“I’m done with Hyundai playing with my feelings.”
A Hyundai owner says she’s at her “breaking point” with the brand after bringing her white vehicle in five times to fix a recurring paint-peeling issue.
TikTok user Alyssa Kay (@alyssakay_) says she’s been working to fix her Hyundai Elantra’s paint job for two years.
Kay says her exterior aesthetic woes were compounded after her mother took her car to get washed for her birthday. Afterwards, she noticed that large chunks of paint were missing from both the roof and door.
“Mind you, the door was painted six months ago,” she tells her followers. After bringing her vehicle in for inspection, dealer reps purportedly told her they found additional paint peeling on the trunk.
She says that she’s been in constant dialogue with Hyundai’s corporate offices and that “70 percent-80 percent” of her vehicle has already been repainted. She adds that Hyundai sent her Elantra to AW Collision in Las Vegas, and accused the business of “botching” the paint job. She also claimed the company had cut the lines to her car’s backup camera as a result of what she describes as shoddy workmanship.
Kay went on to state that she had to involve corporate yet again after the business refused to speak with her about the work on her vehicle. After multiple paint jobs, she requested that her Hyundai have all of its paint “stripped” and re-painted.
“I’m done with Hyundai playing with my feelings, playing with my car, playing with my time,” she says in her video.
Additionally, she asked that AW Collision be kept away from her vehicle as she wasn’t happy with the service it provided. Her third ask, which she calls negotiable, is to have her Hyundai repainted another color. That’s because she believes white paint is more prone to peeling.
There are some anecdotes online that support this theory. Consumer Reports received several complaints from white sedan owners who said paint sections fell off their vehicles.
Later in her video, Kay says the Hyundai rep told her her vehicle would have to be returned to AW Collision. That’s because, Kay explains, the warranty program listed the company as the one to fix the paint. This confounded her. She says AW Collision told her that Hyundai wouldn’t be working with them any longer.
What’s more, Kay says, is that the automotive aesthetics company “overcharged” Hyundai and claimed to perform work they didn’t satisfactorily provide.
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She also claims that Hyundai urged her not to communicate with AW Collision out of fear that her issues with the company would “escalate.” She feels this request took away her voice in advocating for proper work on her ride.
After the call, Kay said her vehicle was once again in AW Collision’s care.
After they took the car, she remembered her child’s Christmas presents were in the trunk. As she considered retrieving them, she says she was shocked to see it was being painted at a gas station. But because Hyundai told her not to contact AW Collision, she opted not to retrieve the presents.
Hyundai hasn’t issued a recall for paint peeling. However, it did issue extended warranties for its factory paint jobs on “seven of its vehicles,” Repairer Driven News reported. The outlet quoted Hyundai as saying that “manufacturing issue[s] with…paint on Hyundai[s] is extremely rare and…only occurred in isolated incidents.”
The models that received protracted paint coverage are as follows:
Motor1 previously reported on a Palisade owner who noticed large chunks of paint missing from her vehicle. Unfortunately, the dealership experience wasn’t ideal, and she says she had to bring the car in multiple times to address the issue.
The issue is widespread enough that social media forums, like one Facebook group, were established just so Hyundai owners could raise awareness of the alleged problem. One concerned Elantra driver wrote on the r/Hyundai page on Reddit that they, too, had heard of “some kind of paint recall” and wanted to know whether their 2015 Elantra was included in this warranty extension.
Others who replied to the post said they had a terrible time getting their paint fixed. One advised people dealing with this issue to bypass dealership workers altogether and contact Hyundai corporate for assistance instead.
Another complained, “I got told to kick rocks for my 2019 Elantra’s paint peeling.”
In an update earlier this week, Kay said the matter has yet to be resolved. “I’m still waiting to see if I can get my entire car repainted, but at this rate, I don’t think it’s going to happen,” she wrote.
Motor1 has reached out to Kay, Hyundai, and AW Collision via email for further comment. We’ll update this if any of them reply.
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