In praise of good service – Kia cars

Got a problem with my 4 year old Kia, basically the front brake caliper needs replacing. The car was bought from a car supermarket and not a Kia dealer 18 months or so ago.

Took the car into my local main dealer end of last week expecting a hefty bill and perhaps some push back about the service history of the car. How wrong I was…

Get the call from the dealer the same day. Good news, this issue is fully covered under the 7 year warranty and so is the labour so this will cost you nothing, bad news is there is a 6 week wait on the part to arrive. However, as that delay is their issue and not mine they’ll sort me a hire car out until it’s fixed.

15 minutes later I get a call from Kia HQ saying they have a hire car for me and can they deliver it to me the next day. Said car arrives and it is brand new (35 miles on the clock), similar size (and vastly better spec) to mine and is mine for as long as I need it, no mileage limit, no silly insurance excess, just drop it back at the dealer when mine is fixed.

So yeah, no real point to the post bar to say acknowledge good CS when it happens and to perhaps encourage others to look at Kia’s when considering their next option.

Wow. That is pleasantly good customer service!

That’s amazing, no issues since a purchase last August but I have to say our experience was good also, we had a monthly checkup call from the sales rep post purchase for three months, the last of which he offered to decline or continue to call at our choice.

My OH is 5 years in to her 7 year warranty, and one of the reasons she went to Kia after a couple of failed (bought new) Land Rovers.

Only downside to a Kia vs my BMW is that they require an annual service rather than a mileage-based service ‘plan’.

A couple of weeks ago it had a new NOX sensor under warranty.

Hyundai (same dealer, mostly same company) did this for me too.  Although I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have a caliper available. in my case it was a control module and this was during the chip crisis so a little more understandable.

Yep +1, MIL has a 9year old Kia Rio (?) that I bought used for her. She drives it to the Spanish border every year and has it serviced at Kia main dealer before she goes and I watch over her shoulder at the work/costs with MIL being in her 70’s and widowed.

Happy to report that the service she receives is really very good and the car has been faultless.

@molgrips, the car is not the most common of Kia’s so they apparently they don’t hold much stock of parts for it.
Either way, I’m not complaining, they can take as long a they want whilst I have a brand new car to use instead!

Yep, we’re on Kia #3…

One failed damper, replaced, no fuss

One manufacturer’s recall for some minor issue or other, “We’ve updated the satnav mapping as a courtesy as well”

Only downside to a Kia vs my BMW is that they require an annual service rather than a mileage-based service ‘plan’.

There’s much advice / YouTube videos that will tell why that’s a good thing, the BMWs Indy advice varies but generally suggests the services should be annual / between 5k – 10k miles disregarding the cars suggested service intervals.

Mines in for a major service today, and after that is going to a new local Indy garage that’s amounting a great reputation.

Lucky you.  Our 5 year old Kia is making a scraping noise from the gearbox, has no 2nd gear, is stiff to get out of reverse and slowly getting stiffer to get out of other gears and the gear lever no longer centres itself when in neutral.

The wait to get it seen (for diagnostics) at the dealers is 4.5 months.  The other dealer in town isn’t taking on new customers.

I have a 10 year old kia carens, dull as dishwater but nothing aside from consumables has gone wrong.  Interior trim plastics are a bit cheap and scratch easily.  I’d get another but they stopped making them.

When I bought it dealer said if it didn’t arrive on time they d lend me a car until it arrived.

I ll probably get another kia when this one dies, can’t beat them for the money.

Yep +1, MIL has a 9year old Kia Rio (?) that I bought used for her. She drives it to the Spanish border every year and has it serviced at Kia main dealer

Bloody hell, that’s a bit of a trek for an oil change

Our eNiro lease is up soon and Im seriously considering an EV6.
this is another tick in the box

“Yep +1, MIL has a 9year old Kia Rio (?) that I bought used for her. She drives it to the Spanish border every year”

She has a Rio and she drives toward l’Espagne?

Wow, that’s impressive! Did you expect such outstanding service from Kia when you first purchased the vehicle from a non-Kia dealer?

2.5 years into a new Xceed and we are exceedingly impressed by the service, not to mention how amazing the product is, not just for value.

I take the point about short service interval but servicing seems to work out at £140/year on average with a service plan inc MOT. Not sure a BMW X2 would have been less.

And honestly the KIA feels like the premium product compared the the BMW.

