Predatory practices of car sales has never worked in the long term for anyone.  Looks like Hyundai is having some serious financial issues right now because of it.  Kia’s stock is sliding pretty bad along with it.  The car market isn’t booming like it was in 2015, but the slide is far worse for Kia.  Their abuse is finally catching up to them.  I feel bad for their working people that are losing jobs, but they can blame the corporate greed and policies for that.

Kia, are you going to start honoring the warranties that you sell?  If not, the world will continue to see you as the slum lords of the automotive market, and you will never be able to sell the higher priced, more profitable vehicles that you need to recover.  People want power and luxury.  Just not from you.

After posting yet another reply to Kia’s Twitter account last week, a Kia representative actually contacted me!  They sounded very concerned, and was very polite to me on the phone.  She gathered the story again, and said she would have it reviewed to see what they could do about it!  All I asked was a refund on the lease payments I made while the vehicle was broken, and I would call it even, and take the site down.  But, I didn’t get my hopes up.

I just received a call from Kia, saying again, they will not be offering any compensation on the issue.  After many emails and calls from other former Kia customers, this is, unsurprisingly, a pattern.  Kia does make some great looking cars.  And, even though Kia and I aren’t friends, I think their K900 has a heck of a lot of curb appeal.  But, the K900 failed, and it failed hard.  The Hyundai version is also suffering from dismal sales.  The problem isn’t the car, or the price.  It is the brand that Kia and Hyundai have built for themselves.  This brand, is that of a cheap car.  Everyone knows they’re cheap.  I would lump them in with Chinese car cheap.  But, Kia can’t deliver with customer service or reliability.  They’ll tell their customers to get lost, the second something goes wrong with their car.  They play the blame game, and lawyer up at the drop of a hat.  Now, when you are going to do business with a professional, Businessman, lawyer, sales, etc, there are many other factors.  No business professional will show up in a $65,000 Kia.  Not because it’s a bad car, but because the Kia brand holds a stigma.  You cannot compete with Audi and Cadillac, until you build customer loyalty and respect.  Until Kia can step up, and be a respected car manufacturer, they’ll always be slinging cheap cars to people who cannot afford to be screwed over by their manufacturer.

Kia, is the mark of disrespect for its consumers.  Dancing hamsters don’t exactly bring in professionals either ;).

P.S.  I’m also about to get my 2nd $50,000 pickup truck, Kia.  We’ve also added a Chevrolet Volt to the household.  This business could have been yours.  Along with many other people’s business.  The new truck will also carry the same sign / sticker as the old one, linking here!  Probably why I can pull tens of thousands of hits per month, with no advertising.

Not in the literal sense, but they sure don’t like negative attention!  Hiding from the problem only fuels my many thousands of visitors a month, Kia.  It’s been a couple of years.  How many millions of dollars in lost revenue are you willing to eat, to try to win?  You may lawyer up, but it’ll cost you.  My attorney is still taking every case of yours to court, and costing you much more than a buyback would have.  Heck, a simple warranty repair.

Sitting in a K900, at the North American International Auto Show(Press day, press pass, thanks blogging!).  I noticed Kia didn’t even have a single Sportage there!  Could it be that it was one of the worst quality cars on the market?  I do believe so.

Kia sure didn’t appreciate that tweeted to them earlier..

Just hide your head in the sand Kia.  Or just pull a Claude Lemieux!  You can bloody someone’s face Kia, but open media will always win!  And Detroit knows your dirty game.

Hey everybody, sorry for the long wait in a new post!  Life’s been pretty busy lately!

We’ve been enjoying the heck out of our new Chevy Volt!  And we’ve been Sportage Free for months now.  But, I did keep the engine.  I just cleaned my garage out, and I’ll be performing surgery on it soon.  I’ll do my best to document what I find, and see the damage that Kia’s “engineering” caused this time.

While we’re talking about the Volt.  GM has been taking a lot of flak lately about their recalls.  My Volt has been quite a good car so far.  Hasn’t skipped a beat, and has exceeded all of it’s promises.  Kia’s issues are far more dangerous than anything GM has done.  My Sportage’s engine failed multiple times while on the freeway.  The last failure shut the car completely down, in the dark.  Lights, steering, power brakes, the works.  I was almost hit several times while wrestling it to the side of the road.  The NHTSA complaint I filed, has not been taken as seriously as someone overloading their keys and breaking an ignition.  It did take over a decade for these issues to catch up to GM though.  The currently Kia lineup is still young.  I guess we’ll see how long until this lasts, until we can get a real class action lawsuit going, and take Kia down a peg or 2.  How many thousands of people will Kia rip-off, hurt, or maim, before they’re forced to face the music?

Looks like people really do read about Kia quality nowadays.  I’ve been getting quite a bit of traffic here.  And it looks like Kia’s sales numbers are dropping pretty hard.  I’m specifically speaking of the K900.

http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2014/03/kia-k900-sales-figures-usa-canada.html

Kia.  You really need to begin to treat your customers better.  Not just me.  Everyone.  I’ve spoken with many customers with a similar story as mine.  Broke people, people with money, people of all classes and races.  Basically, your entire spectrum of customers.  They all get it.  Kia is the slumlord of the automotive world.  And the way your customers really speaks volumes about it.  The problem is, you want to go big now.  You want to sell luxury cars.  From the day you announced that car, I knew it would fail.  Because nobody takes you seriously.  If someone sees your brand as a cheap brand, and then they read about how you screw people over, they’re going to walk away.  There are too many other brands with more class, service, and a sense of responsibility toward their customer.  People who are going to drop $60,000 on a car, are used to having service.  White glove style service.  They don’t want to have to sue to get warranty work done.  They don’t want to deal with your awful dealer network, that sells $18,000 junk cars by the dozen.  They want what Cadillac offers.  What Audi and BMW offer.  When you sell luxury, you’re not selling leather and a RWD V8.  You’re selling an experience.  Getting fu@#ed by your dealer and manufacturer isn’t one of those experiences that people will risk $60,000 over.  Start making things right with your customers.  You spent more on advertisements selling that car, than you’ve made back.  I don’t think your sales have even covered the cost of that Superbowl spot.

