I participated in the great 18-month one-pay lease offerings back in January 2023 on the Nissan Frontier. On July 3rd, 2024 I returned my lease to Nissan of Tustin and received some generic handouts for turning it in. By August 2024 I was getting calls from Nissan USA (NMAC) that my car was overdue. I reached out to the dealer via email x6, phone message x2 and in person once when I was told by the sales guy he would make sure it got taken care of. A week or so later NMAC called again from collections and I had a three-way call where NMAC left a voicemail on a manager’s phone explaining the need for them to “ground” my car. At this point, I thought for sure it would be handled and I stopped hearing from Nissan Finance. On Monday however, I received alerts from all my credit monitoring that I had new derogatory remarks and my account was in default past 30 days. NMAC still had no notice of the car being turned in.
At this point, I’m now furious and didn’t know what to do anymore. I went to the local police department to file a police report that the car was stolen. Tustin PD had me email blast one more time warning them I was going to report the vehicle stolen, and Nissan of Tustin finally started responding. About an hour later they said they found the car. They’re still being incredibly incompetent about it, and on Tuesday put in a grounding notice to Nissan of August 3rd 2024, backdated 30 days from Tuesday which was as far as they could go. This leaves my account still in default and doesn’t fix the credit issues.
NMAC has been helpful and I’ve filed a complaint with them. Ultimately, I think it will get resolved in 6-8 weeks. I need to get the new bill for defaulted August, have it waived by NMAC, and then NMAC can work to remove the derogatory credit remarks.
I’ve filed complaints with Nissan USA, the CA DMV, and something I read about called the NVMB (New Vehicle Motor Board). Ultimately, I sense I will just have gone through a pretty terrible experience and at best just be back to where I was before I returned the car.
I guess I’m looking for anything else I can do to make this as miserable for the dealer as it has been for me. Nissan of Tustin was bought by Mass Automotive Group LLC earlier this year. Mass seems to have at most 5 total dealerships all in SoCal. Any ideas for recourse I could have? Anything I could reasonably ask for in damages?
Agreed, but I think I’m there on to step 3 now. Today, four days later, Nissan of Tustin finally delivered a signed letter to me admitting all fault and showing the July 3rd turn in date, which NMAC says is all I need to get through the next 6-8 week long process of recovering my credit (dropped 74 points on Monday). There’s a week long delay to close the account; then I have to get a default fee letter, then get it waived, then credit repair. I think it’s just a wait now.
What hurts any business the most is impact to future business. I didn’t read (and apologies, i just skimmed over your note) where you mass posted your experience publicly on all the major outlets: Google reviews, Yelp, dealer rater, Facebook, etc. From past experience that gets businesses’ attention real fast, especially if well and powerfully written. Sorry about your experience.
Did you not get a signed Odometer statement when you grounded the lease?
If NMAC fixes the reporting you shouldn’t have to do anything, it will just show as a derogatory until they do. Once your bureaus are updated, the next pull of your credit score will be back where you expect. You can file a dispute with all three credit bureaus, but it may not get investigated/fixed before this is resolved?
In the meantime, I wouldn’t wait for a default letter before sending this on to NMAC, whether or not the dealer contacted them directly.
What you have been through is horrible but looks like you figured things out. I’m sure you are furious but, unfortunately, I don’t think you are legally entitled to anything.
You can ask for things within the limits of the dealer. Maybe accessories you care about etc. and they might gift it to you in good faith. If they don’t, I would just leave them bad reviews and move on.
Thanks. Yes I have receipts from when I turned the truck in, but it didn’t do anything for NMAC. I’ve been in touch with NMAC daily and they’re being great and working through this with me. Incredibly apologetic and empathetic so far. They compiled a full complaint report against the dealer also. I’m pretty confident NMAC will get it resolved. They seem especially helpful as I’ve had a lot of Nissans over the year and actually replaced this one with the Leasehackr Titan deal out of Arizona in July.
I really just want to get some sort of satisfaction out of making the dealer feel like remorse and crap for doing this to me. So far they’re just aloof jerks about it and not taking it very seriously at all. Really looking for advice if there’s anything that customers can do that actually impact the dealership. Online reviews I have done but those are so plentiful now they don’t seem to have the same impact they used to. Does a NVMB complaint or DMV complaint do anything? A report through Nissan corporate? Any other avenue I’m missing to take the fight back to them?
I’m sure this is the right answer. By next week hopefully I’ll do just that. In my business we have like an industry regulator - maybe was hoping that existed and they might make the dealer have to fill out annoying reports or something. Nissan of Tustin isn’t accredited by the BBB. Just looking for something that would frustrate the dealer back.
Ideally, you should try to get a benefit from them without frustrating them. Realistically, IMO, the most you can do is to leave a bad review and most likely they won’t lose their sleep over it. I would try to frustrate them if they don’t show you any good faith. Even then, I would free my mental space from this ASAP as things are resolved.
I’d just run away from this dealer completely. No sense in trying to draw water from the stone.
They clearly didn’t care, so if you mass blasted it on google reviews, auto trader, cars.com, etc then that’s gonna likely get your message across vs some kind of monetary amount (which you’d likely never get) or something like free roof rack or floor mats
maybe you can find a lawyer who can work on the case for a fee if case won, consult whether you can win big if sue for damage and loss (at least a few hundreds thousands), split 50/50 or even in favor of the lawyer, to get your revenge
well, I am not dreaming, I am not familiar with the field, so I do not know what is out there as options. But lack of attention from the dealer did cause substantial damage and loss (consider time, mental efforts, loss of wage, etc) to the OP, it is up to be defined by his lawyer if he wants to hire one.
