PeoriaStory

The Toyota Prius tire debacle: a true cautionary tale

PEORIA, IL -- Did you know that some new cars now come without spare tires?  The sales people might not tell you and the owner's handbook might not either in a straightforward way.

But you will learn the hard way, being stranded, waiting for a tow truck. That is, if your cell phone is in the car and it works to summon help.

That's what happened to me and my husband on August 17.  Our Prius IV is less than three months old, with about 4,500 miles on it.  It's under a full warranty by Toyota except for an exception: the tires. 

Since there's no spare tire, which we discovered while fruitlessly trying to locate it in the truck or beneath the car, there's a 'kit' of 'gunk' to be pumped into the flat tire to repair it and pump it up.

Those kits never work, the tow truck driver told us.  Our's didn't. The tow truck driver's device to pump up flats didn't work either.  So the car was towed to the Toyota dealer in Peoria for a new tire, wheel balancing, and a new 'kit.'  Total cost:$350. Not covered by the warranty.

Our auto insurance covered the tow truck, and the other costs go toward our deductible of $500. The tow damaged the bumper which means body work, so in all the blowout will cost us $500 before the insurance covers the rest. 

We were grateful for the tow, since huge trucks were passing us from two feet away going 80 miles per hour.  It was a dangerous situation. One inattentive driver and we would die.

An auto driver without a cell phone or one that could not get a signal, on a deserted road at night, would be sleeping in his vehicle. Or worse

This is a serious traffic safety issue. 

Now for the tire warranty.  Surely the Bridgestone/Firestone tire warranty would cover the cost.  No.  If you use the 'kit' to fix a tire, even if it doesn't work, the warranty is voided.  It's in the small print. That's not in the car handbook either.

We took the blown out tire home to examine it.  No rips or visible punctures. We don't know what happened to it.  Was it defective?  The tire dealer also looked at it and said maybe it picked up a nail that then fell out. The warranty doesn't cover road damage either, only defects. And not that, if you use the 'kit' to try to fix it.

We're not done with these issues.  So check back for updates.

 -- Elaine Hopkins

8/31/16: I filed a complaint with Toyota. The response: the kit is not part of the warranty unless it is defective, and it apparently worked but failed to fix the tire, which likely was off the rim. So we're out $100 for the kit unless we return it, which we might do.

The woman who took my complaint said it would be documented.  I suggested that customers should be told in writing that there's no spare tire, and using the kit voids the tire warranty which is worthless anyway as it doesn't cover road damage. So buyer beware!

Turbo Tax works sort of, but...

PEORIA -- How odd that the most helpful reviews I could find on the Turbo Tax software for 2008 were not in the newspapers* but on Amazon.com, where people complained loudly about how this year it costs more for less.

The initial Turbo Tax also allowed only one bite at the apple – no more doing the taxes for your teenagers or grandparents without buying other expensive disks.

That hurt, so TT backed down on that issue, but other issues remain, especially the price increases.

Thanks to those reviews I learned that TT Deluxe would do everything I needed, even though TT claimed it wouldn’t. So I bought it, even though I have always used Basic.

A bonus: the state tax form is included along with free e-filing this year. But…

My husband and I began doing our own taxes after we got audited years ago, and found that our paid tax preparer had left town! So my husband learned the IRS rules to confront the audit (we didn’t have to pay!), then we began doing our taxes as if we would be audited.

In fact we were audited so often we expected it. (We never had to pay!)

Then the audits stopped, and we discovered Turbo Tax.

TT is easier then a spreadsheet, calculator and pencil, because it does the math, but there’s always a glitch. Something doesn’t work quite right.

This year we were looking forward to e-filing for the first time. No such luck.

Our return had errors, TT told us, so could not be e-filed. What errors? We took the standard deduction!

No matter. There were blanks in worksheets downloaded from a broker. Worksheets? These are not even turned into the IRS as part of the return. The blanks involved some dates which are irrelevant.

There were other errors, from worksheets not even used in this year’s return. They were used last year. TT takes last year’s data and incorporates it into this year’s tax return, which is a big time saver. But apparently some software glitch allowed last year’s worksheets to stop this year’s e-filing.

I gave up. Who wants to spend half a day trying to figure out how to fix this stuff!

We printed it and mailed it.

And the state return? Yes, it was included, but no, the state e-filing isn’t free. It’s $20.00.

$20.00? You gotta be kidding! We mailed it for a 57 cent stamp.

With a day to spare.

-- Elaine Hopkins

* Is this the type of omission that leads readers to drop their subscriptions to print newspapers? The business sections are full of irrelevant, self-serving articles repeating what everyone has heard for years about saving money, consulting brokers, etc. But no real information people need, such as how well Turbo Tax works this year!

Illinois AIG policy holders safe, state says

PEORIA -- Illinois residents who have insurance products with companies associated with AIG, American Insurance Group, are safe, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Insurance said on Thursday, Sept. 18.

The federal bailout of AIG contains a provision forbidding the company from borrowing from its subsidiaries, spokeswoman Susan Hofer said.

Asked whether Illinois will allow any borrowing, Hofer responded, "no."

Before the bailout, New York had given permission for AIG to borrow from subsidiaries in that state.

There are no federal regulations for insurance, only state regulations.

AIG owns VALIC, a Houston, Tex.- based insurance company and likely other companies doing business in Illinois.

AIG-connected insurance products include policies and annuities which many retirees, including former state employees, depend on.

Hofer said insurance companies in Illinois must maintain adequate reserves to serve their policyholders, and are not allowed to invest in risky securities. Instead they must invest in AAA-rated government backed bonds and the like, she said.

