After our son was born in 2009 my husband and I decided we wanted to upgrade the gamily SUV and purchased a 2009 Hyundai Santa Fe in January. It was just what we wanted, great warranty and plenty of room to go along with the amazing saftey ratings and reviews. We have owned the SUV for 2.5 years and it has been in and out of the shop, spending a total of 19 days in service! It was pretty smooth sailing up until we hit 30,000 miles. It all started with an oil leak, which took the service department 3 consecutive trips to the dealer over 5 months to fix. Also keep in mine, we are passed any Lemon law time frame at this point (by literally 1 week!) When it hit 33,000 miles the entire car started shaking and turns out we needed a new axel, or cv joint (sp) you guys get the point... Major components are now being replaced on our "family car". Had a meeting with the service manager, who played hide and seek with me for nearly a week the first time we had a meeting. Then we set up the meeting and he forgot about it and stood me up. I had to wait an additional hour for him to arrive, which at that point was nearly 10am... Must be nice to go to work whenever you want and blow off customers! Since January 4 its been in the shop nearly 12 times... Thats every 3 weeks for different issues. I work for a nonprofit and we had an event on a Saturday, so the day before we left (friday) we took the SUV into Hyundai to make sure it was 100% safe, at this point we had 2 seperate talks with management about the safety of my vehicle and expressed our concerns with them regarding the issues. Their response was simple "its under warranty so dont worry about it". ANyways, friday it was in the shop from 9am-4:45pm having an oil change, allignment, balance and rotation along with their oh so wonderful "hyundai multipoint inspection". The next morning we left for the event with our dog, 2 year old and my husband heading to Pembroke Pines, FLorida. Halfway their the brakes lock going 75mph causing the entire car to jerk to the right and let out this horrific screeching sounds from the right front area of the car. All of this was caught on camera, the sounds at least. My husband is an experienced driver and is used to driving fire trucks, fortunately he knew how to handle this out of control car. We pulled over on alligator alley (middle of no where) and called Hyundai, they suggested we tow it because at this point the "Electronic stability control" has shut off and wont turn back on. Their suggestion was to tow it to miami, which closed in 45 minutes and wouldnt be open until Monday leaving us stranded in Miami until then. Hyundai said, no worries we can get a rental car and pay our out of pocket and drive back to our house 200 miles away but then we would have to drive back to pick up the death trap SUV when it was ready. Um, NO! I demanded we wanted to be towed back to the west coast and the denied the request. This is the issue, we had a pit bull with us which is illegal in Miami-Dade county... The very location they wanted to tow us. If we would have gotten towed their we would have lost our dog to Miami-Dade animal services. Not an option. We had to drive the car back to the west coast going 40-45mph in a 70 MPH zone. Again, very dangerous but Hyundai couldnt be bothered with our issue. We called 2 seperate Miami Hyundai dealerhips asking for them to call us back (this was during normal business hours) and our phone never rang. Nearly 4 days later, they still have not called us back. Anyways, brought the death trap to the dealership, removed all of my belongings including the car seat because i will never put my child in that death trap again, EVER! Here is the fun part, hyndai looked at my car and determined "it was a freak accident, and these things happen" and nothing was wrong with the car. Really?! Then the proceeded to tell me, something must have been lodged in my break pad, breaking of a chunk of it and thats what the problem was... Listen folks... We dont off road my car, we dont take it mudding or on dirt roads... Is that honestly even an option?! I have spoke with multiple car centers and explained the situation to them and they have all said the same thing, this is so rare for it to happen to a normal, everyday highway/city family car and something didnt seem right. I went back and had a meeting with the service manager and he was so cocky it astounded me, i know my spelling is horrible we can address that later! As a last effort I contacted Corporate and they said the dealership is supposed to contact them with cars having issues 4 or 5 times in the shop in a short period of time... They are supposed to call me back by friday but have assigned a case number and case manager to me. I just dont understand how difficult it is to make clients/customers feel safe and satisfied! The car sits in our driveway and we are now a one car family because its not worth risking our lives to drive this car that has multiple "freak accidents". Let me add, we live about 30-40 minutes away from the dealership so getting to and from is not just an easy quick task. Also Corporate asked me if we had been given any rental cars for our troubles and I said the one time they did give us one they tried giving me an elantra, hello... We drive a santa fe! I had to complain and throw a fit for them to call enterprise and get me a car comprable to what I drive and it took them 3 hours to do this. All other 17 trips in I have had to sit and wait or have someone pick me up (which is rare). When I walk into the service center they greet me by Face and Name... They know who we are because we are in their every 3 weeks. Ugh! Super frustrating!!!
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