Complaint Review: Nissan North America

On April 28, 2007 I purchased a 2002 Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V. I purchased a warranty for an additional 5 year/100,000 miles powertrain only.

One week after purchase I realized that the car had a squeak after starting and continued for the first few minutes of driving. This continued for the next 2-3 weeks so I had the belt checked and was told that it was new and that they were unsure of what the noise was from.

On May 25th I took the car to a Nissan dealership for them to hear as the noise had gotten much worse and was not only upon a cold start but driving as well. I was told by Gates that they had no idea what the noise was but that they definitely could hear it. The service manager told me that in 30 years he had "never heard a noise like that and one of two things would happen, it would go away or get more distinct."

A week or so later I took it to an exhaust shop because I was sure it was the heat shield, kinda like a metal vibration noise. They realized that my car was 2 quarts low on oil. My car does not leak oil and is not smoking. So they oil was changed and the noise was gone. Two weeks later I was another quart low on oil.

I called the Nissan dealership and made an appointment to take it in for 6/27/2007. I was told on the phone that they would be changing the oil in my car and monitoring it for loss. After sitting there for more than an hour the dealership told me that they did not change my oil and that my car did have the precatalyst failure and a remanufactured motor would be $2100.00 and the labor would be $2200.00 (estimated).

They checked with my warranty company for my car and they said that they would not cover this because the motor was damaged due to part of the exhaust being sucked into the motor and they did not cover loss due to exhaust. They also contacted Nissan North America and were told that they would not accept responsibility for my motor because of the mileage.

I contacted sales manager at the car lot I purchased the vehicle from and was told that he would have one of the service managers call me. Shortly thereafter the service manager called me and asked me to bring the car in to be looked at. After they looked at the car and called Nissan Motor Corporation and the warranty company and me the same thing that Nissan dealership had told me earlier with the same results with the warranty company.

I have called Nissan North America at least 25 times since 6/27. At first no one returned my calls. I have been hung up on, lied to, and even laughed at. I do not find anything funny about financing a car with a bad motor. Obviously this is something that would not have been noticed unless it was driven about 700 miles and I had no way of knowing that this car consumed oil.

Anonymous
, Kentucky
U.S.A.