Financial Reflections

I own two cars, one is a cheap paid-for-in-cash ride that I use to get me to my commuter van, the other is a much newer used car, financed at a low rate through my credit union. The paid-for car has over 150,000 miles on it and the newer one has only 56,000. So of all things, I wouldn’t have expected the one with 100,000 fewer miles to be the one that has given me fits, but that’s exactly what’s happened.

I told of my car care woes with my older car before, so I’ll spare you that sob story. But the newer car just completely overshadowed the older one when the transmission completely gave out and we were handed a $4,500 dollar repair estimate. That’s not a typo. They wanted to charge me almost twice what I paid for my other used car for a “refurbished” transmission. When we questioned why a transmission would have a catastrophic failure at such a young age, they claimed that it was rare and almost never happened.

I was so upset I couldn’t even call the dealership back after I heard their voice mail. What to do? I called local repair shop wanted $5,800 for the work! They said they would have to buy the refurbished transmission from the dealership, who would just jack up the price they paid for it.

What to do? Here’s three things I came up with:

1. Research. The internet is a great ally here. I knew the transmission on that particular make and model vehicle had some issues, but If I had dug just a bit deeper, I’d have realized it was a massive problem. One search and I found hundreds of stories of consumers who had their transmission fail just like mine did between 10,000 and 75,000 miles. One transmission failed at just 13,000 miles! i’d have never gotten it if I had known. The dealer also had a big hole in their “this never happens” story.
2. Negotiate. I have to thank my wife for this — she’s a great negotiator. Armed with our research she marched down to the dealer and asked to talk with the manager. A call from the manager to the car’s manufacturer led to an 80% discount on the transmission repair. Others from our research who fought and won got about 70% off. I do have to respect the manufacturer enough to acknowledge that they were willing to pay up for a transmission that never should have failed that early on just about any make of car, especially a “luxury” SUV.
3. Maintenance. One thing that worked in our favor is that the car was regularly maintained at that dealer and the records were there to prove it. It wasn’t like we neglected the car for years and then complained. Maintenance can also lengthen the life of anything, including my old car that might have gotten even more than the 180,000+ miles it had before it finally croaked.

We dodged a major bullet there and came out relatively clean. We just love that SUV, but it has a some serious repair problems, especially with the transmission. We have a 12 month/12,000 mile warranty on the refurbished transmission, so about 10 months or 10 thousand miles from now we have to decide if we are going to keep or trade it in. More on that when the time comes…