Nissan

I'm not sure i've ever blogged the entire story about our car situation. Most of you that read this know all of the details but there are a few that don't. I'll start by saying that my dad has always leased cars. He had leased a Mazda 3 for me while in college. Well the lease was up and it was time for me to get a car. It was the first time I had dealt with getting a car for myself. We had looked for a long time but Zane and I decided we liked the Nissan Altimas. We ended up leasing one in July of 2008.

Fast forward to November. Texas Tech had just beaten Texas, the #1 team in college football so my friend/co-worker Ryan and I decided we wanted to go to Norman and watch the Tech vs. Oklahoma game. It took about 7 hours to drive there. We went to the game and it was FREEZING!!!!! Needless to say Tech lost...by a lot. When we got up on Sunday morning to drive back to Lubbock there were only 3000 miles on the car. Ryan was in the drivers seat and when he turned on the car it started shaking, chugging and smoke was coming out of the tail pipe. I just thought that maybe the battery was dead. So we let it sit and we go have lunch to let it cool off . We try again and it does the same thing.

Since it was a Sunday the dealerships were closed, all wreckers and car shops were closed...we were officially stuck. So we stayed an extra night in Oklahoma City. All of this time Zane is on the bus driving back to Lubbock so he was completely helpless. Monday morning we call a tow truck and they take us to the dealership. They give us a loaner car so we can grab some lunch and figure out what we are going to do. They figure out that 2 of the 4 cylindars were cracked and the entire car had gone into hydrolock. I'm not really sure what hydrolock means but it was bad. The proceeded to tell me that they have to replace the entire engine. "EXCUSE ME!? This is a brand new car!" They went on to say that I can drive their loaner car back to Lubbock for a few days and then drive back to Oklahoma City to pick up my car when it was ready and drive back to Lubbock. " Um, No! you will deliver my car to Lubbock when its done and we will be flying back to Lubbock today." I thought that when I got back to Lubbock McGavok Nisson would take care of me since I was their customer. They would NOT help me. No loaner car. No Customer Service. Nothing. McGavok ended up making the Oklahoma City Nissan dealership paying for a rental car for me. I filed a complaint with Nissan headquarters and nothing was done. Brent McGavok is the owner and he is a former Red Raider football player so Zane tried to get in touch with him MULTIPLE times and was always put off.

Once they delivered my car back to Lubbock nothing was right. The alignment was off, the brakes were squeeling, there was rattling under the hood everytime I turned, The car just didn't run the same. So I took it back to the dealership...they had left a wrench under the hood. For the next 6 months I was in and out of the dealership at least twice a month for something that it was doing. It is just unfixable. Zane and I researched the Lemon Law. Lawyers that we spoke with said that with the Lemon Law the problem has to occur 3 times, meaning in order for us to file for the Lemon Law they would've had to replace the engine 3 times. So we gave up. Since then we have just come to the realization that we are in an unreliable & unsafe car and to make sure that we have everything in order when we do travel long distances. We keep telling ourselves "we have one more year, we can suck it up and never deal with Nissan again". Don't worry, it was all under warranty.

Last Tuesday one of the new coaches came into Zane's office and said "Zane, I need to get some gear for the guy that's getting our coach cars for us" Zane said "No problem, who is it?" Coach said "Brent McGavok, with McGavok Nissan" and Zane immediately responded jokingly "No, i'm not giving any gear to that guy" from there the coach preceded to ask why and Zane told him the whole story. Turns out the coach grew up with Brent and wanted to fix the problem. Wednesday Zane gets a phone call from Brent's assistant asking us to come in and get things taken care of.  When Zane called me and told me I thought he was kidding. So Thursday we went into the McGavok Nissan dealership and the whole time i'm thinking to myself Are you kidding me? NOW you want to help us? When you find out that your customer works for the Texas Tech football team and he is the one that gives you free clothes? We saw Brent for 5 seconds when he was passing by while we were talking and he said "Hi Zane, we will take care of you this time". So he knows who Zane is.....grrrrr. Needless to say they did help us. We appreciate them helping us now and i'm not complaining but its not right. I am praying that the Altima was just a bad egg.

They cancelled our lease with the Altima and we started a brand new lease on this Murano!! I absolutely love it!