ZnSaucier

Wanted to post my experience on getting Lexus to repurchase my lemon RX450h as reading other stories online was helpful with what to expect. Sorry this got so long, it's been a few months in the making and I didn't want to leave too much out in case it could help someone in the future.

TLDR: I had to fight Lexus to get them to repurchase my lemon 2017 RX450h. GA's Lemon Law protection is better than many states as it covers 2 years/24k miles, and the people in that office are great. Have your documentation ready, but expect everything to get dragged out. Lexus didn't seem to take my lemon seriously until the State of Georgia's process made them take it seriously. Then it was very easy to get them to repurchase the car.

Links:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - Get your Lexus Service Bulletins and Tech-Tips here (get as much documentation as possible)
Lexus "Tech Tip" L-TT-0201-16 - "Brakes Make Squawking Noise When Brake Pedal is Pressed" (published 5/02/2016)
Lexus Service Bulletin TSIB L-SB-004-19 - "Brake Squawk/Knock Noise" (published 2/1/2019)

Timeline:
November 2017 - Purchase My RX450h in Georgia and drove it back to North Carolina

December 2017 - Car developed the brake squawk/knock noise (as detailed in this thread, it sounds like a seal barking) very early on (591 miles on the odometer), and I took it to my local dealership in NC. The Tech was aware of the issue, and took me for a ride around the parking lot and was able to make it squawk on command. He said that it was a known issue and that once air got into the brake actuator/reservoir assembly it was very difficult to get back out. The Tech called Lexus Technical Assistance, opened a case (per Lexus Tech Tip L-TT-0201-16), and was instructed to bleed the brakes. This failed and they were then instructed to replace the brake actuator and bleed again twice. This solved the problem, for now...

March 2018 - Squawking noise returns with a vengeance. Once again return to the NC dealership for service. This time the brakes are bled, but fail the procedure twice. Technical Assistance called again and Techs were told that they should bleed the lines individually and then try again. When individually bleeding the lines they found "an excessive amount of air coming out of the rear brake lines". Once this was completed the normal bleed sequence was followed, completed, and the noise was gone.

December 2018 - Squawk returns! Now living in Massachusetts so off to a new dealership. Technical Assistance called, brakes are bled, noise goes away.

February 2019 - Guess who's back!? Return to the MA dealership again. This time told that there's a permanent fix this time! Lexus Service Bulletin L-SB-0004-19 has been released with a redesigned part (Reservoir Assembly, Master Cylinder" part number from 47220-48270 to 47220-48271). New parts are installed, noise is gone. I'm cautiously optimistic that this is all going to be behind me and I can ride off into the sunset actually enjoying the car and not dreading the deranged seal noise that seem to be a ticking time bomb.

August 2019 - NO!!! Why won't it leave me be!? This is the final straw, this car is going back, I'm done. Luckily the folks at the Georgia Department of Law, Consumer Protection Division are extremely friendly and walk me through the steps to take. [These are all GA specific, and are current as of writing. If you're car was purchased in another state follow your state's process, if your car was purchased in GA, check the links for the most up to date info]. The state wont get involved right away, as the consumer you have to give the manufacturer a "reasonable number of repair attempts" (which is 3 unless it's a "serious safety defect" in which case they only get 1, or if the vehicle has been under repair at their facility for 30 days or more). They had already attempted to repair it 4 times, so i was all set on that one. Second, you have to provide the manufacture with a "final repair attempt", which they have to schedule within 7 days upon receipt of the request sent via certified letter, and complete within 14 days.

I get a response back from Lexus Corporate scheduling a time for the Lexus Field Technical Specialist to inspect the car. I was out of the country so my wife had to take the car to the dealership (which was a mess as apparently Corporate didn't share the info with the dealership so no one knew what was going on). She had to go to work, so after calling my wife and being on speaker phone with her and the service manager where I explained the issues, the service manager suggested my wife take a drive with one of their Techs. Wife talks to the Tech for about 30 seconds on the way to the car and mentions the brake squawk. Tech exclaims that he's very familiar with the issue, knows what it is, why it happens, and no need for a test drive. Field Specialist arrives later and per the notes in the service record "road tested vehicle with FTS during brake application the symptom reported is a normal characteristic of vehicle as compared to know good like vehicle" (Side note: Are you F***ing kidding me? A loud knocking and squawking noise is a "normal characteristic" of a luxury SUV? I'd love to hear the Lexus VP of Quality/COO and the VP of Marketing/CMO spin that one...). Oh, also Technical Assistance was called again, not sure why?

