[Jim R]

I bought my 2004 Sienna LE in Aug of 2007. Three days after I bought it from the original owner, the check strap issue reared it's ugly head.

After first going to a Toyota dealer (whom I had purchase a 1990 Cressida from in 1991) they told me that it was out of warranty and suggested I ask a body shop to look at it.

I took it to a body shop where they had seen this very problem a few times before. They said repairing it wasn't an option. They wouldn't even consider doing it. It was a waste of time because it would only fail again as they had taken this route before and had learned the hard way. The only way to fix it reliably was to replace the door.

At 107,000 Km, and being only three years old, I was NOT impressed. I phoned Toyota Canada and complained bitterly. Toyota Canada passed the buck back to the dealer again. They actually said it was up to the dealer to decide.

When I contacted the service manager at the dealership, he understandingly explained that it was indeed up to Toyota Canada to authorize any such repair since they, not any dealer would be paying for a situation like this. It was absolutely not going to be the dealer.

I asked the service manager to call Toyota Canada and have someone with the authority contact me and to officially refuse to repair this absurd problem. He agreed with me on the principle of the problem and said he would call and express my concerns about the diminished quality of Toyota's product to the appropriate people. After all, my Toyota Cressida had served me quite well for 17 years. This is why I had chosen another Toyota product. Chunks of rusty metal had begun to start falling off the doors of the Cressida when you closed them. In spite of this, no check straps had failed on any door of the Cressida as it had on the Sienna's driver door.

Instead of Toyota Canada contacting me, the service manager called me the next day and asked me to bring my Sienna in for his inspection. When I did, he inspected the problem himself and based on some guidelines Toyota had given him, he informed me that Toyota Canada had authorized him to replace the door.