2023 Toyota Sienna long-term update: Floors for less

Our long-term 2023 Toyota Sienna’s floor is finally back intact and not scraping along the ground anymore. You might be wondering, gee, when did that start? Well, direct your attention back to Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski’s “9 thoughts” update where he had the unfortunate (and unavoidable) experience of running over a deer lying in the road.

At the time, the damage from that deer did a number on the felt shielding that smooths out the underbelly of the Sienna, protecting any vital bits down there and providing for a more aerodynamic profile. A good hunk of that floor covering was pulled loose by the deer, and depending on the type of driving you were doing, could be heard scraping along the ground. Not good!

So, I took our van in to the nearest Toyota dealership to have the damage assessed and see what needed to be done. The service adviser said that the whole undershield needed to be replaced and that all of the bolts were broken. I was quoted $1,732.62 for the job, which included three hours of labor. Not only that, but the dealer said that some of the parts necessary were on national backorder and that if we wanted them to do the work (whenever the parts came in), they’d need to charge me for the parts right then and there.

Something about the quote didn’t sit right, so I took our van to a different Toyota dealership. They were a bit confused by the assessment of the first dealer and said that the parts to fix it were actually in stock and that they could have them in a couple of days to remedy the problem. Not only that, but the dealer also told me that it would only be about 45 minutes or an hour of labor. The new quote came out to $712.09, and that’s exactly what we paid after picking up the car all patched up a couple of days later.

So, if there’s a lesson to be learned here, a second opinion never hurts. We don’t know if the first dealership was simply mistaken or taking us for a ride on what all needed to be done, but we saved over $1,000 by seeking out a second quote.

The above said, this story doesn’t end here, because about a month after we got our long-term Sienna back, one of our editors walked out to the van to find that the underbody shield had yet again fallen out. This time, it wasn’t our doing. I picked up the van and headed back to the dealership that put the new floor in for us. They slotted us into their service schedule right away, recognizing that the issue was perhaps due to an error on their end. And ultimately, that was their assessment. One of the new bolts they installed to hold the new floor up was mysteriously missing (perhaps not properly tightened?), causing the shielding to droop toward the pavement once again. With a new bolt installed, we went on our merry way a short time later. Of course, we weren’t charged for this extra trip, as the dealer tells us any work they do is under warranty for a year.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the floor repair was patched up, and we’ve had happy sailing ever since. We don’t have much longer with our long-term Sienna at this point, but here’s hoping the floor stays where it’s supposed to be for the final months it has left in our fleet.