Some more car thoughts and calculations
I have two pending offers on my car: $13,200 from Carvana for a straight sale, and $14,372 from a local dealership for a tradein. Here’s some of my thought processes about which one to take.
Finally have my car back
So, I went to the Kia dealership, and it took them an hour to figure out where my car’s keys were. Also they had trouble finding my customer record, because it turned out the service advisor misspelled my name, and they don’t have a good way to search their system. Disorganized clown-shoes operation.
But, whatever. I finally have my car back. And the click sound was gone at first but it came back halfway home. And according to the tech notes, guess what they did during the month they had my car:
absolutely NOTHING.
They decided that the sound was “normal EV motor noise.”
Why did they need my car for a WHOLE MONTH to tell me that?
The tech notes said (all misspellings theirs):
No abnormal noises were heard fro vehicle. Test drove vehicle and found no abnormal noises heard. Referenced TSB ELE234 and found the noises heard from the vehicle to be constant with the Note: Be careful to not mistake the abnormal noises for the normal noise of the EV motor in the vehicle
Did they also read the part of the tech note that says that the TSB’s clicking noise is intermittent and only occurs at slower speeds? Probably not!
And, I repeat, it took them A GODDAMN MONTH.
But at least I have my car back and a paper trail for what happens when the bearing fails.
Finally getting my car back, hopefully
I finally got in touch with someone at the Kia dealership who said that my car will be ready to pick up tomorrow, after “only” a month being stuck there. Ugh.
They said that they were not authorized to do the full TSB repair and that they could only do the first-level sound mitigation, claiming that it was “just normal EV noise” (it fucking wasn’t) and that they can only actually replace the bearing when it actually fails. Given how much I drive that’ll probably end up happening both well after the warranty expires and in the most inconvenient situation imaginable.
OH WELL. At least I’ll finally have my car back, and can stop putting up with this piece of shit loaner that’s frustrating to drive and gets 22MPG and has basically no cargo space.
But knowing how the dipshits at this service center operate, I’m not holding my breath for my car to actually be ready to pick up at my appointment time.
Car update
I took my car to the local Kia dealership to get TSB ELE234 taken care of on Tuesday. I still don’t have my car back or any indication of when I’ll be getting it back.
Followup
I contacted CarMax about the missing EVSE, and they pointed me to a hidden compartment for service equipment, thinking it might have been hiding in there. The EVSE wasn’t in there either, but there was the “tire mobility kit,” so it’s good that I have the official one too!
Anyway CarMax is going to order me a replacement EVSE as well. Nice.
I suspect they saw the NACS adapter and confused it for an EVSE, which is easy to do — I’d made the same mistake during my test drive and walkaround!
But yeah so far I am very happy with the CarMax experience.
Bye LEAF, Hello Niro
Today the Niro became available for test drive and purchase, and I got the next available appointment. CarMax was super busy and they weren’t able to see me until nearly an hour after I arrived (ugh) but the process went pretty well.
I gave the car a test-drive and found that I really like it, and the OBD check showed no battery degradation whatsoever, so I decided to go through with the purchase. So now I have the nicest car I’ve ever owned (after giving the LEAF a little pat and telling it I appreciated our time together).