Another reason to avoid the Nissan

So, I have one of those 2002 Altimas. In early February, the manual transmission went out. It's still under warranty, so I didn't think it to be that big of a deal.

I get it towed to the closest dealership, and they quickly diagnose the problem, they get on the phone with Nissan about the warranty, etc. and they put the order in for parts. At first, I was told it would be five business days to get all the parts in and another day at the most to fix it.

But instead, everything has gone to hell. The five days kept getting extended and the wait for various parts grew and grew. Finally yesterday, my service adviser calls and tells me that they are only waiting on one part, but that the part won't arrive until April 1.

Now, I've already been without my car (and without any car since they did not offer a loaner. I borrowed an old pickup from a friend, but I couldn't use it indefinitely) for a month by this time, and I was looking at another month of waiting.

So, I call Nissan and explain the situation. They tell me that they might approve a rental car for me, but that it will take at least 48 hours to check into the situation to find out. I ask if that's 48 hours in the sense that it takes five days to get the parts in like I was originally told, and it basically deginerated from there into a stream of accusations from me about their shady business practices there at Nissan North America (that they were in breach of the warranty since they refused to provide the part. That they were lying to me for the past month about the part situation. I probably threw in some words like "fraud" and the like and made it known that I have friends at Channel 8 who might be interested in a story about $25,000 paperweights that Nissan was selling, etc. And I did it all without cursing once or even really raising my voice. I was proud of that).

That was apparently enough to get them to speed up the process a little bit. I got a call from the dealership an hour later letting me know they could get me into a loaner car while I waited (a 2004 Sentra, which is not really a comparable car, but good enough). And today, I got a call from Nissan North America noting that they had found the part I need at another dealership and would be overnighting it to Richardson, and that instead of April 1st or 2nd, I should actually have my car no later than Monday.

But it is ridiculous to have to deal with this sort of thing. If you sell cars, you should provide parts, especially when the car is under warranty. There's absolutely no reason I should've had to wait a month on parts, and I certainly shouldn't have to wait two months on parts. It's called "just in time" inventory, not "we needed it two months ago" inventory.

I understand that things go wrong with cars from time to time, it's how a company handles those problems that shows the true character of that company. Nissan showed me it didn't have any character. It spent a month lying to me, and then when it finally came clean, it tried to give me the run-around some more by dragging its feet on getting me a temporary vehicle (they kept saying that the warranty doesn't provide for rental cars, and I kept mentioning that it does provide for making parts available and fixing the car, and since they couldn't do that, the least they could do was provide a car to use while they waited for the parts to swim themselves over from Japan).

This experience just confirmed in my mind that I'd never, ever buy another Nissan again.

 

It was Nissan, NA that was giving me (and the dealership) the run-around.

And I don't think the car is a lemon. It had a bad transmission. That happens, and it's covered under warranty, so it normally wouldn't be that big of a deal. But when a major corporation simply decides that importing parts is not important, that's a problem. Most of the time, they can get away with it (especially when it's a manual transmission part. I'd bet that manuals are only about 5% of their market), but every once in a while, it bites 'em in the ass.

And when it does bite 'em, they should handle it better.

I don't expect any ownership experience to be completely problem-free, but I expect that when something happens, there should be parts available to get it fixed in a reasonable amount of time, or else be willing to quickly make other arrangements for the owner.

 

I'm not having trouble with the dealership. They're fine. Nissan does not have the part needed to fix the transmission. They will not make the part available until April 1. It's dumb luck that we found another dealership that had the part, but it took Nissan (not the dealership. The dealership called around, but they can't call every dealer in the nation) an entire month to even bother to look for alternate sources for the part.

Nobody could've gotten my car fixed without the part. Nissan doesn't have the part. I could've gone to any dealership in the Metroplex (where I am) or Houston or Austin or Amarillo, etc. and gotten the same story. Nissan doesn't have the part to sell to the dealers and won't until April 1.

