Bye Bye Nissan

"Dealer" and "heart of gold" in the same sentence? Dream on. Let us know how superb your service is in a year or two. And if there is any $$ left in your wallet. Good luck. Bob

95 SE Auto 89 SE Auto traded

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003 19:15:53 -0700, "Not James" postulated:

been there, done that in the 90's. It's fine when you pay the usurious scheduled maintenance charges during warranty, get your nice loaners, are called "sir" and treated thoughtfully, but DON'T keep your car beyond the 36 months...if anything goes wrong, they'll continue to be courteously helpful but you better get a second mortgage. Even the independent repair shops will treat you like a walking invoice! Those cars are nice, but overrated; mine was broken down or towed much more often than my Max. I ended up buying my own parts and finding a small german garage to install my parts for hourly labor, when I could anticipate another part failing.

ROFL! Before you look at your first repair bill, make sure you don't have a heart condition, are not pregnant, and keep your hands inside the car AT ALL TIMES. A few years from now you'll be saying, "gee, if I had kept the Maxima I could have saved $xx,xxx" (yes, that is tens of thousands of dollars).

I'm really not being a jerk, I hope you enjoy the car, but my point is that you're trading one set of headaches for another. German cars are undeniably fun to drive, but they're second only to the Korean makes in their horrid reliability. I speak from experience.

Love the car, hate the service. That's how it is with Nissan. And in my experience, Infiniti too.

These are some of the very best cars on the planet. Just think what Nissan could do if they spent any effort whipping their dealers a bit. Nissan dealers are near the bottom of the barrel. Ghosn, are you listening? Of course not. Nissan is totally divorce from their core customers, which are right here at this site telling them what the need to know.

So, I drove that '04 Solara the other day. Nice. Fast. Comfy.

Drove the '04 TL the same day. Nice. Faster. Comfy.

Both dealers want MSRP. I laughed at them, especially the Acura dealer: "You can't give me a brochure, you can't get me the color I want, you want MSRP, and you want a deposit for a non-existent car that isn't even on a truck somewhere?"

That Acura dealer does have a primo service department though. Tempting.

JM

I have dealt with two different dealers here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and so far, over the years, I'd rate my experiences as reasonable.

If the US dealers are so bad, why hasn't corporate noticed the difference themselves.

rtt

I keep seeing similar threads in this newsgroups.

I for one can not confirm the bad Nissan Dealer experience with my

2000 SE. My dealer here in Phx Ariz., Midway Nissan, is excellent.

I have had the car in several times under warrantee - sun roof motor (well if you buy one of those you deserve trouble,,lol), power window switch, and the dreaded brake shudder.

I can not complain about the service on any of these; the sun roof was problematic to get fixed - but they called in the factory tech for it, and it was done on time, the tech on the window switch went way out of his way to diagnose that problem (he cycled it 35 times before he was able to duplicate my problem), the brakes were completely replaced, at Nissans expense, (though i did have to mention the service bulletin about that - thereafter no questions asked).

After the service they always follow up a few days later with a phone call to see if I was satisfied with the service .

I even take the car to the dealer for its oil changes - cheaper and faster than Jiffy Lube.

Before this I always owned American Cars - but no more. The reliability of this car, and the dealer experience, is far better than any American car I have owned. I did even briefly look at BMW before deciding on the Maxima. Nice cars, but the Maxima is 90 percent as good at half the price.

"Richard Tomk>I have dealt with two different dealers here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and

Hope you have a lot of money. That sweet little BMW is not going to be cheap to keep up. ronm

"Cheesy" nissan? Hmm, never heard of that.

I do hope you enjoy your Bavarian car. BMW's do drive nice. I used to look at the BMW dealer in Buena Park a lot. I was always taking my boss over there to drop his 525 off for service. I'd say it was at least once a month, if I'm not mistaken. I used to think it was odd me taking him in my '87 Nissan PU, but then I realized - he's paying for service and I wasn't.

I felt much better when I began taking him over in my then-new '98 Maxima.

K

if you believe a car dealer can have a heart of gold you're in for a rude awakening when something goes wrong. dealers are always customer oriented when you buy a car from them...

regardless, good luck with the 530. it's a nice-looking ride.

Yes a 98 Max that what I have. Great auto. :-) ronm

Yeah, the problem is that unless you're buying a stripped car, pretty much all Maximas have a sunroof. That's what I found when I was shopping for my

03, at least.

I can't remember where I read it, but this person said you should "shop the dealer and THEN shop the car". Excellent advice, and one of the reasons I bought a Nissan is my parents' fantastic experiences with the local Nissan dealer (Go Nissan in Grand Rapids, Michigan) when they had problems with their '96 Altima. One of the only reasons I consented to my wife buying a Ford is the local dealer (Duthler) has a truly gifted service department, and a group of stand-up salespeople who have worked there for 1-2 decades. It's a giant dealer too, which tells you they treat their employees as well as they do their customers. Now THAT is a place worth doing business with.

Have a top end VW (2001) and a 2001 BMW 530 ---....both have spent more time on the lift than my 1998 Maxima which has double the combined mileage of both the VW and the BMW.

VW/Audi/BMW -- fun to drive, and the 3 or 4 year/40,000 free maintanance is nice, but get rid of the car after that.

-Jeff

NotJames,

So let me get this straight, you got rid of the car because you were unhappy with the service? Instead you are opting for a problematic car with great customer service.

Most people I know with Nissans have no idea how good or bad the service is because THEY NEVER NEED TO BRING THE CAR BACK TO THE DEALER! They just don't have problems.

Just wait until you start spending $1,500 on things like brake jobs, you'll quickly realize that the "Yes Sir" crap at BMW, is irrelevant. Oh and I almost forgot about BMW's constant electrical problems.

Maybe you don't plan on having the BMW that long though considering you are already focusing on it's resale value..

Oh and as far as being "Customer Oriented" you're right they are. Your basically paying them to. I'm sure if I walked into a candy store, picked up a stick of gum and gave the cashier $100 and told him to keep it, he'd become customer oriented as well.

Tom

"Not James" wrote in news:qrKgb.47718$gv5.35333@fed1read05:

To be fair I think this applies to pretty much all makes from that area of Europe. I had a 96 Jetta that had everything connected in some way to the electrical system detonate at one time or another. Thank God it was only a lease. The coupe'de'grace on that car is when the battery leaked junk all over the engine compartment. The list of stuff replaced was truly phenomenal.. most of the hoses, as far as I could figure. I also had to have that car towed half a dozen times in the 3 1/2 years I had it (it was a

4 year lease, but I couldn't take it anymore) because either the starter would fail, or the ignition, or battery, or alternator... that was my first AND last experience with German makes. People give crap to American reliability all the time, but DAMN have those cars been good to me compared to that Jetta.

heart of gold yeah right, i hope you have a second or tird job.