I have to ask, bee 2....what company screwed you over so bad that it affects your sense of right and wrong.
Anyway, in the olden days, which you probably remember very well, information was restricted to first or second hand knowledge. So maybe if your cousin was a mechanic and he could call his other buddy the mechanic and they could swap stories about how he heard this and that.
Today information is freely available if you do the research. Then they have these things called printers so you can actually make copies of "technical service bulletins" about poorly made products and how to fix them. No longer do you have to remember did your cousin say only blue camrys are affected or all color camrys.
You can also type plain old questions like "Toyota torque convertor problems" and like a miracle, right before your eyes, you can read about the major problems toy. Had with their convertors in the 2001-2003 ravs...or for something else, the massive problems they had with Camry.
The major upside(s) to the Internet is that as a company, take Toyota for instance, you cant bulls**t everyone like you used to, just those too lazy to do a little "leg work".
The other upside is that when you a have a company like Toyota, who has major issue with a costly part or product, you can "mass" communicate with great ease.
So in my case, close to 900 people have viewed this thread...you know most people would struggle to directly address 900 individual people in the course of many years about one particular subject.
So then you figure if they agree with me or not, they'll relay this to a few other people (and some of those were thinking about a rav or Camry....but not anymore).
You see it's not about ....did Toyota take care of Camry owners, it's about a fairly new car sitting in a repair shop, the time you spent on the phone to get it fixed and the fact you had to schlep rides to and from the shop. Then there's the experience of driving down the road and having your car feel like it's going to drop the engine on route 95...during rush hour.
In my job I sometimes have to deal with independent contractors and customers. One way I have to deal with an individual I think might be stretching the truth is to ask questions which I already have the solid answer to. If they answer honestly, I know theyre someone who I can trust to have a conversation with. If they they reveal some info I didn't have prior, I'm willing to adjust my view in their favor. If they lie out of the gate, I'm always wanting to ask more things just to see how far they're going to bury the truth. In the case of Toyota, they buried it and that's why they didn't call back and then did the about face on the TSB.
In conclusion, they didn't lie just to me, they gave this, or will give the horses**t story to anyone who calls about the Rav.