The Consumer Complaints Blog

I bought in August 2007 a Hyundai Santa Fe. I noticed about two months ago a rust on my driver’s side door (inside of the car), which I took to the dealer to have it inspected. I first of all need to clarify that I have purchased this vehicle at the Hyundai Mississauga dealer, and since I had moved to the city of Oakville right after purchasing the vehicle in August 2007, I decided to start servicing the car at the dealer located in Oakville instead, just for convenience.

The first comment the dealer in Mississauga had to make when I took the car for inspection was that I had not been servicing the car at their dealer reason for why they could not deal with the claim, as it would required too much paperwork for them to justify this claim to the head office. I alluded to the fact that I had bought the car there as well as the rusting protection for the car at the time of purchase, however, they mentioned that this policy only covers for rust damages caused on the outside of the vehicle not on the inside. This for me does not make sense. I followed their recommendation to take the car to the dealer when I usually do service it, the Oakville dealer. The Service manager at the Oakville dealer, Mr. Steve Allum, ask if I had bought the rust proofing, and asked for me to show it to him. When he looked at it, he mentioned that his dealer does not deal with the Diamon protection plan, that they have a completely different plan and that therefore he recommended me to take the car back to the dealer where I have purchased it from. This immediately to me sounded incorrect, as I was felt that no one wanted to take ownership for the claim neither wanted to provide the customer service any client deserves, even more for a car that was at the time only 18 months old.

I took the time again to contact the dealer in Mississauga to update the service manager Mr. Kohli about the conversation that I had with Mr. Allum, of course he said that his statement was completely wrong and that he was going to call him to discuss.

Three weeks after I did not have any response from neither of the two, despite the follow ups. At the end Mr. Kohli mentioned that he had agreed with Mr. Allum that the Oakville dealer would take care of fixing the door. To my surprise, after dropping off the car on 6 Jul 09, I got a call from Mr. Allum on 7 Jul 09 indicating that they had determine that they can not fix the door properly but have decided to put some kind of patch on the rust, as it was felt that I had caused the rust with the scratches caused by my shoes by getting in and out of the car. I have to say that this is the lamest excuse they could have come up with. Since when the cars rust by the contact they have with your shoes for getting in and out of a car. The recommendation that Mr. Allum had given me is that I need to take the car to a body shop for proper fixing, which could cost in the range of the $300 dollars he indicated, and that they were not going to assume responsibility for paying for this repair as it was considered outside of the car warranty.

I decided to follow up directly with Hyundai Canada to seek their advice, and was unfortunately turned down. The customer service department rep at Hyundai Canada told me that they can only go with what the dealer is telling them, and if they say that I had caused the scratches, there is then nothing they can do about it. I told the lady that I can not believe that they would jut wash their hands and not provide the Customer Service that someone’s deserve. I even told her that if that was the case I would return the car to the dealer. The response of their rep was that I can do whatever I wanted to since the car has already been paid by the bank, so basically they did not care what I did with it. As you can understand this is extremely disappointing and frustrating, even more so knowing that I still have a couple of more years to go paying the car. If the car is going to start falling into pieces from the inside out and they are not going to be responsible for responding for this then I do not want this car. This is the reason why I bought a new car, if I wanted to have a car that falls into pieces, I could have easily bought a used car for that matter.

I am writing to you to seek your advice and look at the possibilities that I have for making them pay for the repair. The clean up work the dealer did its very poor, I even noticed that the rust on the door is coming form underneath a plate that is sitting by the door foot step, so how I can my shoes get underneath this plate and also cause this kind of rust? In case needed, I do have pictures that I took to show exactly where the rust it’s actually located and also for anyone to look at the quality of the job the Oakville dealer performed. I am very concern about the lack of service Hyundai Canada and their dealers provide, specifically post-purchasing of a car.

I thank you in advance for your advice and attention to this matter.

Lizbeth Carmona

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

Business involved:
Yorkdale Volkswagen o/b 2031113 Ontario Limited
600 Wilson Avenue
Toronto, Ontario M3K 1C9
Phone: 416-741-7480

I leased a new VW Passat CC through this dealer. They used an offer to lease form which doesn’t include the selling price of the vehicle on it. They told me the purchasing price was $34,735,which included the base price of $31,975 + $1,400 for auto transmission and $1,360 for freight and PDI. The leasing company is VW Credit Canada Inc. The numbers were the same as posted on VW Canada’s website. The monthly payments were a little more than what I wanted to pay so I asked if they could lower the purchase price enough to make the monthly lease payment an amount of $350 per month (this included an $8,000 trade-in). The salesman told me that he required my credit card in order to present this to his manager. He came back with a reworked offer to lease form and told me I have a deal. At that time, the salesman took my ownership papers for the car I was going to trade-in.