Still -- the quasi-government mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were rated AAA before they required a government bailout.

If a company in Illinois fails, Hofer said, "policy holders come first."

Hofer said her agency employees more than 200 people to oversee the insurance companies.

Do we believe what state officials say, in a state that wants to close its parks and historic sites while wasting money on other projects that could wait? Do we have a choice?

Author Steve Pizzo, who with others wrote "Inside Job," the definitive book on the greed and malfeasance that led to the savings and loan crisis or more than a decade ago, has offered the best explanation in plain language of the AIG crisis. He wrote:

"In case you don't know what AIG does that's so important it required Treasury to nationalize it, here's a hint. One of the biggest, and most lucrative, products of AIG is asset insurance which they sell to banks. Asset insurance works like this:

"Regulations require federally insured banks to maintain a baseline percentage of their assets as a cushion in case some of their loans go bad. Banks hate that, because they can get better returns loaning money than holding it.

"Enter AIG which sells banks insurance policies to replace a bank's regulatory capital with an insurance policy promising to produce that now missing capital in the event the banks borrowers default.

"The bottom-line, AIG's policies allow banks to maintain far less capital on hand than regulations require.

"You might have noticed there's a lot of defaulting going around right now... a lot more than AIG or their bank customers ever imagined, and a lot more defaulting and asset value write downs than AIG can possibly cover, because, you see, AIG doesn't have enough ready capital itself. (Remember this the next time McCain complains about "burdensome government regulations." You might want to ask him precisely which regulations he would eliminate as president.)

"So, if AIG failed, all those banks out there that replaced their regulatory capital with AIG IOUs would be in deep, deep, deep, deep, doo doo. If AIG failed the feds would be faced with the possibility -- growing daily into a probability -- of having to virtually nationalized a huge number of banks and S&Ls, replacing AIG's IOUs with USA IOUs. (Yugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would get a good laugh out of that.)"

A good explanation of what's really going on. Without that federal AIG bailout, banks would start to fall, like dominoes.

If you want a more complete but complicated explanation, see this New York Times story.

Meanwhile, here's a little free advice, probably worth what you pay for it: where you can do so without penalties, transfer or roll over cash brokerage accounts into bank CDs, guaranteed by the FDIC. Your broker should be able to do that for you quickly.

Stocks and mutual funds in your name should be safe, though they can crash and fall to be worth nothing. At least AIG or its bedfellows can't take that away by "borrowing."

As Sen. Obama has so famously said, "in an ownership society, you're on your own."

-- Elaine Hopkins

Wal-Mart rip-offs

PEORIA -- If you buy a defective product at Wal-Mart that has a warranty beyond Wal-Mart’s 90-day return policy, you’re on your own.

Despite what it claims, Wal-Mart won’t help you.

Even if it would cost more to mail the product back for repair than it cost originally.

Case No. 1: In late July 2007 I bought a $79 Coleman PowerChill Cooler at the Peoria Wal-Mart, 3315 N. University. It takes the place of a messy ice cooler in the car, and plugs into the auxiliary outlet to keep its contents cool.

Since then I have used it three times. On the first two times it worked fine. But last week it failed. The connector apparently melted (is that a fire hazard?) and it won’t run in the car, and it also won’t run when plugged into the power supply cord that plugs into the electric outlet in the wall. I did not abuse this product in any way, and am mystified as to why it suddenly failed.

There’s no way to replace the plug and cord – it’s attached to the unit, an obvious design flaw that I didn’t realize until I had taken it home and unpacked it from the box. Oh yeah -- it's also made in China.

It carries a one-year warranty, plainly written on its box, which I had saved. I also found the receipt.

Today I took it back to Wal-Mart and was told to forget it, I’m on my own. Wal-Mart won’t swap it for another, take it back and sell me an even more expensive version, or pay to mail it back for repair. Tough luck!

That’s in spite of a sign on the store wall saying Wal-Mart will assist customers with defective products that have warranties longer than the 90-day return policy.

That’s a lie.

A clerk checked in the company computer – no results. So Wal-Mart sold a product that may have started a fire, but they have no information on it, not even a contact with Coleman.

(I plan to complain to the Consumer Products Safety Commission, but if it lets children be exposed to lead, I doubt it cares about this.)

There’s an 800-number for Coleman on the box – I’ll call that after the holidays but I’m not optimistic

Case No. 2: The other day, before the Cooler meltdown, I bought an inexpensive DVD player at another Wal-Mart, planning to hook it up to an old TV set in a bedroom.

Here’s what Wal-Mart doesn’t tell you: these won’t work with old TV sets. Also needed: a device called an RF Modulator that costs nearly as much as the DVD player.

I wasted at least an hour trying to get the DVD player to work, even running it through a VCR. That didn’t work, as the article explains, thanks to the greed of the entertainment industry..

It’s going back to Wal-Mart ASAP.

I’ve read about how Wal-Mart abuses its employees, drives small retailers out of town, exploits third and fourth world workers and all the rest. I figured there’s no point in totally boycotting Wal-Mart, just as you don’t boycott the zoo because tigers attack and kill people. That’s what tigers do.

Wal-Mart is the capitalist tiger, playing by the rules that the government sets, presumably based on informed consent of the majority (though that’s not a given, when you consider the way the Bush administration got into power).

But when a retailer sells products to consumers in a deceptive manner, doesn’t disclose important facts, doesn’t back up its own, posted warranty rules – it’s not just a tiger, it’s a rabid tiger. Consumers, beware!

-- Elaine Hopkins