“They don’t put new batteries in used cars.”
A woman who purchased a used Volkswagen Atlas claims the dealership sold it to her despite knowing it had serious problems. Now she wants to know what, if anything, she can do about it.
Niccole White (@niccole.white) recently posted a series of clips explaining what went wrong with the purchase, which she says was made at a Louisiana Hyundai dealership According to her, she learned there was something wrong with it after bringing it to a mechanic not affiliated with the dealer, who surmised that she inadvertently purchased a problematic vehicle.
“Whoever had it before you let it overheat and nobody fixed the problem,” she says the service tech told her. “They sent me home with a cracked coolant reservoir,” she says of the dealership, which White writes in an on-screen caption was Matt Bowers Hyundai Metairie in Louisiana.
White adds, “They did not inspect it properly.”
She claims the car shut down on her while she was driving to work shortly after buying it. A fellow driver helped her push it off the road and gave her a jump start. But she says this was only a temporary fix. Days later, White says the Hyundai started acting up again.
The dealership reportedly told her the car would need a new battery, for which she says it would charge $400 plus tax. Instead she had a mobile mechanic do it.
The battery issue is not her most serious complaint about the Atlas. White claims the dealership concealed the fact that it had a broken reservoir component. This has her convinced it lied about inspecting the vehicle.
White purportedly took the Hyundai back to the dealership with her husband to complain to the manager. She says that the cracked coolant reservoir had been fixed but they neglected to replace the hoses, which she believes ultimately led to more problems.
White says the dealership refused to fix her car. They reportedly told her that there was nothing they could do, as it had been roughly six months since she bought it by then.
She says she was “beyond livid” because the vehicle cost her almost $40,000 and has given her nothing but problems since she purchased it.
While alleges that the dealership covered itself legally by claiming it inspected the Atlas. She also argues that the problems only became noticeable after driving it for a while, suggesting there was no way she could’ve known before buying it.
Some people suggested she should’ve done more due diligence before signing on the dotted line, however. “Did you take it for a pre-purchase inspection from an independent location?” one asked. White replied that she did not get it inspected, writing, “Shame on me for everything I didn’t do but they took advantage.”
She concedes that the purchase was “as is,” but suggests that if she’d understood what that meant, she may not have bought the SUV in the first place.
According to Adobe’s Business Hub, buying a vehicle as-is generally means that you accept responsibility for any repairs the vehicle may require.
“The legal term ‘as is’ means that you are purchasing a car—or any term—in its current condition at the time of the sale … as the buyer, you accept that repairs may be necessary now or in the future and that the seller is not responsible for making or paying these repairs,” Adobe states.
However, this doesn’t mean that White doesn’t have any potential recourse. If she can establish that the dealership knowingly sold her a vehicle with defects, she may be able to get some relief.
This primarily boils down to what is known as redhibitory defects. The law in Louisiana, where the dealership is located, says that “parties may agree to an exclusion or limitation of the warranty against redhibitory defects,” but provides that, “A buyer is not bound by an otherwise effective exclusion or limitation of the warranty when the seller has declared that the thing has a quality that he knew it did not have.”
This essentially means that if the Hyundai dealership knew the Atlas had these defects when she bought it, it may be liable.
In our conversation with White, she clarified the make and model of the vehicle she purchased, and said that there was “a lot [she] didn’t even say” in her online clips chronicling her issues with the Atlas. “Text messages [were] not being answered. When I have the issues like basically ignoring me nobody wanted to help me. And now my car is in the shop and I’m spending thousands of dollars because they neglected to replace those hoses like they were supposed to.”
She added that after her video garnered views online, she received a call from an employee at the dealership. According to her, the dealer is willing to work something out regarding her vehicle, in exchange for her taking down her videos. “The executive manager reached out to me last night wants to make it right cause he just joined on a month ago so he wasn’t involved in any of this when I bought the car but he wants me to take my videos down. I was just making a video based on principal at this point do I keep going viral with this and not let it stand or do I let them pay for whatever damages were done with the mechanic shop and let them get one over on me,” she wrote.
Motor1 has reached out to Matt Bowers Hyundai Metairie via email for further comment. We’ll be sure to update this if it responds.
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