Step 3 of the GA Lemon Law process, send a request for repurchasement or replacement. I send this baby out as soon as I get back to the US as obviously Lexus thinks my seal-mobile is perfectly normal. Lexus has to respond within 20 days of receipt, but no response is ever received.

A little while later I receive a letter in the mail stating the same "concerns you reported were investigated by a Lexus Field Technical Specialist" and "your vehicle was found to be operating like any other 2017 RX450h", and of course "Accordingly, we cannot offer you any further assistance with respect to the subject claim". Oh, and they also start to push the "National Center for Dispute Settlement" as a path forward, not a damn chance...

September 2019 - I request the arbitration application from the Consumer Protection Division as Lexus has not responded to my repurchasement request

October 2019 - Application is returned to Consumer Protection Division and at the end of the month a hearing is scheduled for mid-December. Now the wrinkle for me is that since Georgia has jurisdiction for this process, the hearing is going to be in Georgia. Luckily I have some miles and hotel points to burn so this isn't really going to cost me anything (and I could cancel at any time without penalty), but I could have hired a lawyer to represent me, and the representative from the GA CPD started to mention something about being remote, but I knew if it was going this far that I would travel to see it through face to face.

November 2019 - State of Georgia allows consumers to request discovery for documents to be used in the arbitration hearing. A little before Thanksgiving I submit my request for all documents regarding the Technical Assistance cases that were opened for my car, all documents for the Lexus Tech Tip and Service Bulletin linked above (as well as all docs regarding the supercession of the reservoir assembly as part of the SB), and all documents related to the determination that the noise from my car was a normal operating characteristic as assessed by the Field Specialist.

December 2019 - All documents are due to the GA Rep the week before the hearing (our case it was a Friday morning hearing, so the documents were due at 2pm the Friday prior). The week that the documents are due I still have not received (or heard) anything from Lexus. I ask the Rep what to do as I want to make sure I can submit all my stuff on time, and she says that if I want, I can request that the Arbitrator direct Lexus to provide documents. I submit that request on Wednesday morning (with the Lexus rep on copy), 24hrs later I have an email stating that Lexus would now like to postpone the hearing in order to work out a settlement (the GA process requires that both parties sign off on a postponement, it cannot be unilateral). Since I'd requested a repurchasement back in August, I'm not inclined to give them any extra time. I respond that If we can come to an agreement before the hearing date, I'll support the postponement, but otherwise I'm planning on flying down to GA next week.

Lexus (to their credit) works quickly and has a proposal to me by Friday afternoon we go back and forth with a few items but all emails are answered very promptly (someone is paying attention now!). At the same time, I submit my hearing documents for next week, Lexus does not submit anything. By noon on Monday, we have a signed agreement and the hearing is postponed.

Now, Lexus contracts with a 3rd party to mange the actual repurchasement transaction, so I was contacted by their rep at the end of the week who said that she was passing along the checks and whatnot to the local rep who would actually be meeting me. Given that the holidays were approaching I was hoping to get it all done with beforehand, but that didn't happen. The local rep wasn't able to schedule it before the end of the year, so we made a plan for the start of January.

January 2020 - The day arrives. As scheduled, I met the 3rd party representative at local Lexus dealership, turned in the keys, signed some papers, and walked out with my check in about 30min. The least painful part of the process. I was tempted to walk into the showroom and take a look at the 2020's but I'm not sure about what's next.

Overall I'm conflicted, I really liked my RX450h. It was great to drive, super comfortable, and coming from a '05 4Runner, seemed like I was in a spaceship. After everything was said and done, I'm basically back at where I started back in November of 2017, this ordeal hasn't costed me any money. In fact my only real expense for the car over the 2 years (and 16k miles) has been gas and insurance. If I didn't have this experience, I'd 100% recommend the car to everyone/anyone, but the Lexus Corporate response has made me second guess the brand. Which is a shame since there were a lot of great service advisors and techs who wanted to make everything right at every step of the process. They seemed personally vested in making sure that my Lexus experience was a good one, and a few seemed genuinely disappointed when the issue resurfaced. Now I have to decide what is going to take the space in the garage (and if Lexus/Toyota should be included in the running). Hopefully someone finds this helpful, or entertaining, or something.

ravenuer

You have to decide if you're going to put another Lexus in your garage? Really?

