Reverting an approved claim AFTER the work is done

My car had an issue with its clutch. It was so bad that it had to be towed into the dealership. The car arrived on Monday, 20th March 2018. I explained to the consultant (Vincent Zulu) that I have an extended warranty on it but I am not too sure if they will cover this kind of problem since I wasn't entirely clear what the warranty covered - and whether this problem fell into that category. After a couple of questions, he stated that it'll probably be declined since I hadn't serviced the car with Toyota the past 5 times but he will submit the claim nonetheless. Vincent called me the following morning to inform me that the claim was approved and that I'll only need to pay R399 for skimming which is not covered by the extended warranty. He also informed me that I'll only have my on Thursday, 22nd March since Wednesday is a public holiday.

I didn't get the expected call on Thursday. I called in on Friday to find out what the issue was. Vincent then told me that the claim had been declined for some reason. I was assured that this was a technical error which should be sorted out asap - a call was logged to sort the problem. When I called later that day, no one had attended to the log and I had to wait until Monday to get the issue resolved - this was particularly frustrating since the car is registered with Taxify/Uber and it was a pay weekend.

I paid the dealership a visit on Monday, the story had now changed. They were saying that the claim was not supposed to be approved to begin with - since the car had not being serviced by Toyota - which I was not aware of by the way. As such, I now have to pay the invoiced amount before I can use my car again.

My problem with the above scenario is this. I authorised work to be done by Toyota based on the approval of the claim. They cannot backtrack on that status AFTER the work is done - that is unfair on my end since it does not give me an opportunity to seek better quotes elsewhere.

I have since paid the invoiced amount however I am escalating this matter to Small Claims court. I am suing for the invoice amount as well as for lost business caused by this dispute since I could have been told on Friday what the situation was - and yet again givenan opportunity to respond accordingly.