For whatever reason, Nissan (not the dealer) chose to not import enough of this particular part for a time, and that happened to coincide with a time when I needed it. Now, Nissan (not the dealer, but the company itself) kept saying that the part was on the way, even though it never was. They only came clean yesterday and admitted the part would not be available to anyone within the entire Nissan dealer network or any other authorized parts reseller until April 1.

If you didn't already have the part (and no one around here did), then you were SOL until April 1.

My problem is with Nissan, not the dealer, because the story would've been the same no matter which dealer I went to. Nissan made a business decision to not import enough parts. There's nothing my dealer could've done to change that. And it was Nissan who gave me the run-around about the replacement vehicle, not the dealership.

 

As a matter of fact, if someone came to me dead set on buying a Nissan, I would recommend both the dealer I bought my car from (Grubbs Nissan in Bedford) and this dealership (Courtesy Nissan in Richardson). If you already had a Nissan and needed some service work done, I'd tell you to call Courtesy Nissan and give you the service advisers' name, and tell you to tell him that I sent you.

The dealership has no fault here, in my opinion. Nissan is completely at fault for not making parts available. A dealership can't possibly be expected to stock all the parts they might need for their entire line of vehicles. But they need to be able to count in Nissan providing those parts when they are needed. There's no excuse to have a two-month back order on any part, no matter what it is. Unless the ship with all the parts on it was sunk by German U-Boats, and even then, I'm only giving you a month's leeway.

There's no excuse for Nissan to lie to me and my dealership about the availability of this part and tell me and my dealership that the part was on its way several times when it was not. Own up to the problem. Tell me it'll take two months and then do something to make it right (by providing alternate transportation, or whatever).

Or, in this case, since there was the part I needed available at another dealership in the country (my understanding is that the part was in California), why not check that out in the first week or so instead of lying about the part availability and pretending it was on the way. I could've had my car back three weeks ago if Nissan had been willing to be truthful and willing to look a little for the part.

I've not had all that much trouble with the car. This is the first real thing to go wrong. If all it was was that the transmission failed and they replaced it under warranty in a week, I'd have no problem at all.

But they lied to me for a month, then gave me the run-around and quoted policy to me instead of trying to make it right (either by finding the part elsewhere or giving me access to a loaner car). For the rest of the time I own this car, I'm going to be afraid, not of something going wrong, but of all the crap I'm going to have to deal with if something does go wrong and the long waits I may have to endure because Nissan doesn't think making parts available for its cars is important.

 

There were two outstanding recalls on my car when I brought it in. One was related to the engine (and the service engine soon light, which I believe was related to the exhaust system).

The point with me was not that the car broke down. That's going to happen to a certain number of people regardless of the overall quality rankings of the car. No line of cars is 100% infallible.

My biggest complaint with the car itself is the cheapness of the interior components, though I understand they've upgraded that for the new Altima model (don't recall if it was for 04 or for 05). It appears they listened to their customers and did something about it.

Heck that little Sentra they've got me in now seems well constructed. The cheapness of my Altima interior doesn't come across on it (it's an 04 Sentra), and the engine is certainly peppy, even mated to the automatic.

Like I said, my problem is how they've handled the situation once it came up, not that the situation came up in the first place.

 

Well, it turns out that Nissan North America lied to me again. They told me they had found the part my car needed, but they hadn't. So, they spent several days telling the dealership (and me) it was on the way, only to once again not deliver.

I guess they will do anything to get out of providing a rental car when they know they've screwed up by not importing the parts needed to keep their cars running.

If not for the dealership giving me a loaner car, I'd be looking at at least another three weeks of walking, as we're back to the April 1st estimate on the part (though that may not end up being the case, either. They've lied about the part coming multiple times. There's no guaranteeing that the April 1st date is not also a lie).

It's entirely possible that I won't see my car again before my lease expires (so, for a time, I'm really overpaying for a Sentra that I'm not allowed to take over 50 miles from the dealership. So, technically, Nissan of North America is preventing me from seeing my kids).