Hey Hackrs!
A little background on my situation:
I am in South Florida and last year in June I leased a 2019 Nissan Altima brand new. I am approaching my 1 year mark next month and the vehicle has begun to act up horribly in an extremely unsafe manner. The vehicles crash prevention sensors are defective so as a result the car thinks I am in an accident and the car slows down entirely. It only lets me accelerate to at most 1500 RPM and does not let me exceed 20mph. The first time this happened it was on a highway and I took it to service right after the incident. The car has been to the dealership a total of 3 times after the issue keeps on arising and the dealer has no way to replicate it thus they cannot provide a remedy. What should I do? Who should I contact? I feel unsafe with my car.
Sorry if I left out details- first time posterđ
Have you tried a lemon law lawyer in FL?
I have gotten in contact with one- but truth be told I had only gotten in contact with him based off a referral and I looked him up on google and he doesnât have many raving reviews. Not sure if the community has a good lawyer to offer which I am all ears for
Youâve probably got to get in touch with a few to see who youâre comfortable with, will take your case, etc.
And youâll need full documentation of your incidents, call/emails/meetings with dealer, Nissan, etc.
Good luck!
Cheers! Thank youđ¤
This is going to be most important. Service records with dates and mileage that show you took the car in multiple times, complained of the specific issue each time, and what their diagnosis was. If this is happening frequently enough, spend less than $80 on a dash cam and set it up pointed at the dashboard. Every time I take my car for service, I bring a document with âCUSTOMER STATESâ messages so the RO clearly says what I want it to say, not the Service Writers interpretation.
Be prepared to take it to multiple dealers multiple times beyond what youâve already done. If you have primarily been dealing with one dealer, take it to another dealer but make sure the RO shows that you reporter all the issues and what they did about them.
A good lemon lawyer will need to review all your ROs: get them unstapled/sorted by date/scanned. Having been emotionally wrapped up in several of these, I strongly recommend you type up a summary statement of what the issue is and what youâve done to try to get it fixed and send that. 1 to 2 pages max. You should probably meet two or three lawyers so think of the first one even if their reviews arenât stellar as practice (I talked to 3 in Ohio and 2 in California before I found the last firm which I used twice). See what questions they ask, make sure you have all the information theyâre asking for.
The most important suggestion I can make is: if youâre currently carrying any attitude about this problem, you need to drop it - immediately. Be professional and kind to every person that you deal with no matter how raging angry you are. Cars are mechanical and electronic: they break. None of the people you are going to be dealing with built your defective car, but if youâre going to survive a lemon lawsuit or get bought-out, know that youâre maybe at the 1/3 to 1/2 point today.
If they do find a problem and perform a repair, there is a good chance it will fix whatever problem youâre having. It might just be software or a sensor. You have to keep an open mind, but also keep bringing it back and keep reporting the problem if itâs not fixed.
The fact that this is the leased or financed makes no difference â in my experience with other leasing companies they wonât assist you even though itâs their car and you rent it. If this was just an annoyance you could let it go Until the lease is over, but if itâs truly a safety issue youâre digging in to win a fight where either
- The car is repaired successfully and you can drive it safely for the rest of the lease
- Nissan excepts there is an issue with the specific car and offers you a collateral exchange, so you get a different altima to drive for the rest of your lease
- They buy the car back and depending on your state lemon laws you might get back as much as 100% of the lease payments youâve made to date
Good luck: I only succeeded in 2 of my 3 lemon cases, and all three were (later confirmed) defects that couldnât have been repaired.
Thank you so much for this info! I really appreciate the lengthy reply! I have all the info as far as repair orders and everything Iâm just looking how to execute. Iâll be sure to get in contact with several attorneys and see what I could do. Again, thank you so much!!
This is fantastic advice. Without proof of this going on, youâre basically hoping for Nissan to settle out of the goodness of their hearts
I do have two videos of the situation happening but I havenât driven the car much since all this started to occur. But definitely video evidence is a must because it would be my word vs their words
With my CX-5 (whose plates eventually read CX-FAIL) I had a cell phone with a camera but dash cams really werenât a thing. The problem happened frequently but I could never get my cell phone out and get video recording to catch it, only a couple still pictures
I had to fight and fight with Mazda until they put a data recorder in the car which is basically a hard drive running a very tiny OS grabbing raw data off the bus, hooked up to an OBDâII port.
When the data recorder was hooked up, I was driving home from the store and the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree in the car went into limp mode and I had to pull over. Had to flatbed the car to the dealer to find out that the hard drive was full and the car didnât know how to handle it so it just shut down.
I donât own a dash cam now, but had I been going through this I would absolutely have bought one, and it wouldâve absolutely paid for itself.
My wifeâs lincoln that we lemoned had this weird issue where youâd lock the door and then the car would randomly unlock. Remarkably, we were able to get it on video once or twice, but that was a rough one to try to show evidence of.
How did this affect your claim? I imagine it must have been hard to explain to both your attorney/ Lincoln that there is a ongoing issue with no proof from service
Fortunately/unfortunately, we had a multitude of other issues. Iâm guessing the car had a weird grounding problem or something because it had numerous bizarre electrical issues that could never be sorted. Having evidence of the locks doing their thing definitely helped though.
Hey Hackrs!
Yesterday I posted about my defective 2019 Nissan Altima in south Florida and Iâd like to thank you all for the great advice! You have all been extremely helpful and I have gotten in contact with an attorney as well!
However, this morning I got a call from Nissan Corp. The call was from a rep from the service department (not the dealer) and asked me how my experience was. I let her in on the whole situation and what has been happening to my car. Long story short, she told me that because it is a new car and I have been to the dealer 3 times and I still have the issue, she recommended that I go the lemon law route with Nissan directly. She gave me a number for me to contact a specific department at Nissan which is in charge of lemon law to resolve my issue. She explained that I just have to submit docs and wait. Is it really as simple as she says it is or should I ride this whole ordeal with my attorney? Thank you so much guys.
Talk to your attorney⌠thatâs what theyâre there for
Thanks for the super quick response! I called my attorney to be, but went straight to voicemail 
Itâs a Saturday⌠leave a message
I completely forgot LOL! My mind is still on quarantine mode
I definitely double checked my calendar before saying it was a Saturday
I want to provide a brief update-
Nissan finally repurchased the car, and I am no longer in possession of the vehicle. I want to say thank you to the community because your responses/forum pushed me into the right direction! And through the forum I met the attorney who helped me through it all! I hope that this thread serves as a great reference for those who are in a similar situation (hopefully not)