Climate Controls Do Not Work

The automatic climate controls in our 2009 CH, now with 11,600 miles on it, have never worked - it’ll heat (winter) or cool (summer) for about 20 minutes, and then slowly get cold (winter) or hot (summer). Four trips to the dealer, over two weeks total in his shop, he “can’t find anything wrong”! Started “lemon law” proceedings, but would really like a fix rather than a fight . . .

Unfortunately, with warranty-related car repairs, a dealership is not going to take a diagnosis from you or from us. If they were to start replacing parts based on our diagnosis, and if we were wrong, who would pay for the parts that had been used? It certainly wouldn’t be Toyota!

I can tell you from experience with Toyota and Lemon Law claims that they will move heaven and earth in order to not have to make good on the claim. In the case that I handled for a friend, they sent the Regional Service Rep AND a Japanese engineer to the dealership in order to diagnose and fix the problem. And, fix it they did, within about 2 hours or so.

What had been “condition not found” to the dealership’s mechanics turned into “condition found and rectified” once more skilled hands took over. I believe that a similar approach will be used on your car.

None of that comes as a surprise . . and I’d be DELIGHTED if they WOULD fix the thing! Frankly, I’m amazed that the dealer’s service department - which had promised that a supervisor technician would visit me last week, which never happened - is so incompetent that they cannot “find” the condition, which I independently documented and provided to them!

The car is simply undriveable for any trip more than about a half-hour. But to be fair, my primary reason for contacting Toyota’s “Customer Experience” office was to see if I could trigger a serious (and effective) response from SOME Toyota Service department(s).

I have 25k on a 2009 CH, and never had this problem. You might want to check if the ECO is turned on or not. If it is “on” then that could be where your problem stems from

Thanks, but that’s one of the first things I checked . . .