Windscreen Replacement

[forkingabout]

4 hours ago, robo1 said:

Good point about responsibility. Just thought it would be daft to pay the Toyota premium only to find it was replaced by National or even Autoglass. 

I had the windscreen replaced on my C-HR last month at the Toyota dealer, they supplied the genuine screen then sub contract out the fitting job to a small independent automotive glass firm that most of the main dealers in the area use.

A decent main dealer would use a local independent automotive glass company - these type of companies work on there reputation / word of mouth recommendation - they haven't got an endless supply of jobs stacked up via insurance company contracts like Autoglass.

[Bper]

I Managed to cut my insurance bill in half. Stil costs the same, just got carried away with some scissors. 😅9
 
 

[Cyker]

I wonder which of us will get their windscreen replaced first!

This is like the worlds most awful and uninspiring race  

 

[Bper]

9 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I wonder which of us will get their windscreen replaced first!

This is like the worlds most awful and uninspiring race  

 

I bet it's been real fun driving around all this time with a crack in your screen. To top it all you have all the hassle of claiming the money back.

I love the way the Churchill dog nods his head. I think in this case it's the other end swaying around.😅

[forkingabout]

2 minutes ago, Bper said:

I bet it's been real fun driving around all this time with a crack in your screen. To top it all you have all the hassle of claiming the money back.

I love the way the Churchill dog nods his head. I think in this case it's the other end swaying around.😅

I was watching the crack spread across the screen - I did carefully clean the screen the apply some clear tape along the crack to try & slow it down.

[Cyker]

28 minutes ago, Bper said:

I bet it's been real fun driving around all this time with a crack in your screen. To top it all you have all the hassle of claiming the money back.

I love the way the Churchill dog nods his head. I think in this case it's the other end swaying around.😅

Ooooh Yes!  

 

I must admit, part of the reason why I stopped trying to baby it is it seems to have stabilized - I got really scared initially as it grew 2-3 inches during the round trip to my brother's house and back, which is why I've not been taking it on the motorway or any fast road until recently. (It's quite disconcerting when you can visibly see the crack moving along the glass as you're driving!!)

However, it survived the recent heavy snow fall without any change, and I've been poking the bear as I tend to do, and after a few exploratory hoons it seems the crack has stabilized around a foot long, and has only grown by a mm or so, so I've gone back to driving normally.

Good thing too, going the short-but-congested way extended my journey by 15-20 minutes, was a lot less fun, and somehow cratered my mpg - I think I got to low-50s, which is the lowest mpg this car has ever seen! - despite using less fuel!

Even coming the long way round at enthusiastic motorway speeds, the mpg has come back up to 64 (Still on the same tank!) and still climbing!  

Mine's booked for mid-january currently so fingers/toes/arms/legs/tentacles/etc. crossed nothing else goes wrong!!

 

[Malop]

Update 18th Jan

No update from AutoGlass.

I never received a call back from my dealer so went in to see them at lunchtime. Spent 20 minutes with the service manager. 

A bit of a shocker coming up.

My dealer can’t replace my windscreen. They’re technically capable of doing it, willing to do it but are unable to quote me or schedule the work as in their parts system the windscreen has no price, is marked as awaiting technical approval and cannot be ordered. 

Dealer is going to call me when they have an update from Toyota. I did suggest they swapped my windscreen with their in showroom demo model but he didn’t bite. 

[forkingabout]

6 minutes ago, Malop said:

My dealer can’t replace my windscreen. They’re technically capable of doing it, willing to do it but are unable to quote me or schedule the work as in their parts system the windscreen has no price, is marked as awaiting technical approval and cannot be ordered. 

 

Nice to see Toyota being consistent when it's a new product, we get that over on the forklift side as well 😂

[ernieb]

How on earth can they not approve an OEM part as a replacement, beggars belief.

[Cyker]

They really should take some initiative and call up the chain instead of just relying on the parts system - I'm sure they could order it from the factory.

Even Jemca tried to, in order to get hold of the missing trim pieces for my Mk4 (They failed, then forgot about it, then were reminded, then got confused and ordered the wrong ones, but at least they tried!)

 

[forkingabout]

It's highly likely as its a new product it just needs someone to add that part to the parts available to order system with the price & availability.

[Parts-King]

That is a common thing with parts that have little or no sales history, however it is normally a quick thing to sort. There is a system for getting the price

[Malop]

Update 13th Feb

Autoglass phoned today. They have the glass in and have arranged an appointment for me tomorrow to have it fitted. I checked and had confirmation it was OEM glass and that they will do the recalibration of all the systems. So hopefully all good tomorrow. 
 

Heard nothing back from my dealer so going with AutoGlass as it’s been a month now. 

[Cyker]

Woo! Finally! I hope it all goes well!!  

On the bright side, 1 month is better than the 3 mine took!!!  