So, we still have an opportunity for you to make it right.  Step up, and be the company that you’re trying to buy the image of.  Advertising until you’re blue in the face, doesn’t break the trend of internet outrage you’ve forced your customers into.  You’ll forever spin your wheels, and never get where you’re going.  Start making things right with your customers.  Whether it’s me, or the thousands of others.  Repairs, refunds, and apologies are far cheaper than spending millions on ads.  And it’s far more effective.

We recently bought an electric car.  A Chevrolet Volt to be exact.  We even saw the Kia Soul electric vehicle that you’re offering.  Unfortunately, you won’t sell many.  And if you would have treated us right with the Sportage, you would have sold one to us.  And if you think all of my social media is negative, check out my Twitter.  You know the handle.  I’ve had nothing but good things to speak to Ram and Chevrolet about.  And that’s why you’ll always be in last place.

Sell the experience.  Don’t be a slumlord.  It’s as easy as that.  With your 1990’s Automotive industry mindset, you’ll slowly sink.  And it looks like it’s already happening.

There are quite a few things I’ve learned over the years.  One of them is, if you are hauling past the GVWR of a vehicle, your transmission will have a much higher chance of failure.  Your brakes may also overheat.  But, I have never seen a vehicle detonate the engine to death, for hauling the weight of 4 grown men(half the tow rating).  Until Kia came along, that is.  The Theta-II engine seems to be a solid runner for most people.  Unfortunately, I bought the one that Kia screwed up on.

With that in mind.  Here’s a couple of pictures proving that Kia’s engineering, or quality control, were highly flawed.

Yes.  That’s a motorcycle towing a pop-up camper almost exactly like that one that was attached to my Sportage.  8 feet, and ~1,100lbs.  The same camper that my Dodge Caliber also towed for thousands of miles.  And the same camper that my 2011 Sportage also towed for over 12,000 miles.  That picture wasn’t from a magazine.  It was the owner of the RV store, that my in-laws bought their new camper from.  He used to tow his pop-up with that Goldwing.

And no, I don’t own that one anymore Kia, so when you look up the VIN, and void the engine warranty, you’ll just be violating a different customer.  That 2.4L also towed that camper just fine.  It never complained, or blew it’s spark plugs apart.  Because it didn’t have the gremlin that my 2012 did.

I’ll give Kia one thing.  They have curb appeal.  But, when your car is stuck, parked on a curb, for years, you learn that Kia doesn’t make customers.  They find victims.  They don’t sell you a car.  They trick you into buying a box of lemons..

Take a lesson from the Americans, Kia.  GM did quite a bit of swindling in their day.  But, when you rip off Americans, it comes back to bite you.  It may not be today, or this year.  But the lawyers find a pattern.  And they send that pattern to the feds.  And that there, will cost you billions.

Start treating your customers right, before you become the next Toyota..

http://www.motortrend.com/features/auto_news/2010/112_1001_toyota_recall_crisis/

We all remember what that did to their sales, and resale values.  I’m sure Hyundai doesn’t want to get dragged down with you also.

Well, the dead kia is alive once again.  Survivng on an engine out of a wrecked Sonata.  Thanks a ton to the guys over at http://www.allprousedautoparts.com for the hookup!  The rolling lemon got some time out at the dream cruise, and tons of people had all kinds of things to say!  I think there were about 1.5 million people down on Woodward this year, just saying..

It feels good to drive the piece of junk again.  I forgot what a nice car it was.  It’s a shame that Kia is forever tarnished it in my view, and I’ll forever tell everyone who asks me about buying a car, why to avoid Kia.  Is it really worth losing so many customers, just to try to stand proud, Kia?  Everyone I talked to, said the exact same thing.  “If they want you to shut up, and want you to go away, why didn’t they just buy the car back 2 years ago?  It would have been a heck of a lot cheaper”.  I’m not surprised about people’s reaction.  I feel the exact same way.  It baffles me how a company would go so far out of the way, just to hurt someone.  Someone who’s family does so much for the community.  That’s right Kia.  You’re taking the money out of the pocket of a social worker.  It’s a rough job, and a thankless one.  And you would rather make them suffer, than do the right thing.  Quite shameful.  There is no honor is taking the money out of the pocket of families that are trying to better the community.  Heck, a lot of the people that are helped, were probably potential customers when they grow up.

For shame Kia.  For shame.

You always have an opportunity to do the right thing, and have this all go away :).  You guys have my contact information.

http://daileylawyers.com/

Justin Grove will gladly take your case!  We’re currently working on a class action lawsuit.  If you have any of these symptoms, or any other issues at all, please contact him.  He’ll even talk about it on his radio show!

http://daileylawyers.com/the-law-show/