Cornes Toyota

Having bought my car from Cornes Toyota and then serviced in their service section, I was originally impressed with the service I received. Everything was great. They were efficient and prompt and everything worked like clockwork. That was until it all went pear shaped! And boy was that a big old pear.
Put my car in for servicing in the morning and picked it up later in the afternoon. I backed out of the carpark and heard a terrible noise but of course my car had just been serviced so there couldn’t be anything wrong! Drove from Hawthorn to the city — everything fine. Drove home from the city, lights started to light up on my dashboard and my alarm bells started to ring. Later drove to a nearby friend’s place and by the time I got there my brand new car was dead. Not being mechanically minded, I had no idea what was wrong so called the RAA. The long and short of the dilemma was my poor little car had to be taken back to Cornes Toyota Service Department via a tow truck because the radiator had been punctured by ‘something’ and needed replacing.
Added to this was the fact that my drivers seat was covered in grease and my new white top was also covered in grease. Not happy Jan!
What really annoyed me was that when I took my car back they tried to deny responsibility for the problems. Really not happy Jan! In the end they fixed my car but I received no apology and they conveniently forgot about my grease covered top.
I truly believe the work experience kid (or whoever) serviced my car that day and left one of their tools under the bonnet, hence the clunk I heard when I originally backed out from the service department.
A couple of weeks later I received a follow up call (as is their normal practice) to make sure I was happy with the service I received. When I told the kind lady who called that I wasn’t happy at all, she also offered no apology but promptly went away. Interestingly they used to call me all the time to remind me that a service was due and to see if I was happy with my car but since this debacle, I have heard zilch!
Good experience turned bad!

Not really close to home however I had a company car for the past 6 years bought from this very dealer so the first service was free here after purchase.
Since then I continued going here as it was the best place to take a Toyota and being a company car I wanted had to do it right. Plus they can more specifically diagnose issues and dela with Toyota on such. They always did a good enough job and always washed and vaccuumed the car before you picked it up so it was also returned nice and clean.
You can wait in their waiting room with some mags and tv but I would prefer to go for a walk in the surrounding area’s or go browse at Mitcham Shopping Centre. The best part about this service centre is their opening hours. You can always find a time to suit.
The only negative I experienced here was that I had a cd become stuck in the factory issued cd player in my new car (within the first year or so the first time). I went here and the mechanic managed to get the cd out but advised me it was becuase it was a burnt disc. The car had an MP3 cd player… how am I supposed to play MP3 files from a cd if I don’t burn it!!! I expected being a new car with that feature it would work properly or they would do something about it. In the end it was just a useless feature on the car as the discs would get stuck unless I ejected them every time before I turned the ignition off.

I have had my car serviced at Cornes Toyota in Hawthorn three times in the past five years and and have been impressed each visit.
The staff are professional, reliable and upfront about expected costs. An added bonus is they wash/​rinse my car before I collect it. It’s the little things…
It’s not cheap and I was tempted to try a city service centre recently but I wasn’t convinced they did a complete service and ended up going to Cornes Toyota a month later as I was concerned about my breaks and a blown dashboard fuse had been overlooked.
This centre is open till midnight four nights a week making it easy to go after work. I often drop my car there, catch a bus down Belair Road/​Unley into the city and collect it later in the day.
I’d recommend this place for a quality service you can rely on.