For all of you Toyota owners out there suffering from Toyota Recall, it seems relief is finally on its way. If you will recall, err - remember, Toyota Recall is the syndrome similar to Post Traumatic Stress that so many Toyota owners have been suffering from recently. Owners who have experienced the stuck gas pedal phenomenon relive the experience every time they get into their once-beloved cars. Those who have not actually experienced the stuck pedal live in fear of their first introduction to it. Even those whose models are not on the recall list fear that their car will find its way onto that dreaded list.
After years of complaints about the potential hazard, Toyota finally caved and admitted there was a problem. Even a few deaths did not deter them from stonewalling for such a long time. It really makes you wonder about any company. If such a revered company as Toyota can make such an idiotic decision not to respond to complaints that had to be statistically relevant, are any companies to be trusted? After all, no matter what we think of a company or brand, or more precisely, how we feel, in the end mere humans are guiding that company. Personnel changes and individuals change, over time. As the personnel change, so does the company. One person in a key position, who has a flippant attitude toward whatever potential fiasco might rear its head, can damage the reputation of a company for a long time.
Given the respect and loyalty so many consumers have given Toyota over the years and decades, it will be interesting to see just how much damage has been caused by this incident. Toyota did mitigate the damage a little bit by acting decisively once it finally did act. Completely halting sales of most of its top selling vehicles must have been a tough pill to swallow and more likely to have been choked on by any American car manufacturer.
Now that Toyota has a fix, business should be getting back to normal, except normalcy may be different for Toyota dealers now. Potential customers will no longer automatically accept Toyota’s claims of great quality at face value. Toyota salesmen may actually have to start working to close a deal.
The gas pedal fiasco would have been bad no matter when it might have been admitted to, but to keep putting off the inevitable just seems illogical. The day of reckoning was going to come sooner or later. Why don’t these companies take customer concerns more seriously? One fumbling of the PR football like this can be so devastating that serious investigations into even the smallest complaints can be justified. The total costs to Toyota of this debacle, both tangible and intangible, will simple not even be able to be quantified. No one can tell how many fewer people will buy Toyotas in the future, but you can bet that those who had the harrowing experience firsthand will be unlikely to return to the fold. You can bet that these same individuals will make sure everyone that they come in contact with will also hear about their harrowing experiences.
To make the whole thing about as bad as it could be for Toyota, this PR nightmare has come at a time when so many of its competitor’s backs are against the wall. The competitors now have a whole lot of sun shining on their futures that just was not there a few weeks ago. One can only imagine the moral boost and hope that this completely unexpected event has given them.
Given that they have been given such a gift, let’s hope that once and for all, car manufacturers will begin to get back to basics and deliver great quality in their products. Maybe we can even hope for some companies to act like good citizens and offer alternative products simply because it is the right thing to do - in the case of automobiles, less polluting, more fuel efficient, and possibly less expensive (?) cars. This should be a lesson to any corporation, but that is probably way too much to hope for. History is littered with companies who have disappeared because they stopped caring about their customers and decided that their customers needed the company more than the company needed them. In the U.S. at least, corporations are structured so that it is easy and tempting for a single person in charge to completely change the culture of the organization to one of me-first in return for a huge pay day.
So out of Toyota’s debacle, maybe some overall good can be salvaged if a few companies take heed and use this incident as a reminder of what made them a company in the first place - fulfilling a certain need of its customers; helping the people that got them to where they are now. With a little luck, some of those who have been suffering from Toyota Recall are in positions of power at larger corporations and can set an example so fewer people ever have to suffer from such a syndrome again.
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