- A California woman named Teresa Solis is suing Toyota over her experience with the ToyotaCare Plus prepaid maintenance plan.
- Solis claims the plan promised to cover 10 service visits but allegedly skipped four and provided less value than advertised.
- The RAV4 owner is seeking class-action status for her lawsuit, suggesting others might have faced similar issues.
Toyota finds itself embroiled in accusations of fraud regarding a prepaid maintenance plan, with one of its customers alleging that the benefits of the program were oversold. The Californian complainant is seeking to elevate her lawsuit to class action status, hoping to secure reimbursement for others affected as well.
Teresa Solis is the woman at the heart of the case, having purchased a certified pre-owned 2019 Toyota RAV4 in 2020. Although she did not include any of the California dealerships mentioned in her allegations as defendants, the case seemingly involves 100 unidentified “Doe Defendants,” who are anticipated to be named at a later juncture.
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When she acquired the car, she also invested in a ToyotaCare Plus maintenance program, which purportedly entailed pre-paying for 10 service visits. As per the Southern District of California lawsuit reviewed by Autonews, the plan encompassed seven routine maintenance tasks and three significant service appointments, spaced at 5,000-mile intervals.
According to her legal claim, she was informed that without the prepaid service plan, the routine maintenance typically incurred a fee of $100 each, whereas the major visits cost around $400 apiece.
That amounted to $1,900 in maintenance expenses, yet the plan was priced at just $1,025, which was integrated into her purchase loan. Fast forward four years, now that the plan has expired, she alleges being billed for items that were meant to be covered, receiving only between $800 and $900 worth of services from it.
That’s less than half as much as she was promised when she bought the plan and, crucially, less than she paid for ToyotaCare Plus. According to her lawsuit, that’s partly because the dealer servicing her vehicle skipped four services, at 20,000, 25,000, 40,000, and 55,000 miles.
However, Solis’ lawyer claims that since the work completed in some of the individual visits amounted to half as much as the figure quoted by Toyota when it was selling her the plan, he is confident that she would have received less than $1,025-worth of work, even if the car had undergone all 10 services.
The value of work completed during a service plan not matching the amount paid for the plan is a “relatively large problem,” Stephen McDaniel, CEO of the compliance firm F&I Sentinel, told Autonews. “You’re calling it prepaid maintenance, which implies that, ‘I’m prepaying for this maintenance and I’m not going to overpay’.”
As a result, Solis’ lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of California, accuses Toyota, Toyota Motor Credit, and other unnamed defendants of unjust enrichment, fraud, negligent representation, violating the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, and more.
