Compliance Letter From Toyota Canada

[ls11j]

Any Toyota owner from Canada moving to US recently?
I met a problem when asking Toyota Canada to provide a compliance letter. Without this letter one can not import his car into USA. Which means I would be forced to sell my car cheaply in Canada and buy another one in USA at a much higher price.
So any Canadian Toyota owner has met the same problem? Is there a way to work around this issue?

Thanks!

[Bevdeforges]

Depends a bit on the problem you ran into. If your Toyota isn't built to US standards, you have the option of replacing whatever item(s) aren't in compliance with the US standards. It's a common problem for US or Canadian car owners who insist on bringing their cars from home when moving to Europe. And many find it simply too expensive to bother with.
Cheers,
Bev

[ls11j]

Thanks for your comment.
Cars from US/Canada are way different from the EU ones. I can imagine how much money they need to spend to get the car modified to meed the EU local standards.
But the US and Canada cars follow pretty much the same standards. In the past years car built for Canada comply to most of the US standards. Owners of the Canadian cars just need to get the letter from the manufacturer stating which minor parts of the card don't comply to US standards. The US authorities will request the owner to get the car modified if they think the minor differences are critical. But commonly they are just day time light and KM/Mile related and won't cost the owner too much too fix (it won't make sense if it cost more than the car's value to get the car modified).
But if they owner can not obtain the Compliance Letter (even the car is almost the same between US/Canada models), the owner will need to spend thousands of dollars to get the car certified and modified. This will be a totally different story.

[ls11j]

And a bit more detail about the problem I am running into. Toyota Canada is claiming that they no longer provide Compliance Letter due to their recent policy changes. Which mean the Canadian Toyota owners will have issues importing their cars into US unless US changes their policy (which is not likely going to happen in the near future).
If I saw this coming I wouldn't buy a Toyota car. They just refuse to provide their customer some basic simple support (which will only cause them a few seconds of computer time to state the specific car year/model's technical compliance) even the customer is willing to pay for getting that service.
Honda states clearly on their website to let their customer know how to get help from them if they need to import their cars into US.
I am very disappointed.

[Bevdeforges]

OK - just an idea for a workaround, though. Have you tried contacting Toyota US about a compliance letter? Not sure it will help, but the worst they can tell you is "no."
Cheers,
Bev

[twostep]

http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/impo...ges/page2.html
You might find something.
Honda changed policy around production of 09/2011. To me it looks like keeping the US market from getting swamped with cheaper border-crossing imports not immigrants bringing a vehicle.

[bridgelaker]

Greetings!

Have you had any further luck with importing your Toyota to the US? I am in the same situation. Toyota Canada told me they no longer issue compliance letters and that I had to use a broker, which will cost approximately $1000. Not sure if it's worth it for my 2000 Toyota Sienna, which is worth only $4,500 according to Kelley Blue Book. Please let me know what you decided to do...feel free to PM me. Thanks!!

[bridgelaker]

Originally Posted by bridgelaker

Greetings!

Have you had any further luck with importing your Toyota to the US? I am in the same situation. Toyota Canada told me they no longer issue compliance letters and that I had to use a broker, which will cost approximately $1000. Not sure if it's worth it for my 2000 Toyota Sienna, which is worth only $4,500 according to Kelley Blue Book. Please let me know what you decided to do...feel free to PM me. Thanks!!

Still hoping to get a response and some help. Thank you.

[bridgelaker]

Originally Posted by bridgelaker

Still hoping to get a response and some help. Thank you.

Will call Toyota of CA this afternoon and I will try and get some help. My wife tried previously and had no luck at all. Will report results.

[bridgelaker]

Originally Posted by bridgelaker

Still hoping to get a response and some help. Thank you.

Well, I am sorry to say that I just got off the phone with Toyota of Canada. I talked to a very nice lady and got exactly the same amount of help as my wife had received a few days ago, NONE.

Upper level management of Toyota of Canada has arbitrarily decided not to issue a letter of compliance for those of us that need to import our Canadian vehicle into the USA. There was no reason given for this.

It appears that the ONLY choices we have is to sell the van in Canada or hire the services of an importer to do the importation. The cost quoted to me was "up to $1,000 USD". Since Toyota made this policy change, the importers now have a total monopoly on this issue. My car has a sticker that states that it is in compliance with US EPA requirement. The car has a dual speedometer so that is a non issue. The car was made in Kentucky. Basically, nothing needs to be done to the car but pay a broker for some paperwork, grrrrrrr.

I will try my best to influence friends, family, and anybody else that I can to NOT BUY TOYOTA vehicles in the future. As I told the customer represenative Toyota has based much of their success on customer service, this issue is certainly part of "customer service". I do not know if other manufacturers, Honda, Ford, GM, etc have similar policies. I never planned to import a car to the USD, but a job transfer changed all of that. SO, consider your options before you buy another car, the $$$ you save may be your own.