What they did not tell me was that they retained the same purchase price, but increased the amount I would have to pay up front, not to mention that they used a slightly higher interest rate to calculate the lease payments than the amount posted on VW Canada’s website. After I released what they did, I called the new car sales manager to complain and ask for my $1,000 deposit back. He would not give back the deposit. He agreed to reduce the my up front payment by $700, while maintaining everything else the same. Further I was told that I could have the car in the colour scheme that I wanted by the end of the week. I later found out that they do not have the car I wanted, and promised to order one for me from the manufacturer. The car arrived three weeks later. It did not come from directly the manufacturer. Instead, they acquired it from another dealer and had a manufacture date that was ficve months old, meaning it had sat through the Canadian winter — they did not disclose this to me.

When I picked up the car and fill out the leasing paperwork, the leasing rate offered by VW Credit Canada had dropped from 4.9 to 2.9%. The dealer had forms for me to sign which stated that the interest rate was 2.9% but the monthly payments or up-front payments had not changed. The residual value had been lowered by a mere $340.00. Again the purchase price was not disclosed on the new offer to lease form. When I pointed out that the lower interest rate should have a more significant effect on lowering either the up-front payments or the monthly lease payments, I was told that the effect was minimal. The Business Manager told me that they made $250 and he would make it up to me in services. At this point they already had my car and my insurance had already been transferred to the new car. So I just took his word for it. However, the lease agreement itself, which is an entirely different document, only presented to me after all of the above had occurred, contained a Vehicle Selling Price that was 37,662.83. This price was significantly higher than the MSRP of the vehicle, and when I questioned it I was told it includes freight, security deposit and first month payments as well as some other small charges. Not having a computer with me at the dealership, these items cannot be easily checked. After getting home, I realized they the selling price only included freight, not security deposit and first month payment and was $3,319.83 above the selling price I had agreed to.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

Jim Pattison Hyundai Coquitlam
Unit B – 2385 Ottawa Street
Port Coquitlam, BC
604-552-1700

Jim Pattison claims customer satisfaction to be number one.

Well he sure didn’t get that across to his Hyundai dealership in Coquilam. (Jim Pattison Hyundai Coquitlam, Unit B – 2385 Ottawa St., Port Coquitlam, BC 604-552-1700)

My wife called his dealership (Feb.20/09) and talked to a sales rep and eventually to the Sales Manager, Darren Corr. She asked if they would sell the Hyundai Accent for 15,500 all inclusive. Taxes, levies etc.
After going back and forth and several calls back from them, they agreed. She called me in between their calls to let me know what was going on. And once they agreed to her price asked if we could go down as Darren said deal was only good if we went down right away.
I said that was fine, just to be very clear that we want the car for 15,500 including everything, taxes, doc fees or anything else. And to be sure they could arrange insurance and financing so we could drive off the lot with it, as I did not want to make a second trip.
Darren agreed to all.

My wife and her friend were just about to see a movie when the agreement was reached, so she got a refund on the tickets and rushed home to pick me up. We then bundled our 4year old up and started the 45minute drive to their dealership (Start: Friday ~7:00pm End: back home ~9:00pm). Once there, the Sales rep and manager insisted I take the car for a test drive, despite telling them we had already done that at another dealership and there was no need.

They kept insisting one of us take the drive before making the deal, as it was policy. I agreed, but before I took it out I went through what was agreed to on the phone and asked the Sales rep if this was correct. I asked if there would be enough time for them to have an insurance agent come down. Again he said yes to all but that time would be tight. So I said let’s not waste time, and get going. I took the drive, they took my info (photocopy of license) wrote down the original price and the sales rep said the manager would fill in the details to what we agreed to on the phone. Only to have them come back and say there had been a misunderstanding and they couldn’t do it for that price including taxes. The 15,500 does not include the taxes.
I ask you, why would we offer 15,500 + taxes when Hyundais’ own web site has it on for 15,190 + taxes????

They thought we were offering more than the asking price? No one would do that. There was no misunderstanding, they were just typical scam artists doing there trade.

If my 4 year old wasn’t with us I would have had a few choice words for the scum that work there.

Beware this dealership and if enough people speak up hopefully they will pay for their scamming ways many times over.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

I recently purchased a used truck from BelAir Jones Junction, Maryland. HUGE MISTAKE! I paid cash up front. The truck was advertised as a Certified Pre-Owned but when I took it for a ride I found soft brakes, a chipped windshield and over 60 miles/hour I had to wrestle with the steering to keep the truck in the lane. CERTIFIED???? Hmmm… I didn’t know what Certified meant, but apparently neither did JonesJunction.

