Friday, January 23, 2009

Interesting Toyota Estima Hybrid Car Story

We had a call yesterday from a dealer from Christchurch whom we won't name here. They had a customer with a Toyota Estima Hybrid. The inverter that charges the hybrid battery failed. They sent away to Japan for a replacement. It took 4 months to arrive and when installed they found out that the main hybrid battery was dead. They asked our price for reviving this battery to which we answered with our standard charge of $1500 but that they will have to deliver the battery to us in Auckland.
About a couple of hours later a lady rang us and asked us about our charges to fix a Toyota Hybrid battery. She said that she found us through our website www.thebatteryclinic.co.nz We of course told her $1500 not realising that the two events were connected.
She then told us that she was quoted by the dealer $2600 plus GST. Our price was including GST.
What is interesting is that our lady fried turn out to be a reporter.
We managed to get this main HEV battery fixed and another happy customer.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting, we may have to come and see you ourselves. Our Estima Hybrid has just done an inverter as well, and I am scouring Ebay Japan to try to find another at less than the quoted price, but I guess our battery will be flat by the time it arrives too.. Sounds like the whole thing will be financially crippling. A stunning car otherwise though. Do you know of anyone who is prepared to try to work on the inverter at all? After all, it will just be a component, however small, that has #$%@ itself I guess.. Harry, Napier

Unknown said...

Had another customer with the same problem as well. He purchased a new inverter from Japan for about $2000 I think. i could ask him if he could help you source 1 if you like

Unknown said...

Is it possible to hook up some kind of trickle charger to keep these batteries alive until the inverter arrives?

Unknown said...

It will be difficult to find a charger to trickle charge a 288 volts battery.

Unknown said...

Actually the Power Jockey will function like a HEV battery charger.