I bought this car new in 2002 - it had 33 miles on it when I pulled out of the dealership. Never had a problem with the car - always took care of the "normal maintenance". Fast forward to now - the car is 4 years old with 69K miles on it, 90% of those miles are highway miles - I commute 25 miles each way to work 5 days a week. About 10 miles from work one morning, my check engine light comes on - the car is running smooth, so I continue to work. As I go to leave work, the car won't shift out of first gear and won't go over 5-10 miles per hour. Kia towed the car for free to the closest dealership. Ends up, the service department tells me the transmission needs replacing - they don't know WHY, not sure what broke, only that it needs replacing. Then the big hit - it's NOT under warranty because I can't reproduce a receipt of having the transmission flushed @ 30K and 60K miles. Now - my manual says "normal maintenance" is inspect transmission fluid up to 105K miles THEN have it replaced @ 105K miles. Turns out, the state of NC is in the "severe maintenance" schedule - which REQUIRES flushing the transmission every 30K miles - no one ever made me aware of this. They are adamantly refusing to pay for a new transmission - hey can replace it with a rebuilt transmission for $1500, again not under warranty. I had the transmission flushed @ 30K miles - I have no receipt. I would NEVER buy another Kia again - despite this being a decent car up until this point.
Again - the car had NO PROBLEMS until the transmission died. It wasn't shifting hard, nothing that would have pointed to something going wrong in the transmission.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
I bought this car new in 2002 - it had 33 miles on it when I pulled out of the dealership. Never had a problem with the car - always took care of the "normal maintenance". Fast forward to now - the car is 4 years old with 69K miles on it, 90% of those miles are highway miles - I commute 25 miles each way to work 5 days a week. About 10 miles from work one morning, my check engine light comes on - the car is running smooth, so I continue to work. As I go to leave work, the car won't shift out of first gear and won't go over 5-10 miles per hour. Kia towed the car for free to the closest dealership. Ends up, the service department tells me the transmission needs replacing - they don't know WHY, not sure what broke, only that it needs replacing. Then the big hit - it's NOT under warranty because I can't reproduce a receipt of having the transmission flushed @ 30K and 60K miles. Now - my manual says "normal maintenance" is inspect transmission fluid up to 105K miles THEN have it replaced @ 105K miles. Turns out, the state of NC is in the "severe maintenance" schedule - which REQUIRES flushing the transmission every 30K miles - no one ever made me aware of this. They are adamantly refusing to pay for a new transmission - hey can replace it with a rebuilt transmission for $1500, again not under warranty. I had the transmission flushed @ 30K miles - I have no receipt. I would NEVER buy another Kia again - despite this being a decent car up until this point.
Again - the car had NO PROBLEMS until the transmission died. It wasn't shifting hard, nothing that would have pointed to something going wrong in the transmission.
- Sarah D., Burlington, NC, US