 

[Malop]

Update 14th Feb

The technician from AutoGlass called this morning. He’d just started reading the instructions for replacing the windscreen and had identified they may not have all the parts, apparently in some circumstances a replacement trim might be needed. 

He offered for me to drive the 40 minutes to their depot for them to take a look to see if they thought they could refit the old trim or to wait until they got the trim in. 

Having read some of the issues with the trim replacement when the new RAV4 model came out I declined the offer of wasting 1h30 of my time and decided to wait until the trim came in. No current delivery date for it. 

Clock restarted on how long to get windscreen replaced. 
 

[forkingabout]

This was one of the reasons I let the Toyota main dealer deal with the replacement windscreen supply & fitting. 

[Cyker]

They did quote for such trim pieces with my Yaris; Added something like £50 of plastic to the bill, although one of them wasn't needed it turned out so saved the insurance company £30  

If they're ordering them from Toyota should be able to get them within a couple of days - Toyota are very on the ball with logistics if they have stock! (Just is a pain if they don't, as it then needs to be shipped from usually Europe or Japan, which can take 1-2 weeks)

 

Still, at least they called before you'd made your way there and saved you a trip - With mine I had two wasted trips; The first attempt, they called me to tell me the new windscreen hadn't arrived just as I was parking in their car park, and the second attempt they came and told me the glass was cracked just as I'd gotten settled connecting to their WiFi and starting up the company VPN!  

[ernieb]

@Cyker,.... you couldn't make this stuff up could you, I can never understand why these guys turn up without first checking they have all the bits.

[forkingabout]

1 hour ago, ernieb said:

@Cyker,.... you couldn't make this stuff up could you, I can never understand why these guys turn up without first checking they have all the bits.

Likely there's someone higher up in the company keeping an eye on outstanding jobs on the system, they don't care if all the parts are not available as they likely never check, they just want to see a repair attempt so they can move figures around on a spreadsheet - they don't then care if that repair attempt is then aborted. 

 

[Cyker]

To be fair they were trying to get it done before christmas because I didn't want to drive it long distance with a giant crack in it, but bad luck and bad timing skuppered it in the end.

 

[Guest]

On 1/4/2023 at 6:26 PM, forkingabout said:

FWIW: I wouldn't let Autoglass touch a vehicle I owned going on my previous experiences with that company.

I know some insurance companies will pay a sum towards the repair if your not using there approved repairer - need to check the policy wording.

I had a C-HR windscreen replaced recently, it wasn't that expensive at the local Toyota dealer, it was still more then the insurance excess but it avoided me having to deal with Autoglass. 

 

Definitely don’t trust Autoglass. Took them two tries and 10 weeks of my time and inconvenience to get it right as well as their policies that make zero sense / point you toward an ombudsman whose purpose does not extend to car repairers…  They eventually sourced me Pilkington (not Toyota stamped) glass and fitted it but the stress of it wasn’t worth it. 
 

definitely demand better for your 6 week old car. 
 

Toyota here in NI said they needed someone to come and do it on site, they wouldn’t confirm or deny if it was Autoglass. Probably whoever answers the phone for them first and has availability though. 

[Cyker]

The Toyota dealers here all pretty much subcontract it out - The people my dealer use told me they do all the Jemca franchises in London but only work for companies, not end users (So I couldn't have just ordered the glass and then called them to do it). Apparently they even sometimes do jobs for Autoglass!   Interestingly they were insistent the glass Autoglass use is good quality and as good as Toyota glass, which seemed a bit weird since they were on the dealer lot doing this  

Autoglass don't normally do work for other companies tho' - Part of my issue was that I could book in fitting and calibration within a day or 2 with Autoglass, but they had no glass, while Toyota could get the glass within a day or two but booking in the fitting was more problematic.

The obvious solution to get it done ASAP would have been to get the glass from Toyota and get Autoglass to fit it, and while Toyota would be happy to sell the glass to me personally, Autoglass wouldn't buy it from them and wouldn't have fitted it if I'd bought it and brought it to them.

That's one of the downsides with dealing with big companies - They always have a lot of 'Procedures' which tends to make them inflexible.

 

[Malop]

Today was the day. Autoglass phoned 3 weeks ago and booked me in for the replacement today. Did double check with them they were open Easter Monday but they said they were.

Turned up at the depot, left the car and went shopping. Job took about 1h40 minute. They calibrated the cameras and the windows looks good. 

One downside, they took the car for a test drive to check camera calibration and have lowered my average driver score for the month with a trip score of 50, looks like they wanted to test the acceleration out on the car.

[egg]

Well it looks like I'm going to have to phone my insurance company now. Just got back from a long trip to Cornwall and back. Whilst I was down there I noticed I'd picked up a 50cm crack in the windscreen 😒

[Cyker]

My sympathies - I hope your experience is smoother than mine was!!!