Anyway the salesman assured me that everything will be fixed and the windshield replaced. He also assured me that the truck has a clean history so I have nothing to worry about. That was when I asked for the Car Fax Report. His manager, Tim Carter brought up the fact that JonesJunction is in business for over 90 years and the truck is OK. Well, I was stupid enough to trust a salesman and a used vehicle manager from JonesJunction! After I payed the truck I left it there for repairs. Shouldn’t Certified Pre-Owned mean that is inspected and mechanically in perfect order?

I went home and got a bit suspicious when the truck was not ready the next day and needed to be kept for another 2 days in the shop. So I looked for the Car Fax Report and guess what: the truck has had a serious FRONT CRASH ACCIDENT with another vehicle, was sold at an auction as a FLEET VEHICLE and from Sept. 2003 till Sept. 2007 was driven only 16,000 miles and no records about service or anything else whatsoever. True or false? I was called the next Monday to go and pick up the truck and I noticed the chip in the windshield had been fixed instead of replacing the whole windshield and the paint miraculously lost its shine and was completely faded.

I asked for a refund of my money, naturally, but the answer came: No, you paid for it. You bought it, it’s yours. But if you want to trade it in and buy another one….
Would I recommend Jones Junction? NO NO NO! Just stay away from it. It’s bad for your health and for your financial situation. I still don’t have the truck or got my money back.

PS: I succeeded to speak with the manager from Jones Junction (after 3 weeks he finally called me back after I left him several messages on his voice-mail) and he told me there is nothing I can do, I have to go and pick up the truck but I also have to pay for storage fees. I have to mention that nobody told me about any storage fees and nothing like that is included in the contract. So, what can I do? It looks like the ball is in their court and nothing can be done. For now…

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

Before you get all excited, there is no real way to beat the system. But there are things that you can do to help yourself from being completely shafted.

1. Never pay the fine outright.
If you pay your ticket without going to court, your conviction will register immediately and you’re pretty much screwed with your insurance. So even if you get a ticket for 10 over, don’t pay it. Take it to court. Why you ask? Because your conviction will only register after you have been found guilty. With the state of the court system today, that can be up to a year or more before you go in front of a judge.

So let’s say you got charged with not stopping at a stop sign even though you did stop. You can’t fight it because they’ll always believe the cop in court but you can limit the insurance penalty.

Even if you’re found guilty in court, the points will go on your record only after the conviction so they may only stay on your record for 6 – 8 months if the courts are jammed enough. This is because the points are based on the offence date and not the conviction date.

2. Go to court and look and listen for the cop.
The prosecutor will check in with all the cops. It helps if you can memorize the cops face when he stops you but he’ll say his Officer Number to the prosecutor to check in so listen carefully. If he’s not in court, your charges will be dismissed. This has worked for me 7 times in the past. Cops don’t always come to court. Sometimes they are busy or have to work and so on. If you’re really polite when they stop you, they may note it down and not bother to come if it’s just the one case.

3. When in doubt, bargain.
The prosecutors are lazy. They just want the conviction for their stats so they’d rather not sit there actually doing their job. They want to bargain with you and go to lunch early. You can usually get minor secondary offences dismissed and reduce your charge if you agree to plead guilty.

4. Stay away from those ticket services.
If you hire one of those “We’ll get you off for any violation” people, they really won’t do much for you but take your money for doing what you could basically do yourself.

5. If you have time and friends, stall.
If you have an agent that is willing to go in for you, you can try stalling by having them tell the JP that you are really sick with diarrhoea or something else disgusting and believable then ask for a new date. Stalling not only adds more time from your offence date to the conviction but it also increases the chance that the officer won’t show up. But don’t have your agent talk to the prosecutor in this case or he/she will know what’s going on. There is always the chance that the JP won’t believe your agent in which case he’ll have to say that he is not prepared to proceed and you may get convicted anyway. In that case, take the time it took to get to court as a bonus and be happy with that.

6. It’s your Worship not your Honour.
Apparently they get very testy about this. The traffic court has a Justice of the Peace (JP) and you refer to them as Your Worship. The criminal courts have judges and they are Your Honour. Holy crap talk about an ego trip. In any case, you won’t get a fair shake from either because in my experience, they always believe the cop over you. So no point in pissing them off further. Just remember to call him Your Worship and you’ll be fine.

7. An excuse is not the law.
If you have an excuse for doing what you did, it won’t matter so don’t waste your breath. They just go by the law like some kind of idiot robot. There is no room for humanity in the court so even if your baby was dying, they’ll convict you because you technically broke the law when speeding to the hospital. It’s best to try to prepare based on the actual law if you plan to fight the charge.

To sum it up. Basically, just go to court for any offence. The $20 extra for court fees and so on are well worth the insurance premium over a year with points on your record.

If you have a serious conviction like DUI or something, go talk to a lawyer right after your AA meeting. I only intend this advice for minor traffic offences. Good luck.