Is it really impressive though?  Car is under warranty, a safety critical part has failed and they can’t get a replacement – surely it is their obligation to give you a hire car, not anything extra?

The only extra thing is the length of the warranty but that’s a well known benefit of Kia and Hyundai.

We have the service plan inc MOT.  3 years for £540 upfront.

There are some elements of our Sportage which feel a tad less premium than my 320d.  The boot lid feels lighter/less acoustically damped, and the ride is a tad more jarring over potholes  but that could be the “eco” tyres which is suspect are a firm compound.  But other than that, it costs less in 2023 than my BM did in 2017, has many many more toys, is lots more technologically advanced, a pleasure to drive, saves baby robins daily (it’s the the HEV) and  overall I feel an excellent car.

Oh, and we got offered / recieved the free map / software update also.

She has a Rio and she dances toward l’Espagne?

fixed that for you

“Is it really impressive though? Car is under warranty, a safety critical part has failed and they can’t get a replacement – surely it is their obligation to give you a hire car, not anything extra?”

Well, I guess it depends how cynical you’re feeling @molgrips.

Is it just a case of them doing as they should? Maybe, yes.

But they’ve done it quickly, without fuss and without causing me any stress or inconvenience. And given how many threads you see about poor CS and companies not doing what they should I thought that was worth acknowledging.

Unrelated, has anyone else lost the button on the top of the posting box to do quotes, etc.?

Unrelated, has anyone else lost the button on the top of the posting box to do quotes, etc.?

I did the other day, but it’s been back for a while. I found that flipping between ‘visual’ and ‘text’ editors and back caused the buttons to reappear.  Amusingly, for me the quote and formatting buttons are back but the visual/text buttons have now disappeared.

Car is under warranty, a safety critical part has failed and they can’t get a replacement – surely it is their obligation to give you a hire car, not anything extra?

I had a Mazda Cx5 and one of the led headlights failed after about a year. The dealer said there were none in the country and it’d be about 3-4 months lead time, and they expected me to keep driving with a failed headlight until then. I had to raise a complaint with mazda UK to get a hire car, and even then they first offered a tiny hatchback rather than a similar sized car.

@wwpaddler

Which dealer?

@footflaps, Evans Halshaw in Stourbridge, front caliper for a Proceed.
Thanks!

Arnold Clark in Edinburgh.  Sorry I can’t count.  It’s only 3.5 months.  It’s booked in at the end of May.

I had two company Kia cars, a diesel Ceed and an EV Soul both were brilliant, reliable and trouble free and the local Kia garage was great for servicing. Shame I can’t say the same about my current VW id 3 though the VW dealer has been pleasant to deal with.

Took a while for Volvo to accept there was a problem with my bought used V40 (7yo with 78k on the clock) as it was using oil at the rate of 500ml per 1k miles, overall £5k worth of warranty work done & a nice xc40 to borrow whilst it was done. So yes some warranties are worth it – Volvo Select in this case.

Is it really impressive though? Car is under warranty, a safety critical part has failed and they can’t get a replacement – surely it is their obligation to give you a hire car, not anything extra?

This TBH.  It’s easy to complain about a company on social media now and companies definitely are bothered.

But they’ve done it quickly, without fuss and without causing me any stress or inconvenience.

Maybe, but more significant to me is the fact that the brake caliper died in just 4 years.

There are so many parts on a car that are constantly being refined and fettled, there will always be mis-steps now and then. I’m any case I’m sure Hyundai didn’t design and manufacture the caliper.

Oh absolutely….. But 4 years is fairly crap for a part that’s been in production for decades.

It’s not like brake calipers are a new development.

As an aside, my niece has a LR Velar. It went for its first MOT 6 weeks ago and it failed on worn ball joints – on a 3 year old “premium” car 😱

The dealer has supplied her with a loan car while the back ordered parts arrive (as said, 6 weeks and counting).

Decent service but no more than I would expect and doesn’t change my opinion that LR/RR are crap!

Also – bell curves. For any “design life” of a component there will always be failures that happen much earlier (which get complained about) and parts that last much longer (which nobody ever mentions)

I wouldn’t let anecdotal evidence detract from reliability surveys that show the Koreans being up there with the Japanese brands.

I never had a brake caliper fault on any VW cars but I don’t conclude they are reliable 😂.

And it’s the Koreans who have 5/7 year warranties, not VW.