Hi, the buyout amount on my Kia Stinger GT1 is 35k, can I trade this car into another dealership and apply that to a new/used vehicle? Or are you unable to trade it since it is lease though Kiamfusa/Hyundai? I understand the book value may be less than 35k so let’s say I got it appraised for 33k would I eat 2k and move on?
I am currently 18 months out of a 3 year 15K mile lease, I have 19600 miles on the car.
Primarily my reason for wanting out now is subpar dealership experience each time for service and continued paint issues.
Yes, its a tough spot, One local dealer 5 miles away, then the next one is about an hour, I have considered going to a Genesis dealership next, oh also its Aurora Black Nov17 build date.
Keep hammering the dealer, keep calling Kia Motors. They will make it right. They are building a brand, corporate has too much invested in this whole “premium” shit.
I agree, he should keep pushing Kia Corporate. However, I wouldn’t expect Kia to pay 100% of a respray for the car. They’re doing that for the Sunset Yellows, but no other color. They may do a “good faith” credit however and cover 50% or more of it, which is nice.
The truth about this situation is, OP can just hold onto the car and turn it in at the end of lease, making the paint issue Kia’s problem. It’s really not his problem, at the end of the day.
If his car is flaking paint off like dandruff, he’s still going to have a battle with Kia with excessive damage charges I would think. Better to get it rectified sooner rather than later where there’s no recourse. OP didn’t really clarify what “Paint issues” he’s experiencing, so I’m just making a wild guess.
It’s a fair assumption to make that paint flaking and chipping is the problem. This issue wasn’t relegated to just the Sunset Yellow Stingers, but the yellow ones were all Kia bothered to acknowledge.
I agree that OP should definitely raise hell in the meantime over it so he doesn’t get dinged at lease turn-in. At the very least, he needs to establish that this was an issue out of his control.
I will say that when I first took my Sunset Yellow Stinger in to get the paint checked out, the “expert” service manager swore up and down that the paint chipping was my fault based on my driving habits. I guess he assumed I liked to drive behind wood chippers or dump trucks… I don’t know.
The point is, service manager was proved wrong by Kia Corporate and took care of me, which I appreciated. I know a lot of other Stinger owners who did not get the same treatment.
Oh my story is fairly out of hand but here goes:
My car is Aurora Black, within the first month and first 1k miles I noticed chipping on the hood, fender, front bumper and driver’s door.
Like others have mentioned here I took it to the dealership who told me it was “rock chips”, and sent me on my way. OK great, I called Kia consumer affairs which arranged another trip back the the Kia dealership, this time for pictures for the district manager to review, I was then again told by the service advisor and service manager that it was rock chips and would not be covered, awesome. I wait a week or so and get a phone call, they are going to respray only the effected areas, so anything showing paint chips. I then get an appointment with the bodyshopthat the dealership uses and get those parts of my car painted. This is now about 6 months of ownership, many stops to the dealership and phone call with Kia but it gets done. It was great of them to admit to a problem and fix the issue.
I picked up the car and things look good at the time, no significant issues other than the Kia service advisor and technicians putting regular oil in the car.
Fast forward 8 months
Then all of sudden out of no where the paint starts the same issue again on the fender.
I call the Kia Consierge line and the first thing that happens after stating my case and previous work is 'Kia provided a one time good will previously and will not be able to do it again"
Ok awesome, so we call again this time get ‘escalated’ weeks go by and I get a call from someone in escallation. They arrange that I go the bodyshop that did the work to begin with, I go there and show them the same spots as beforehand, they’re reluctant but say they will paint it again.
So that happens or also the second time no loaner vehicle so that is fun to deal with.
Anyways sorry for the long post, but I have dealt with just about everything they can throw at me at this point with this car. It’s too bad I did want to buy it out but now I know this car will have issues for the life of it.
So for me since I’ve spent so much time getting it looked at and dealt with both crappy dealerships, bodyshops and dealerships that I’d just like to be out if it at this point.
Oh I’ll mention I have owned one vehicle from 0 to over 100k miles and never experienced any paint chipping ( 2007 Chevy Cobalt SS Supercharged) and then everything from Wrx,Wrx STI and Q50 and never seen paint issues like this.
TLDR- Kia service is questionable at best unless you have yellow for paint issues
The problem stems from Kia’s inexperience with painting aluminum body panels. Those panels that you have chipping on are aluminum and they applied an ineffective paint bonding process to them. I believe that Kia acknowledged the issue only on the Yellow cars because the Sunset Yellow color was a limited run to about 500 units. It was easier to recall and buyback a small number of cars as opposed to the rest. This allowed plausible deniability to Kia.
The car itself is pretty solid. I never had any significant issues with my Stinger besides the paint chipping, which on a lease, was okay to me so long as they resprayed it or didn’t give me any grief at lease turn-in.
I think the paint on newer Kia’s is just kind weak in general. There’s quite a few areas on my 17’ Cadenza where the clear coat is being stripped off from “basic” natural encounters.
Bird poop left after more than 1 day will strip the clear coat off where its covering (seems to be worse on a hot day)
Any rain water that pools on top of my car seems to strip the clear coat off where its pooling
(non-natural, but still) I play paintball and am always very cautious of parking FAR from the play area, but 1 time a ball hit my car (indirect shot that bounced off the ground). I wiped it off within no more than 2 hours with some water and a towel - clear coat stripped off.
