dude, thats my car

[footfootfoot]

Oh. In that case, never mind.

[jimhelm]

Originally Posted by JamesB

You can be lucky with used cars.

In 2008, I bought a 1998 Nissan Pathfinder that came fitted with an aftermarket snow plow blade. A year later, the left front suspension tower almost completely separated from the bodywork, and the brake master cylinder and steering shaft were all that were keeping it in place. The car was still drivable, but it was one bump away from simultaneously losing front suspension, brakes, and steering. I parked it while I tried to figure out how to fix the suspension problem.

After it sat on the driveway for a couple of years, I decided that it just wasn't worth the time and effort of making the repair, and in late 2011, I was about to call a wrecker to come and take it away when I did a search on the internet and discovered that a recall for the very same suspension failure problem had been issued in mid-2011.

Nissan would either repair the suspension tower failure, or in extreme cases, make an offer to buy back the vehicle.

In the end Nissan declared my vehicle unrepairable and offered to buy it back for more than what I paid for it (and certainly for far more than it was worth). Who am I to argue with a deal like that. I still have the snow plow assembly and now that we've seen that we don't really need it any more, I'll stick on the market just before next winter.

We had over 20 of them in our service lot back then.

[JamesB]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

We had over 20 of them in our service lot back then.

Mine sat on the local Nissan dealer's service lot for close to 5 months, and during that time I saw incompetence or just plain outright lying (most likely both) at a master level.

After my car had been on the lot for over 4 months, one day I dropped in to the dealership to make yet another fruitless inquiry with the warranty manager that I'd been dealing with for all those months about the state of my car's processing. I used to drop in every few weeks as I'd been told over 3 months previously that the car had been declared a buy-back case, and had signed over the title to them at the time, and they were just waiting for official notification. I'd last dropped in to see the warranty manager just 2 weeks previously to let her know that we'd accepted an offer on our house, and we would be leaving the province in just over a month and would like some resolution of the case. The warranty manager wasn't there and I was informed by the service manager that she had resigned unexpectedly (gave them just one or two days notice and had already left town with all her possessions).

As I discussed things with the service manager, other than the fact that it had been booked in for the recall months earlier, it was still on their lot, they had the keys, a copy of the signed over license, and a copy of a bill for the towing to their lot that I had paid for and was still waiting for reimbursement, she could find no records of my vehicle's recall paperwork. Nobody at the dealership had any idea that a rental had been provided to me by the previous warranty manager, and its cost was now probably in excess of the buy-back valuation of my car.

I had kept my own records of every meeting and phone call with their now ex-warranty manager (mainly to document the fact that in 4 months, she'd never returned a single call, and because I was getting just a bit suspicious of her actions), and could provide the name of the woman at the company handling the recall processing in Canada that their ex-warranty manager had been dealing with for the past 4 months. I also had details of both times the front suspension had been disassembled for photographs at the dealership and sent on to the recall processing company (the company apparently lost the first set).

When the dealership contacted the company to speak with the woman, they were informed that she had left the company months earlier (long before the date my records indicated that the ex-warranty manager had informed me that she'd been speaking to her and had requested another set of photographs) and there was also no record of my car details ever being processed there either.

Queue a look of panic on the face of the service manager.

Things certainly happened in a hurry after that meeting. I suspect there was some very interesting discussions at the dealership after I left that day.

I got a phone call the following day asking me to return the rental ASAP and they'd provide a dealership loaner in its place. I was also informed that yet another set of photographs would be taken and sent off, but that would have to wait until the dealership could get an exterminator to take care of the head sized wasp nest the insects had built in the car while it sat on their back lot over the summer.

Less than 2 weeks after my meeting with the service manager, I received a phone call in which the buy-back figure was officially discussed, and 2 days later, I signed the paperwork accepting the figure I'd been offered. I had the cheque in my hand less than a week after that.

[footfootfoot]

Where does that experience fall on the luckiness continuum?

[JamesB]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

Where does that experience fall on the luckiness continuum?

The process was a pain, but other than time, it cost me nothing. I had a supplied rental vehicle for about 3 months that cost me nothing other than gas, and eventually I received a buy-back offer that was about 50% more than I paid for the vehicle 4 years earlier.

The rusted out hulk that wouldn't hold fuel because of all the rust holes in the gas tank, wouldn't stop properly because the rear brakes dildn't work due to the rear brake lines being rusted through, and as far as I was concerned was nothing but scrap metal, was bought back by Nissan's agents at a payout figure that was close to $1000 above the private sale blue book value of a similar age vehicle in good condition.

I've spoken to a lot of Pathfinder owners in this part of Canada, and only about 1 in 10 are even aware of the recall and repair/buyback deal. If I had the time (and lower moral standards), I'd be searching for similar condition Pathfinders that haven't been through the recall process, buy them and do it all again. People were doing this with an earlier Ford mini-van repair/buyback until Ford figured out that a lot of the vehicles were being pulled out of junk yards, and required that the vehicle had to have been owned and licensed/insured for at least 6 months by the person presenting it for the recall.

While I was going through the process, I mentioned the recall to a friend of mine in Australia. He had relatives living in Montreal that were about to move back to Australia and were selling up most of their possessions. All four members of the family each owned a Pathfinder in the affected range of vehicles. Only two were drivable and they were trying to sell those two and were about to scrap the other two before they moved. He told them about the recall, and after inspection, Nissan bought back all four.