AutoNation Toyota South Austin

I brought my 2007 Camry Hybrid in because it was flashing check engine light and VCS and seemed to have stalled several times. I drop it off and later get a phone call from my service tech, Tony Sabatino, telling me that the brake actuator needs to be replaced. He tells me unfortunately the part is on back order indefinitely. I ask him, “What would cause the actuator to fail?” He replies, “Well, there’s no rhyme or reason to it.” (Remember that…) I begin thinking I’ll probably need to get a new car and ask him to send me the contact information for a salesman and tell him I’ll get back to him on what I’m going to do. I decide to try to find the part myself. Looking online I found # 44050-30660 Brake Actuator that matched the make/model of my car and found a dealership that had it. I call Tony back and as soon as I tell him I found the part he immediately begins acting very weird. All of a sudden his computer isn’t working, he can’t get into the system, and he can’t find the part that was needed for my repair and that he needs to call me back. I tell him I’ll hold, and after doing some more tap dancing he tells me I need # 47050-04120 Cylinder Assembly Brake. I tell him to transfer me to the manager, Greg, who I then explain my issues to and tell him I’m just trying to figure out what part I need for my car’s repair. I get a call back from both Greg/Tony telling me that the backorder issue was due to the fact that they were looking up a (incorrect) superseded part number and that the correct part is # 04003-44830 (also a Brake Actuator). Tony tells me that the labor will be 2-3 hours and that the part will arrive the next day. I tell him to order the part and hang up, but decide to call back to get a full estimate. This time Tony tells me it’s actually going to be 4 hours. I end up calling Greg, the manager back and ask him why his service tech isn’t able to give me a proper estimate for labor when it’s all supposed to be standardized. I also lay in to him about the fact that I was about to begin looking into buying a new car because of his service tech’s mistake. He says that it’s the fault of the parts department, not his service tech, but to his credit he is very apologetic and gives me the estimate for labor ($675). I know they charge somewhere around $220/hr. I went in this morning to pick it up and walked up to a random service tech and asked them if they could help me check out. I started to ask him about how they know what parts are needed for a vehicle and if he can show me something verifying the part that was put on my car was in fact the part that was needed for my vehicle. He starts to do that, but another service tech interjects. I tell him I’m just asking because a mistake had already been made and that I just want to verify, because what I was able to find online is different than what they ordered and what was quoted to me by a different dealership. He blows me off and tells me that you can’t look up parts yourself because you need to know the VIN number. I end up checking out and leaving. Still bothered by what had happened, I decide to check and see if there had been any recalls for parts on my car. Sure enough, back in 2014 there was a recall (POL 14-04) for brake actuators that my vehicle’s VIN was covered under. As far as I can tell, the superseded part number was the one they had ordered for my car, and the new part number was the one I had found online. This makes their argument that the reason they had thought the part was on backorder was due to a superseded part number to not make any sense. I’m also shocked that the fact that the part had been recalled was never at any point brought up to me. I know I wouldn’t be covered under the warranty anymore, but every time I’ve taken my car in to a dealership for servicing they have always mentioned if there were recalls on parts for my car. From the Warranty Bulletin labor time to replace the actuator was supposed to be 2.3 hours and I was charged $675.