Dodge Journey Reviews

By the second year, I had spent 3000$ on repairs that should’ve been still covered under a manufacturer warranty. They were not. Dodge only covers your car up to 60,000 miles for defects for certain parts of the vehicle. So why so many repairs in such a short amount of time? When there is a potential issue that would call for possible warranty replacement, you have to contact the dealership, pay astronomical diagnostic fees just to hope that it’s a fault on the manufacturer. Which I understand due process. For about a year, I had no issues. Car ran great. Smooth as a button took a few long haul trips. Fast forward to year number 4 with my journey and only having 73,000 miles. The following has had to be replaced.

Transmission is leaking and basically has to be rebuilt.

Now my car has been to 6 the different shops in the last year and the dealership 4 times. Now I’m stuck paying on a car that I can’t drive and is having more issues that nobody can figure out. Take it to the dodge dealership where they charge an arm and leg just to open up small parts of the engine to find the root cause. Which some people don’t have dealership money, some of us would rather use smaller shops with real experienced techs who have been working on vehicles their whole life and know exactly what they need to be doing. Now, here I am with a car that I’m still paying on and I have to send it to the junk yard. Because not even the dealership can figure out what’s wrong with it.

If you’re looking for a family car. Find something else. The journey will disappoint every time. Dodge won’t do anything to help other than to tell me to keep spending money to have it diagnosed and telling me there’s nothing they can do. So while my car is on its way to the junk yard after a year and 13,000$ in repairs. I will be plastering a sign on my car with lemons and a statement of DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY!

I’m really disappointed in dodge. I’ve driven dodge vehicles all of my driving life. This has been by far the WORST experience and I will not be giving dodge another dime of my hard earned money. The only decent engine dodge made was the 3.9L engine most commonly found in the older Dakota. Thanks dodge. Way to disappoint. Mind you. I do have a lot of knowledge in vehicles. So why so many repairs with so little miles and why is the engine not responding to factory replacement and after market parts? Didn’t realize lemons were still a thing! Guess this is what happens when computers are used for everything in these newer vehicles!

I hope everyone that reads this understands that Dodge is not honest and I don’t believe they care about their customers. I was totally shocked to find out all these problems happen at 100,000 miles. My last car was a Ford explorer 1996. 203000 Unfortunately I got rid of it for this. The only thing I did that I did to my afford was put an alternator in it and a battery.. So you definitely can understand my devastation with this. Literally it has 100100 miles and trashed maintenance was done on it. There’s no scratches there’s no dents clean inside and it’s trash. Engine blown transmission gone overheated. Now to find out even if I get this all Fix, there’s more crap about this car. And you don’t have more recalls. That is dishonest and highway robbery. Shame on you dodge.

Original review: I have had the overall most dissatisfying experience at this dealership and with this vehicle. I purchased a Dodge Journey from Cherry Hill Dodge in December of 2021 from Jayson. He sold me a complete lemon. A couple days after purchase I had a tire blow out and also electrical issues which resulted in me having to get a new battery and tire. It was working fine for a little while until March. My radio would randomly stop working, car wouldn’t lock and car started overheating. I took it to some local mechanic and they said I have a leak and replaced my radiator. In June my car wouldn’t turn on, I got it jumped and took it to Midas. They replaced the battery, again. In September I took it to Cherry Hill Dealership. They had my vehicle for 2 weeks and they replaced the radiator, water pump, and thermostat and some hoses. As soon as I drove it off the lot it began overheating.

I contacted Cherry Hill Dodge again and they told me to bring it back that Friday and I did. They had my vehicle for weeks leading into October. They did some other work on the vehicle and then was released to me October 12. Again after driving off the lot it began overheating again, I called back and they told me to drop it back off the next day. I was given a beautiful rental that the manager Roko offered me since I expressed how difficult it is for me to get to work and home for weeks without my vehicle. It was to my knowledge that he said that they are responsible for the payments. I dealt with Roko for the majority of my service experience. In the beginning he seemed to be very helpful and very understanding but throughout this process I have called every day trying to get information about the vehicle. I was told I would get calls back I never received.

I’ve been hung up on numerous times after being put on hold for over an hour several times. I even involved my mother and grandmother to see if someone would answer them because they wouldn’t correspond with me. It was interfering with my finances, job and other people I had to ask for rides. I called Roko and finally spoke to him, he said that he was waiting for the warranty assessor to come out and once they contact Dodge after they assessed the vehicle he would let me know. That day they came out but he didn’t call me, I found out because my mom called for me and told me what he said. He said that he just needs my permission to tear down my engine because if the warranty company doesn’t cover it I will be responsible for the tear down and reassembly of my engine which would be almost $3000. I tried contacting him back to tell him to not tear it down and I’ll figure it out.

He didn’t answer so I called again the next day and let him know. He told me I can come the following day to pick up my vehicle. When I got to the dealership I expressed I was billed $500 from Enterprise and that I was told that they were responsible for the rental payments. He argued with me, flipped the script on me, called me a liar, told me I haven’t called… it got the point his supervisor intervened. His name is Chris, Chris assured me that he would handle the rental situation and that I was good to go. Since October my car has been overheating and now it’s December and it finally stopped working. I called back to the Cherry Hill dealer, spoke to Chris and he was very aggressive and dismissive on the phone when I expressed everything I been through with the company and to no avail I was brushed away and was told he basically can’t help me.

I called around, researched what I can do because I feel like I was scammed at this dealership and with this car. I finally contacted someone from consumer affairs and expressed my experience. Today Chris called me expressing he was contacted by Consumer Affairs and they basically said that he has to help me. Hopefully this goes well because I’m financially, physically and mentally exhausted from this whole experience.

I took the car back to the dealership where I purchased it and they did a diagnostic which showed no problem but the problem persist. I had two other diagnostics done by other car services and they found nothing. On June 20, 2022, I called the corporate office and found out they have technicians that can assist Dodge dealership technicians in diagnosing what is wrong with a car. Something that should have been done in February when I first took my car there. Now they are looking for me to pay another dianostic fee. Very unfair.

Bads: We bought it new, 2016. Car was great. Except twice the engine stopped on the highway at 90km/h and the steering wheel was blocked. First time, service said it's a coding problem, and I should come back ONLY if this "problem" persists. Thank GOD it "persisted", the engine stalled again, same speed, middle of the road where everyone is driving at max. Thank GOD it was during the day and other cars noticed us and stopped. In reality that was a life/death situation. Anyway - this time service Turned OFF those codes. Another thing - I have to rebalance the wheels every 4-5 months.

Goodies: Now 5 years, we are still alive and the car is great. Absolutely not one problem. None. Nada (except the rebalancing).

Why we want another car? Third row is really small. But compared to the reviews for Quest or Odyssey that we are reading here, our Journey is a sweety.

Suggestions: The car dealership we bought it from are all a group of liars, manipulators, cheaters and real thieves. Using psychological manipulation techniques to sell cars. ALWAYS buy a new car with someone else beside you. I actually believed that I’m buying a 20K car, but it's actually a 46K.