At the end of May, I made a very poor decision which I hope many of you people in the United States do not duplicate.
I decided to trade-in my 2002 Subaru Outback, that I loved, for a 2004 Hyundai Accent. My plan was to save some money on car payments, plus have a little better gas mileage.
So, I had heard a lot about Billy Fuccillo, and his "HUGE" sales at Syracuse. My wife and I drove there, and after an amount of time, I drove the Accent home. It drove very smoothly, it did get a little better gas mileage, and although I liked the Subaru,
it seemed like a good purchase at the time.
Less than a month later, the car started smoking, and I pulled it off the road in Oneida. I called the 24 hour towing service. They said the policy was that the car would be picked up, but that we wouldn't be. That upset me, because we just moved to the area, and know no one well enough to come pick us up. We would have to take a taxi. The gentleman on the line, who should have known what he was talking about, said that if I was close to home, I could just start up the car once the engine cooled off, then very slowly drive it home. If the car stalled out, he said, just wait a few minutes, start it back up, etc. Until you get home. About 1 mile from my house, the car really started smoking. I was very concerned as to what it was doing to my engine. I know nothing about cars, so have to go on the advice of people who should know what they are talking about.
Later, my Dad, who is a retired mechanic, told me that the car should have been towed on the first sign of smoking. There is no way that I should have been advised to drive it.
The next day it was towed to Carbone Hyundai. They were very personable, told me that someone, either at Hyundai Motor America, or Fuccillo Hyundai, did a poor job of fastening one of the hoses, and that it came off and caused the smoking etc.
When I asked if it could have done damage to the engine, I was told that the way engines are built nowadays, many different things could have happened to the engine, and that, if not right away, certainly in the foreseeable future.
It was then that I decided that I bought a new car... I wanted a new car. And this time I wanted one that had been scrutinized very carefully beforehand.
To make a very long story short, after a number of letters, a district manager went to Carbone Hyundai, found out what happened, then gave his results to the Better Business Bureau, whom I had contacted.
What he told the Better Business Bureau was that Hyundai was going to do nothing about it. The car was under warrantee, it was fixed, and that was it!
I let them know that that isn't it—how would they like buying a car that someone had helped ruin almost before it left the dealership.
The customer satisfaction side of this is nonexistent.
I hope any of you people who are thinking about buying a Hyundai will give it no consideration at all, and hightail it in the other direction. I shall do everything in my power to let people know what this car dealership has done to me, at least until the time that they come to their senses and give me the car I thought I had bought once I left Syracuse.
If any of you disgruntled people would like to join forces, let me hear from you. I have copies of letters sent to several organizations.
I have just begun to fight!
What shocks me is that no one in the company has even attempted to offer me anything as a means of working our way through this.instead, they seem bound to wear blinders so that they cannot see it from my perspective.
Answer me this—would you want to buy a "new car" that turned out to be "damaged goods"—then have the company imply, hey, you bought it, if it's a lemon, oh well, that's your problem, not ours.
For that is exactly the message that I am reading here.
Well, as I told them, they opened Pandora's Box, and they don't seem like they are in a hurry to close it, so the damage they reap from the backlash will be their own.
It's pretty sad when the truth can hurt them this badly...
Ron
Rome, New York
U.S.A.
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