling him what’s going on. He refused to put my complaints in the cars’ computer file. Scared of Lemon Law. Nor did he ever request the tech to retrieve the diaognostic info stored in car computer. The Service Manager has now taken over my account. So, I hope this will be last trip to dealership!