Why I Hate O'Brien Auto Park

When I moved 'permanently' to Spain, I sold my wonderful old 1999 Saab 9-5 Sportswagon to a friend. After all, why should I keep a car in the states and pay for insurance, parking and keeping it maintained? I was living elsewhere, and if I needed a car for the month or so I was here, I could rent one for a whole lot less than the cost of insurance alone.

Last spring, when I knew I was coming back to the states to live (and gas was around $4/gal), I researched the current market and decided on a Toyota Prius. As time for the move drew closer, I began hunting for one somewhere near my home on the internet. What I discovered was that a) there were none available for immediate delivery and b) the wait for delivery would be somewhere between 3 and 6 months!

In desperation, I called an old friend who's a manager at the local megadealer that handles Toyota in the Champaign-Urbana area: O'Brien Auto Park. He had one (and only one) available for sale, and although it wasn't a color or a feature package that I wanted, I arranged to buy it over the phone from Spain.

The color wasn't all that important. I've lived with other white cars before and survived. It pissed me off to pay an extra $2500 for features I didn't want--the most expensive of which was Toyota's absolutely worthless navigation system. (Incidentally, features that I didn't know I wanted until I had them turned out to be the proximity entry/ignition system and the premium sound system which apparently is the only way to get built in bluetooth for my mobile phone--standard equipment in the EU where hand-held mobile usage has been illegal for several years. The other worthless feature that cost quite a bit is Toyota 'automatic' climate control, which is anything but.)

I say I called Pat Hos in desperation because although I've bought cars from Pat (and the wonderful Jim Stephens) several times before, my experiences with the O'Brien service department is an entirely different story, and the idea of laying down $28,000+ for a new car that (due to the hybrid technology) was going to be tied to O'Brien for service made my skin crawl.

I totally love my Prius. It performs as advertised and then some. Until this weekend, it's been faultlessly reliable and I've even learned the work-arounds on the climate control (things my Saab took care of automatically that have to be adjusted manually on the Toyota 'automatic' system). The navigation system continues to baffle, but a $300 Garmin dash unit will take care of that next time I venture into unfamiliar territory. And until this weekend, I haven't had to deal with O'Brien service.

Sunday afternoon, I went out to make a run to Lowe's and found the car totally dead. No power anywhere. A quick jump, however, and Steve and I were rolling again. The hybrid battery system reported 'full' and the car performed beautifully on the engine or the battery. At Lowes, it wouldn't go again. A jump and it's fine back to home. Today, it's dead again, and I call O'Brien's service and tell the woman what's happening. She asks when I can bring it in. I tell her I can't bring it in because it's dead (Steve, the designated jumper was at work.). She tells me she can give the number of a tow service. I tell her I'll call AAA, and thank her for the wonderful Warranty service. (If this had been my Saab, they'd have had somebody out to start it within 20 minutes.)

So I drive the car out to O'Brien, follow the signs to the Service Department, park the car and turn it off to go inside. Whoops! This is the service department for everything except Toyota, which is 100+ yards away. The car is dead again, so I trek the distance (14 degrees outside) and am met by a chirpy service 'consultant' to whom I tell my story. He sends me back to the car (on foot) with a 'porter' to get the VIN and mileage (inaccessible since it's all digital and digital is dead along with everything else). We trek back and chirpy Douglas tells me to sit down and wait while they figure out what's wrong with it. I ask him if Pat or Jim is on the premises (wanting to vent to a friendly face) and he tells me he couldn't tell me that.

I trek another 100 yards or so to another building where Pat and Jim do their stuff (and where Pat is the boss) and recount my adventures to Pat, who drops his jaw, gets on the phone to the big-boss-in-the-sky to bitch about the lack of 'service', and gets me a Camry to drive while they screw with my car. An hour later, I get a call from chirpy Douglas telling me they've charged the battery and everything seems to be fine. When I arrive in person, he can offer no explanation of why the battery would be dead other than the cold.

On reflection, I'm willing to allow that for weeks I haven't driven the car further than to the grocery store and maybe hadn't run it enough to charge the battery fully, and that the cold weather is certainly a contributing factor, but for the thing to be totally dead, I'm still dubious about there not being something else wrong. Chirpy Douglas assures me their diagnostic computers say not. OK, we'll see. I'm certainly willing for everything to be OK now, and I'll make a point of taking it on the road for a charge-up in weeks where it goes no farther than the grocery store.

On the other hand, O'Brien's service department gets an F- for the way they handled this, from my initial call for help to Chirpy Douglas's "I wouldn't be able to tell you that" response to my question about whether Pat Hos and/or Jim Stephens was on the premises.

This is not the way to run a business that depends on customer goodwill--or it certainly wouldn't be if it were my business.