Owners' Stories

I purchased a new 2009 2 wheel drive KIA SPORTAGE EX from FOLGER KIA, Charlotte, for my wife, a 64 year old retired 2nd grade teacher. She and I drove the car exclusively to run errands locally and to visit her mother who lives 150 miles away. No rigorous driving at all. Recently she was traveling by herself to visit her mother. During the trip she started experiencing transmission troubles on hills. The car had around 35,000 miles. When she returned home I took the car to Valvoline, who I've used for years without a service or warranty problem, to get a regularly scheduled flush. A few days later we made the hilly trip again and had transmission problems on hills again. I then drove the car to Folger Kia to have the transmission checked out. They told me that the transmission was "burned out" and refused to honor the warranty because Valvoline did the 35,000 mile transmission flush and then told me I owed them $2,000 plus for replacing an automatic transmission with only about 36,500 miles on it. Folger Kia will not accept my wife's word that the car's transmission was malfunctioning before I took it to Valvoline because her complaints were "undocumented." I paid for a quality vehicle and a five year, 60,000 mile power train warranty. I've received neither. It was a very foolish mistake to buy a KIA. And it was a very foolish mistake to buy a KIA from Folger in Charlotte. Folger Kia's General Manager was supposed to call me on Wednesday and a Kia regional service manager was supposed to call me on Friday to discuss this problem. Maybe resolve it. They didn't call. It appears that they are operating from a manual instructing them how to renege on their warranty. I also suspect that they "overfixed" my transmission and overcharged me. It's my honest opinion that my KIA had a defective transmission, a warranty with a loophole, and a dishonest and self-serving dealership. Yes. That's my honest opinion.

The ESC Off light would not go off and the cruise control stopped working in my 2009 Kia Sportage. The recall for this was for the '06 and '07 models only but my car is still under warranty. The dealership replaced the brake light switch and told me the tail light bulbs needed replacing because they were burnt out. They also said that the burnt out lights caused the malfunction of the brake light switch. I wanted to replace the tail light bulbs myself but they advised that the burnt out bulbs would cause the new brake light switch to malfunction again as soon as I was a few miles down the road. I ended up paying $40 for them to replace the bulbs when I know I could have replaced them myself for around $4 total. I think they scammed me.

At 25000 miles we had to have all the brakes replace do to corrosion, the hindges on the tailgate back window literally broke and shot the window into my husbands head. We were told the pieces were defective. My concern is how many vehicles are out there with this problem so please check the metal pieces that hold your window to the car. If they do not look right you should get them checked. my husband is 6ft 3 and 280 so he was able to catch the window. If it happens to a small person Idk? besides that we couldnt be happier with our kia and we bought it new.