Kia of Lansdale

BUYER BEWARE: Avoid Kia of Lansdale, especially their "Service" department. The quotes here are intentional because what they provide can't be accurately defined as service.

Let me share my experience. I have a 2006 Kia Sedona that started having a problem where it periodically wouldn't start. After a little digging on the internet I find that Kia has a Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) out to diagnose this problem. In other words, they are fully aware that some 2006 Kia Sedona's have this problem. It's a potential problem with the Alarm relay, which is hard-wired into the fuse box under the dash.

So, I set the appointment with Kia of Lansdale to have them use the TSB to diagnose the problem. They needed to keep it for a day, since it's an intermittent problem, and they need to diagnose it in the "no-start" state. As many families with young children understand, when you have an issue like this where your car is in the shop all day it causes significant inconvenience. My wife and I made the arrangement we needed to make to have our son dropped off and picked up from school and left the car at the shop.

About midday, the "service" manager, Scott, calls me to explain that they can't get the problem to replicate and informs me that I owe them $80. I ask him why I owe him money when he didn't do the one thing I asked him to do. He said, "my mechanic spent time trying to replicate the "no-start", and we ran our shop diagnostics." I told him that I didn't ask him to run the shop diagnostics, nor did I authorize them to be done. I told him it wasn't fair to me to charge me $80 for providing absolutely no value. To which he replied "I have to pay my mechanic".

Ok, so they spent MAYBE one hour trying to get my car to not start. What mechanic makes $80 per hour? Clearly, I'm now paying for overhead and contribution to profit. Why should they make a profit off of me when they did literally nothing of value for me?

If Scott has said "we spent an hour on your car, so I have to charge you something to pay the mechanic. I'll give the service to you at cost" ....and charged me $35 or so, I probably would have been fine with it. But to charge me the full rack rate? To make a PROFIT off of me and provide no value? Ridiculous and unethical!

And on top of this, Kia KNOWS about the problem! There's a TSB out on it and it's a design flaw. Why wouldn't Kia want to stand behind their products?

When I went to pick up my car, Scott had taken 20% off my bill to "help me out". Unless their mechanics are making $133,000 per year, this amount still means I'm contributing to overhead and profit on a transaction where Kia of Lansdale provided ZERO value.

I feel like I was robbed and treated very poorly. If you have to bring your Kia into a dealership to get serviced, avoid the Lansdale shop like the plague. Apparently, they don't mind cheating people.