So, H&A, just seeing if anyone else can give me some advice on where to go with this (if anywhere).
My wife has a car, it's a 2014 Kia Sedona and it's engine died on Friday. We had it towed to our mechanic and he said "yeah, that's a Kia thing for this age, you'll want to get it to the dealership". So, after calling yesterday and getting no response, today I got a service manager and he confirmed it's 99% likely a warranty issue and covered - but they are over a month out just to diagnose, then the parts get ordered, then a few days of work, he'd say to expect to be carless for over 2 months. He also said he's had other customers call other Kia dealerships and there is no one that isn't that far out for scheduling.
Now, we have a 2nd car, but it's my bug, and really not big enough to be the sole transportation for my family so we really need to have a solution to get us into something in the meantime. We have a few options - one is to get the dealership to consider a trade of her car even though it's pending that warranty work, one is to trade in my beloved car so we have something different in the meantime (my car is the least "upside down" on the loan), or obviously we could rent something, but that's stupidly expensive.
First, the dealership said Kia only provides loaners during the actual work - so the last two or three days it's in there with them - which is useless. Is there any hope in pushing on Kia's national support to try to get a loaner/rental reimbursement? Second, are their any car rental places folks now of that specialize in longer-term rentals that might be cheaper than the daily rates at Hertz/Enterprise? I assume my insurance wouldn't have any discounts? Anyone been in this boat?
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make a stink about it in as many public places as possible.
the only way to get anyone to do anything anymore is the hope they get shamed into it.
Rental ompanies like hertz are in even worse shape - they sold a lot of their inventory during the pandemic and now can't replace it.
Well, I think I might have found a solution - at least for a few weeks. I called Kia themselves and they will do rental reimbursement for us once the car is finished. However, it's only covering $42ish/day, which is not the cost to rent a Geo Metro at this point (if they still existed). But, at least I knew that they would cover something, so we could have a vehicle for a week or two to get our lives pulled together a bit.
I called my insurance company, and they don't offer a discount/coverage (I swear when I signed up they said they had a discount program with at least one rental company).
Then, it struck me - I work for a company whose primary business is fleet fuel cards and we partner with a bunch of rental/program car places. So, I checked with HR, and we do actually have a corporate discount with one of the rental companies and it's more than significant enough to get the price to where we can get fully reimbursed even if we kept it the whole time.
So thanks all - I know what you're saying spool32 - we really didn't want to buy something, we were just in a really sticky situation. I think this should take care of me - so mods feel free to close out, things sort of fell into place when I called the right folks!
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
The kicker is it's also a kia Sedona and is having engine problems ><
Well this is wonderful to read... my bro's car likely has a crack in the engine block (oil is everywhere), and they were quoted at 6k to replace it, for a car he paid 8k for. So he's now car hunting.