DMPesso

Wow man your lucky your in Georgia. If only we could get this done for the droning but that would never happen since they’d have to buy everyone’s RX back basically

ZnSaucier

Yes, the attitude from Lexus corporate that my car sounding like an aggressive barking seal was a "normal characteristic" of a $60k luxury vehicle and the frustration of having to visit the dealership 8 times in 2 years just for this issue doesn't just vanish because Lexus eventually repurchased my car. Lexus only stopped hiding behind a huge pile of BS at the end when forced with facing a state backed body who could actually order them to repurchase my car as a lemon, because they knew that their own published documents clearly showed that everything that Lexus Corporate had told me about my car being fine was 100% incorrect. Other than the actual Techs who worked on the car (and two service advisors who I believe were former Techs themselves), everyone immediately got behind the corporate line and said it was normal and one even suggested that it was actually something I was causing by braking incorrectly.

Also, I believe that since Lexus "voluntarily" repurchased the car, it changes what they have to disclose (e.g. it was never determined to be a lemon, we just repurchased in the interest of customer satisfaction).

ZnSaucier

Yea, I hadn't considered the impact of differing state's consumer protection laws when originally purchasing the car, but for whatever is next I may go out of state just to be covered more than the 1yr/15k miles that Massachusetts covers (I think Maine is 3 years?).

tommytqt

Wow. Thanks for sharing this. Now i know why there are some guys couldn't stand the process. They ended up trashing their cars (hammer it at the dealer, dropped it from the helicopter,...). It is from 2017 to 2020, way to long, time, money, dealer, service visits.....

riredale

Yikes.

I have a 2010 RX450h, purchased in 2016, it began seal barking in the fall of 2018, just before the two-year Lexus warranty expired. The Lexus dealer here in Portland Oregon drove it for five minutes and knew what the issue was. I was able to get them to replace the brake actuator unit for no charge. But it sounds like this is a design issue that hits all 450h models. Does anyone know, in detail, just what the issue is? I would have assumed that Toyota's legendary engineering competence would have a permanent fix by now, but maybe not.

elimmigran

Dropped mine off after reading your post. Mine is a '17 with 10,200 miles. It'll be 3 years old soon but still under warranty.

I had previously mentioned the noise but was told it was normal. I accepted the answer at the time.

Now having read your post, I'm going to push for a permanent fix and if they are unable to do so, I'll regretfully initiate a lemon law review. Lemon law reviews are free and paid for by the state of CA. I lemon law'ed my '06 Ford F250 diesel in '09 because it kept blowing head gaskets. I was reimbursed the purchase price of the vehicle including registration fees. I also lemon law'ed my '08 BMW 550i because of transmission issues they could not fix. In CA, it's a straightforward process.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

ZnSaucier

I’d suggest bringing printed copies of the Tech Tip and the TSBs with you. Best of luck!

elimmigran

That's exactly what I did. Thanks.

Now I'm actively soliciting feedback from all social sites where Lexus RX owners are members to gauge just how rampant this issue is.

elimmigran

I just received a VM explaining that all new parts were ordered and that they should arrive Friday or Saturday so, they are going to keep my SUV until at least Monday/Tuesday of next week.

elimmigran

Got it back today and so far so good. Will report back if I encounter problems.

elimmigran

Back home and while the wife was out in another ride, I took the 450H on a "spirited" drive through the canyons and no noise thus far. Will bump this thread with an update in another month.

Alexus35

I am in the same exact situation .

I started noticing the squeak/seal bark noise at around the 5k mileage mark. I told my service advisor during the first service this was happening and he did absolutely nothing other than placing it on the notes but no repair or acknowledgement documented. It still had the noise . 9k mileage mark I got the actuator replaced and it was fine for about 4k miles and the noise is back. I am currently getting the car serviced for the 15k mileage service and they are looking into the break noise as of now. I'm pretty sure it will just keep lingering even if they replace or drain it. My only concern is when the noise lingers and I am past my warranty 5 years/60k miles . am I on the verge of a lemon law but in California I would like more info on the steps to go about it? They did say it's safe to drive and is harmless, but I'm not messing around with breaks .

703

Yes go for Lemon law after 3 strikes.