just wondering if any of you have had any reminders sent to you from your dealership about your upcoming servicing schedule for your car?

well it's been nearly 6 months since we bought our car and it's only done about 4000kms (driven 3 days a week)

one thing i'm particularly annoyed about (and one which was not mentioned to us when we purchased our car) is that apparently Toyota will void your factory warranty if your car is not serviced every 6 months or 10,000 kms (whichever comes first...) Does this sound right? In essence they are locking you in for a couple hundred dollars a year just in servicing costs alone - smells like a rort if you ask me....?!

what are your thoughts / experiences?

who told you this?

Not really, you can always take your car somewhere else to get serviced. If I were them I'd like to make sure you were taking care of your car too, even 4000k can be a lot of wear on an engine depending on how it's driven. Do you expect them to just take your word that the car was being properly cared for?

Furthermore, my manual says every 12 months or 15000km unless it's under severe operating conditions

when i spoke to the guy at liverpool service centre. he said 15000kms or 1 year.

Only service every 15k or 7.5k if driven in harsh conditions, never heard of anyone voiding the warranty, sounds like a dealership trying to get some extra buisiness. in my line of buisiness my 15k service is every 2 months.

My car is scheduled for 15,000 or 1 year intervals. In any case you would probably want to service your car that often, if not sooner. I learned the hard way through my Camry which was hardly ever driven, so it was serviced at long intervals and at 104, 000 kms (1994 model) it is suffering from all sorts of problems. Not going to let that happen again, because in the long run you're going to be paying more anyway.

i got a letter from the toyota dealer itself...

well it's always driven with a baby on board so it's never thrashed in any way (i can't remember when was the last time it rev'd past 3500rpm)

so should i stick to what the manual says, or what the dealer says?

i agree with scootastaxisx6 - the dealer will find any nooks & crannies to rape extra $ from you and i suspect this is one of them

would it be something worth taking up with consumer affairs (in case they insist my warranty relies on it, despite the manual saying that it's 12mths/15000kms?)

best to ring them up and ask them, with the manual in hand. Considering it's written right there in black and white they'd have a hard time backing out of any warranty claim.

I'm interested to see what they say actually. I'm thinking though that the 10,000km or 6 month letter is probably using a very old format that was never changed to comply with newer cars that don't "need" to be serviced as much. That being said, I'm not too keen myself on leaving it for the full 15,000km or 1 year - maybe I'm just old fashioned?

My car service schedule is 15000km or 9 months which every comes first. Not sure about your cars schedule but it sounds fairly reasonable to me... I know I got a letter after 6 months just to remind me that the 9 month was nearing.

Even if I only drove my car once every two weeks and did 500km I would still definately take it in after 9 months to at least get the oil changed. Not driving your car almost does more damage to the engine than driving it often... the oil oxidises just sitting in the engine and this is very bad for the engine.

best to call toyota themselves(hq)
they will be able to answer all yr questions

ok just so to confirm my understanding:
when they say 9 months (or 1 year whatever the interval is mentioned), do they mean the period from the very initial service, or 9 months / 1 year since the last service performed?

my car is about to hit 23000kms - how much damage can i expect out of my wallet for this 'service'?? I'm expecting this would only be a minor service..??

i guess you mean you are in between the $120 capped service price service?