My poor, sweet, little tiny, retired mom, did not know this. And when she moved to California, she, without consulting my sis or me, bought one.
She drove it by herself til past the lemon law mileage limits. And then I moved down and we discovered that the passenger side window has a factory defect.
It won’t stay on the run channels, and you never know when it’ll fall off. She’s been to the Kia dealership nearly a dozen times, and has talked to them countless times.
They lucked out to get off with a technicality, that of she didn’t use the window until I’d moved down. Otherwise, it would have been within the lemon law mileage limits and they would have had to take it back.
I won’t go into all the crap the car industry forces onto the buying public with it’s new car selling practices.
But my mom isn’t the only one (again, YOU all knew this I’m sure), here is a site that has many folks with similar problems with both Kia the car, and the company. insofar as it’s refusal to ethically stand behind it’s product.
Yeah, I did already know that. Sucks about how they screwed your mom. They probably used a really hard sell on her, too. One that she couldn’t say no to?
Yes, they convinced her, that financially, she wouldn’t have a choice, or be approved for any used cars. And she was afraid to buy a used car, since neither my sister nor I would be there to help with any potential repairs.
Unlike my sister and I, (mean little old bullies both :D), she’s very sweet, and trusting.
When we were girls, we could talk her into just about anything, (but that’s another story :D).
I read info on the website, and went to several of the links, I am SO mad, I wish I’d known what car she was buying beforehand, so we could have at least helped her with her choice.
I like the one guy who put a big sign in his window, “100% Lemon”. He says he gets to share his story at least three times a day saving his fellow Americans grief a few at a time.
My parents, on a recent trip to California, ended up renting a Kia.
As is the usual on the roads in the SanFran area, they ended up having to ‘politely signal their displeasure’ by honking the horn. They weren’t expecting something like, oh say: A-WHOOOOOOOOOGA!
But they weren’t expecting:
mea
Not even a ‘meep’. Just a mea.
They would have done better hanging their head out the window and yelling.
Between that, and the fact that they felt they could have accelerated better if they had done it Fred Flinstone style, puts it on my ‘never to buy’ list.
<< Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil. >>
No wonder those things are so cheap. I know every car has its detractors, but I’ve yet to hear anything good about Kias – except that a college student can afford one.
Still, it’s gotta be better than the Ford Tempo I used to have…
I had a friend who’d bought one used. The thing was a continual headache. A college student can’t afford one if it’s breaking down all the damn time, really, the repair bills were outrageous.
See, that’s why one must buy these cars new. The warranty sucks if the car gets sold, but it’s 10/100,000 for the original owner. I’m one of those college students who owns one, and every problem I’ve had has been taken care of by the dealer within a week. In two and a half years, I’ve had:
[ul]
[li]a broken heater core[/li][li]a broken heater fan[/li][li]a hole in the radiator (from debris on the freeway)[/li][li]a blown off coolant tube (from replacing the radiator incorrectly)[/li][li] and now, a rattling transmission between 2500 and 3000 RPM[/li][/ul]
Is this inconvenient? Yes. How much have I paid for repairs? Zero. Has the dealer ever left me in a dire situation (i.e. no car when I absolutely needed one)? Nope, they provide a loaner if I ask for one, even going so far as to pull a car off the sales lot for me.
I’d still rather have my Spectra GS than a Ford Focus, aka The Most Recalled Car in History (The car was at 13 when my SO sold hers).
Sorry your mom is having such a rotten experience with this, but I think it’s more the dealership than the car. Many car dealers are still shifty, dirty people who take advantage of unsuspecting people at every opportunity.
I bought a Kia Sephia in the summer of 2000, brand new. Mostly because it was cheap, and it got good gas milage.
It is now summer of 2004- I have about 50k miles on it, it has has zero major problems. (had to replace an air tube that cracked, and the battery once) I get my oil changed regularly, have not had a tune up yet, and drive the crap out of it. (shift gears fast, etc- manual transmission)
Perhaps I am just fortunate to have a non-lemon Kia, but my parents have the Kia Van (can’t remember the name), and they have not had any problems with it for the year they have owned it.
Save yourself the trouble and buy a Hyundai if you’re going Korean. The standard equipment packages aren’t quite as good, but you get the same warranty plus some useful extras like an engine, working transmission, windows that roll up and down, and so forth…
At the time these things came out, most new car prices were like $13,000. Now all the sudden these Kia’s are $7,000 brand new?* You get what you pay for.
*I don’t have price numbers for these cars, but they are pretty damn cheap and I consider them too good to be true.
It’s a factory defect on my mom’s car. I don’t know if other kias have had this problem or not.
The run channels that hold the window into place so that it can roll up and down correctly, for some strange reason, keep twisting out of place, allowing the window to fall off the channels at a certain point.
The lemon law is that if you have the same exact problem 3 or more times in a row, that the dealer has to buy it back. Unfortunately, the lemon law also allows dealers an out, even if the car is still under FULL warranty, if the car has passed a certain number of miles (and they differ depending on the state), that they then do NOT have to take the car back. Legally, they are fulfilling their “duties” to the customer by continuing to fix the car.
Never mind the miles it takes off of a person’s warranty as they travel to the dealer to have it fixed a few times a month.
It took the dealer SIX times, of having the exact same thing happen to the window, before they finally decided to change out the door.
Prior to that, they’d told us that something different was causing the window to stop (it would roll up about halfway, and then stop, it rolled down fine, so the motor was okay, even so, they replaced the regulator twice).
So now, she has to have a new door, on an 18 month old car, on which the paint has been aging. But, they’re not going to paint the WHOLE car. Oh no. They’re going to “blend” the paint on the front fender and back door, so that the new paint from replacing the door sort of matches the older paint.
Legally they’ve got an out. Ethically and morally? They’re dishonest and pushing the car industry to a whole new low.
My mom is a nice, very sweet person, she should be able to enjoy her retirement without this sort of thing. Something that shouldn’t have happened. And wouldn’t have if this company had integrity.
She does plan on filing a complaint with the BBB, and, as some of the other disgruntled Kia owners have said, sending a letter to the shows that do exposes. If anyone knows anything about how BBB complaints work, such as how many complaints on the same company before the company gets investigated or whatever they do, I’d appreciate it.
At any rate, thanks everyone for the shared misery She did laugh when I told her about the 100% Lemon sign, and may do it.
And yeah, I know that other car companies have complaints, but like another poster said, this goes WAY beyond that. Some lemons is one thing, ALL lemons all the time is quite another.
Sounds like it to me. My husband and I bought a 1999 Ford Taurus new at the end of that model year. People talk about how crummy Fords supposedly are, but since buying it we’ve had absolutely nothing wrong with the car. Well, OK, we got a flat tire early this year - the spare in the trunk was still inflated and handled the trip to get new tires just fine.
I can see not caring about frequent garage trips if you’re a college student and thus (presumably) have a bit more leeway in your schedule, though. (Plus we’ll take our car on road trips up into very rural areas, and wanted to stick with one of the Big Three US manufacturers in case we were faced with a breakdown and a repair shop out in the boonies, for probably a much quicker repair time.)
Hmm. I dunno. I think they’re doing exactly the right thing. They are continuing to fix the car, and are now replacing the door. They are blending the paint.
Are you worried about the paint? You won’t be able to tell. And, honestly, expecting them to repaint the whole car is both unreasonable and unnecessary.
I guess if that’s all there is to your rant, I’m going to have to side with the dealer on this one.
She did laugh when I told her about the 100% Lemon sign, and may do it.