Yeah, kinda figured I was fucked. Story of my life, financially anyway.
Should’ve done more research. My previous car lasted 231,000 miles with virtually no issues besides general maintenance which I did myself.
Certainly appreciate the advice so far. Never been the kind that likes attention so the story route with a local paper wouldn’t be an option. Not to mention I’m a guy with a strong sense of doing things right and not getting hand outs. I fucked this up, not looking to blame anyone but me.
Might try to email some Kia corporate to see if they have any options available or find out why this car isn’t included in the recall.
I wouldn't interpret it that way.
Sure, you made a mistake, but your mistake was to reasonably expect fairness in a system where every other party had lawyers draw up documents to protect themselves in the event of an unfair result.
There shouldn't be a reality where someone can go to a dealership, buy a seemingly great car, and expect that it could die a few days later and have absolutely no recourse.
The average person doesn't have the awareness or skill to be able to prevent this from happening to them the first time, which means it's an unreasonable system.
Legal courts don't even hold people to the standard of asking if they did everything in their power not to get screwed, they typically hold people to the standard of what a reasonable person would do.
Perhaps a court would hold you to the standard that a reasonable person would expect that a car would die just a few days after purchase, but they might not.
Did you make a.mustake? Sure.
Were you set up to be the fall guy who has to pay for a lemon car while everyone else profits from you and protects themselves with legal cover? Oh most certainly.
I'm not convinced that an entity other than you contributing to the costs is actually a "handout."
As someone who has run businesses, I've paid out for much less egregious issues and not considered my contribution a handout, but instead recognized that the client was getting fucked and I didn't want to be part of fucking them, so I contributed what I felt was my fair share of the solution, whether I was legally obliged to or not.
I didn't feel generous, I felt responsible for my part in an unfair situation.
Covering ones ass in business and wiping your hands of responsibility on legal cover may be the norm, but that doesn't make it right.
I understand not wanting news exposure though. That's why I specifically included that caveat. Many people aren't comfortable with that. I personally wouldn't be. However, that advice doesn't come from me, it comes from a very, very good lawyer who insists that it's the superior way to deal with bad business as opposed to taking the legal route, which is ALWAYS stacked against you as an individual.
When you contact Kia though, I would *strongly* recommend not writing the email yourself since your personal responsibility taking is likely to come through. Find someone who is good at outrage to write it for you. Companies interpret outraged correspondence as a warning shot before someone goes public.
They will not read your email with a view to what is reasonable or fair, they will assess your probability of going public or engaging in litigation and then risk-assess the value of shutting you up with money from there.
My formula is always to go in guns blazing with hysterical outrage and then calm it right down to reasonable the second someone is pleasant. I'm sending the signal that I can easily be appeased with money.
This works much, much better if you can find a direct email for a VP at the company. These are usually most easily found by tracking down the charities they associate with, because there's often some publication somewhere that has a direct contact for them.
VPs LOVE cracking down on their middle managers, so your email gives them an excuse to shit hard on the people below them, perhaps quelling some talk of promotions or bonuses in the meantime because "LOOK AT HOW YOU CREATED THIS PR NIGHTMARE!"
Plus then you bypass all of the gatekeepers who are trained/pressured to deflect you.
That's basically what the news story option does. It escalates your complaint right to the exec level without you having to track them down personally.
I did this to my bank once. I found multiple VP emails. 20 years later I still get treated with kid gloves in my home branch because there's probably some big red alert that pops up to every teller when my account opens and they immediately call over a senior person to take care of me.
I made a mistake too back then. I signed loan papers that I knew weren't right for my situation, but I reasonably assumed it could be fixed by someone later on who knew the products better.
I needed a small amount of cash immediately for a deposit, and the account manager was insisting that the product I needed didn't exist. So I just signed, knowing he was wrong, and figured I would get someone more knowledgeable to fix it.
I had no clue that changing it after I signed it was almost impossible. Sure, I could have asked, but the guy obviously didn't know his shit anyway. I reasonably trusted the bank to behave reasonably, and they did not.
So I set off an executive sit storm.
