Hyundai Sonata

She manages to get her car off the interstate and onto the shoulder. She calls emergency services and they send someone out to assist us with getting the car off the interstate. Once we get the car to a safe location, the emergency services guy and myself began to inspect the vehicle to see if it could be the battery. We replace the battery and think that is the fix, well it wasn't. We get the car to start and the car is able to run but turns off again, it did the same thing it did when she was driving on the interstate. The car won't hold a charge and it sounds like something is knocking in the engine. Ultimately we ended up getting the car towed to our house.

The next day comes and I call Hyundai's corporate hotline to see if were are any recalls for her car and they said no. Come to find out the campaign closed and no one from Hyundai got in touch with us. We are a military family so we do move after every couple years but my wife's number has stayed the same and when we move, we make sure to get our mail forwarded. Anyways, the agent on the phone tells us that there may be a recall and to take the vehicle to a Hyundai dealer.

We take the car to a local mechanic shop and he tells us that the engine is falling apart from the inside out. We find a Hyundai dealer and take the car there. Come to find out, there is a recall for her engine. The service member gets the info for the car and does a write up to get the request sent up to Hyundai's recall decision center. While the service agent is doing the write up, he tells us that she is not the only person having this issue. He shows us a half of phone book thick of other people who are having recalls for the same issue.

Fast forward a couple days, we get the vehicle towed to Hyundai, the write up is done and Hyundai DENIED to get the recall fixed. Their reasoning is "engine neglect" and that a piece of the engine is not covered under the recall. We ask, how is it "engine neglect" when we take the car to get regular oil changes and maintenance done on the car. We have receipts of oil changes and repairs that were performed on the vehicle. We call up to Hyundai to get a case a number and to talk with the case manager who denied the claim; the misses who wrote gave us our case number was very helpful and understanding. She tells us we have to 3 to 5 business days for the case manager to get in touch with us.

Fast forward to the 5th day of waiting and we get a call from the case manager. We ask him why was the recall denied when we have taken car of the vehicle since we have had it in 2016, and he begins to tell us that since we did not take the vehicle to a certified Hyundai dealer and don't have records of the oil changes and maintenance, that was the ultimate deciding factor. There are plenty of ASE certified mechanics and shops that know how to work Hyundais and other brands of cars. Everything that was described in the recall for the Hyundai engines happened to my wife's car. Ultimately, I would suggest to not buy a Hyundai. Hyundai will NEVER get our business again and I will be sure to let EVERYONE I know to not buy a Hyundai.

After about three weeks, they told me that Hyundai hadn't approved because my car passed one of the tests, and they could not replace the engine unless I paid 9k for replacement. I have been in a financial crisis for the last few months, and this incident happened to my car. If this model has had tons of recalls due to the engine problem, mine should not be excluded, even though it passed one of the tests. I was asking myself why I bought a car from a car manufacturing company that does not have supportive and responsive customer service. Besides, I had to pay over a thousand dollars to rent a car while they had my car, and in the end, they charged me 350 dollars for the diagnosis. If you ask me, I would never recommend buying a car from Hyundai.

Then they blame the customers for lack of maintenance to have an excuse not to replacing the engine. Knowing that with or without oil changes in the Hyundai sonata 2011 -2012 models the engines will eventually seize anyway. I've reached out to their company over 300 times trying to resolve this matter and I'm still in the same place I started at a month ago. I want to sue for pain and suffering. I've been without a car since Nov 9, and it's Dec 20. Hyundai has put me and my family life in danger on numerous occasions, with their faulty and defective parts causing two near-death experiences. Hyundai Sonata has had a recall on every part, and I consider them unsafe and dangerous.

About a month ago my check engine light came on again, took it in and was the Catalytic converter-They tried to fix it, stripped bolts and had to take the turbo off and send it to an outside machine shop. They had my car for 3 weeks. Runs sluggish, no get up and go anymore and Hyundai won't do anything for me. Worst part is I have a Palisade and that car is starting to fall apart at just 40k. Stay away. they are terrible

During this time period I was informed that the dealership could not provide me a loaner car because all their loaner cars were loaned out (which should maybe tell you something about the quality of vehicles they build). That said, the dealership told me to rent a car and that Hyundai of America would reimburse me the cost of the rental. I insisted on getting details on the reimbursement process and stipulations. Furthermore, I wanted the details in writing. I was unable to get that. After speaking with several people at the dealership and two different case managers at Hyundai Consumer Affairs I was given only a vague reassurance that so long as my rental was less than $60 a day then Hyundai "should" reimburse me. It wasn't the concrete information that I wanted but I also needed to get to work somehow and I was tired of playing phone tag.

During the time my car was in the shop being repaired (under warranty) I racked up $4,737.64 in rental fees. On May 16, 2022 I submitted my reimbursement claim. Jump to today (09/19/2022)- I get a call saying my reimbursement has been approved and they will cut me a check on the 23rd (meaning I still have not received anything). They also tell me that the check will only be for $3,616.65 (a difference of $1,120.99) because they were not going to pay for the Damage Waiver or satellite radio I added to the rental cars even though with those additions the cost per day was under $60.

This is theft in my opinion. I attempted multiple times to get this exact kind of information out of them before I began renting cars to no avail. Yes, I could have gone without the Damage Waiver but I wanted to cover myself should anything happen to the rental. Yes, I could have gone without satellite radio (and would have if I'd known the rules of the game up front) but I wanted the rental to be near as comfortable to the car I owned that needed repairs through no fault of my own.

As far as I am concerned, with the warranty they were providing (that was a large selling point for me) I should have to pay nothing due to their faulty engineering. I was less than thrilled to be driving non hybrid rentals and paying more in gas every day. I was less than thrilled with the amount of time and energy that it took to check on the status of my vehicle and get answers about a loaner/rental. Which, by the way, has a very real cost to me as in the form of taking time away from work.

I am less than thrilled about carrying a balance on my credit card for the rentals as they would not reimburse me for the rentals until the repairs to my car were complete. And I am less than thrilled that it has taken from May 16 till now to finally hear that a check is going to be cut to me in short order. Because if it were the other way around and I took 6 months to pay them the nearly $5K I owed, they would send me to collections. Furthermore, the check being cut for $1,120.99 shy of what they rightly owe me in accordance with the vague parameters they provided me around my reimbursement claim is not only unacceptable but criminal. My recommendation is to not buy from this company.

When I tried appealing with Hyundai, I was told that once the original claim is denied, there is nothing else Hyundai can do for me. I am pretty much out of luck and need to pay out of pocket to repaint the entire vehicle. In my opinion, this is a very poor customer approach. If I contributed to the issue in any way or if it was just a small area that was affected, I would have considered handling it on my own. However, since the issue is caused by Hyundai's known problem with poor quality of paint/paint job, expecting a customer to cover the cost to fix it is unreasonable.

I can understand that warranty cannot last forever for things like engines, for example, but peeling paint is not a normal "wear and tear" process (if it was good quality to begin with). Again, the issue is known and widespread. I am not sure who from Hyundai may read this review, but I do hope that it will prompt Hyundai to revisit their decision. Otherwise, this is the last time I will ever buy or recommend Hyundai to anyone because in my eyes, I've been sold a lemon, a bad product the company knows is bad and won't take ownership of the problem. It's just poor business.