“That’s what it says, right?”
A man says a Nissan dealership turned a routine oil-change coupon into exactly the kind of experience that gives car dealers a bad name.
TikTok user Mike Holland Jr. (@mike_holland_jr) stitched a video of a woman who says a Nissan dealership refused to honor a service offer it mailed her.
The woman, who remains off camera, shows viewers a mailer advertising a synthetic oil and filter change for $29.99.
“That’s what it says, right?” she says, holding up the offer.
She says she even called the dealership before making the trip and initially thought it would honor the deal. But once she arrived, she says that the dealership employees said her vehicle wasn’t the one advertised in the mailer and refused to perform the service for $29.99.
“Basically, they were trying to steal from me,” she says.
She warned viewers to “be wary” of “shady dealerships” and ultimately took her car to her regular, independent mechanic instead. That shop performed the service for $50, she says—more than Nissan’s advertised price, but without the back-and-forth.
Holland, who stitched her video, came down firmly on her side.
He says the woman did nothing wrong and argues that the dealership should have honored the coupon rather than losing a customer over an oil change.
His message to dealerships was simple: “Take care of the customer.”
“These are the reasons why dealers get such a bad rap,” Holland says. As of this writing, his video has just over 1,000 views.
Nissan’s own service offers often come with conditions. One current oil and filter offer on Fort Worth Nissan’s website, for example, says the deal is for Nissan vehicles but that “certain restrictions apply” and that the price, offer, and availability can vary by model.
That suggests the dealership in the stitched video could have had a legitimate reason for saying the woman’s vehicle wasn’t eligible.
The problem is that we don’t have an explanation from the dealership she visited, so we can’t tell from the video whether—or why—her car was allegedly excluded.
The bigger question is whether the dealership made those restrictions clear before she drove over.
The Federal Trade Commission warns that advertised discounts can be misleading when important eligibility rules aren’t disclosed upfront. It recommends confirming the details before making the trip and, when possible, getting the terms in writing.
More broadly, FTC advertising guidance says important conditions attached to an offer should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, not hidden somewhere customers are unlikely to notice or revealed to customers after they’re already there in person.
We don’t know exactly what was said on the call that the woman says happened before she visited the dealership in person, and the clip alone isn’t enough to establish that the dealership acted improperly. But if her specific Nissan was excluded from the promotion, that is the kind of detail a customer should know before making the trip.
Many viewers weren’t ready to take the woman’s side without seeing the rest of the mailer.
“I don’t think she read the flyer all the [way] through down to the fine print. There are details she’s leaving out,” one person wrote.
“Look at the fine print. Probably says some dealers don’t accept,” another added.
One commenter went further, arguing that the dealership shown in the video may not even have been the same one named on the offer.
They wrote, “First it says Nissan of Bay Ridge and you at Nissan Brooklyn. All Nissan dealers don’t carry the same coupons some are corporate-owned and some are private owned. They aren’t entitled to your coupons if they don’t qualify for them. It’s like when you see coupons that say ‘only at participating stores’ they don’t have to participate.”
Others, however, were less interested in parsing the offer.
“Anyways, the dealer is always out to screw us,” one person wrote.
But one commenter focused on the point Holland made in his stitched response: Even if the dealership had a reason not to honor the coupon, turning away a customer over an oil change could cost it more down the road.
“Agreed, oil changes for most places [are] a loss leader. The objective [of] any oil change is [to] create a relationship,” they wrote.
Motor1 contacted Holland via TikTok direct message. We’ll be sure to update this if he responds.
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