Terrible Experience

Written by Christoph Irmscher on 02-Apr-2008

At 32,000 miles the clutch on our 2002 Elantra gave out. Kyle McCune, the service manager of Hyundai Stephens, convinced me to have it repaired at their shop. (I should have followed my instinct and taken it to a AAA-certified workshop). Mindful of their 100,000 miles bumper-to-bumper warranty and Kyle's promise to see "what I can do for you," I had the car towed to Stephens. Bad mistake. Throughout the 5 days that the car was at their shop (they promised to look at it the first day and didn't get to it before Wednesday), we were lied to, told to be patient, and were then finally duped out of whatever coverage we might have had. Keith, the service representative, told us that the clutch broke because of our bad driving habits and because there was a "mouse nest" in it (apparently a tech term for debris, which even the general manager of Stephens hadn't heard of), etc. When Kyle showed me the broken part, he admitted that there had been no signs of abuse and that he didn't really know why it had broken or why Keith had told us about the mysterious "mouse nest." He promised to take the matter up with their "factory representative" and said he would get back to us. Well, he never did. A few days later, we got--sans comment--the credit card receipt in the mail (almost 900 USD, on a warranty-covered car). The general manager of Stephens, Mark, apologized for the incompetence of his staff but also didn't offer to make amends. And he said the "factory representative" (whom we apparently can't contact for an explanation, because according to Kyle he either has doctor's appointments or is in --week-long!--meetings) had turned our request for warranty coverage down. We called the national customer service number, which turned out to be a sham, too They employ people with people with better-than-average vocabularies, whose only function in life is to make you feel that something is being done (while in fact they do nothing). But then they call you back two hours later, talk about some mysterious arb