Looking for legal advice
 

Before my wife and I call a lawyer About the warranty issue we have with her 17 Camaro, I figured I'd ask here. Someone has to have had a similar issue.

Background- Superbowl Sunday, in the trunk of her 2017 Camaro RS, there was a small fire and a lot of smoke. In the trunk, under the fuse box there was standing water. Chevy admitted that a clip wasn't installed at the factory and that let water in the trunk. Factory defect on a vehicle covered by factory warranty. There is no disputing these facts, we, the dealership and GM agree. The entire wiring loom for the vehicle has to be replaced with a new part.

But the part is no longer made. It has to be a new part. Chevy has no date on availability. We have no possible date when we'll have the Camaro back. We've never been given a date. The dealership has nothing but excuses and points to Chevy corporate. Chevy won't discuss anything except us waiting on the part. That doesn't exist. That is no longer made. They refuse to do anything else and meanwhile we're in a Cruze loaner from the dealership. It's a shitbox.

So what kind of lawyer deals with this sort of thing? Does anyone have similar experience at all with this sort of thing? What are our options. The car was used, and we're beyond the lemon law time limit.

Ideally GM would buy it back. But if we had the car back fixed 100%, we'd just trade it in. So far we're just being given the mushroom treatment.

Oh, that's a nasty situation - :(

I'm confused, is the fuse box for the Camaro in the "trunk"?

Trunk being at the back of the car?

Also, it's my understanding the auto manufacturer is obligated to supply repair parts for several years after the automobile was manufactured - :iono:


humfrz

yep, there's a law that parts are supposed to be available for 10 years after manufacture..

amd frankly even if there was no part they could surely make one. I mean it's not like they don't make wiring looms for cars.

and it's only 2 years old-- still in warranty.

i think lawyering up and demanding a new car seems fair.

I think I would go for making them buy it back, then go with another brand. I certainly wouldn't want another one.

with their response to the random airbag deployments, i sure don't trust them..

Would love to see that "law". Pretty sure it is an urban legend.

ok fine. i'm batting a thousand today. another swing.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q...arts-for-a-set

I have heard 100s of people say the same but could never find anything. That sounds about right though.

Funny you can still get pretty much everything NOS to build an engine for a 1912 Model T but can get wiring for a two year old car?

Since they have to fix it and you plan on trading it in, can't you just agree to trade it in right now after coming to a trade in price?
Then when they get off their fannies and the parts available, they can fix it whenever.

Did you read the whole thing from your referenced web site?

I got more confused as it went on - :confused0068:

I'm still not sure.


Question: How long will we be able to buy 350 crate engines - :D


humfrz

That referenced read sounds to me like may depend more on the length of warranty and whether or not the part is for an emissions requirement - :iono:


humfrz

i read 95% of it. basically it sounds like isreal is the only country that actually has a law on the record that requires parts to stay available for 7 years, but the caveat is that they can just refund/replace the vehicle as a buyback. GM has almost no business in isreal, so pertaining to this thread, it means that gm likely doesn't have an interest in maintaining the parts requirement.

which means that a reduced-cost replacement, or buyback is going to be more expected for the situation.

overall, i've been less and less impressed with GM as a company in the last couple years. i mean all massive conglomerates have their issues, but GM's taken company bloat and generally ignoring the customer to a level i'm just not seeing in almost any other company..

Should've gone Japanese. They know how to look after their cars.

despite my irrational misspent youth hating fords, the ranger my dad had, and the ranger i now have has treated me at least as well as any import. i've beaten both in ways that they absolutely should have broken, and to this day, both are still some of the most reliable vehicles my families ever purchased.

it's just too bad they couldn't figure out rust prevention better, but tacoma's weren't exactly known to be any better of the same era.

I’ve been though chassis harness wait times twice. We’re in the middle of another one now.

First was a fairly new car with a known issue of water in the harness. On vacation from NY in Montana at the time. We waited 4 months for the harness. From what I understand, warranty covered his flight home, a rental in NY, a free extended warranty and free prepaid maintenance. He certainly could have gone for lemon law with the time involved, but they made it worth his time to stay in the car.

Second was a motorhome, upfitter work failed and burned out a section of harness. I believe we had that thing on the lot for 3-4 months. Upfitter issue, no lemon law. We got it done and we haven’t seen it since.

Current car is a new on the lot E43. Rodent damage to the front. Going on 2 months and no harness yet. Also not warranty, obviously.

Cars used to be made with one harness. If you didn’t have the CD changer the plugs were just taped up in the trunk. Now everything is made to the VIN. One harness for the whole car, headlights to tail lights, sunroof to wheel speed sensors, and only the plugs you need in the exact spot you need them.

Buying a used car saves thousands. It also has its drawbacks.

https://www.floridabar.org/public/consumer/tip007/

My mom did this herself with her BMW in California. You might not even need a lawyer.

i don't believe the lemon law can apply in this particular situation, as they haven't actually repaired the vehicle once. the lemon law requires that the problem car be attempted to be repaired multiple times.

Depends on the law, which varies widely.

not saying you're wrong, but the lemon law is quite consistent across most states. i know somewhat because my brother became the lead tech for alfa romeo for some time, repairing buybacks that other dealers weren't able to repair. all of them had multiple months of repeated repair history before FCA bought them back, and sent them to my brother for further diagnosis.

Looks like the lemon law time frame in FL is 2 years from initial purchase. Beyond that you’re still under warranty, but not the easy consumer focused protection lemon law provides.

I’ve been directly involved in one buy back. A GL with 500 miles, no sound from the radio. I needed a MOST fiber optic harness, and there were none in the world. Pushing 45 days, they “found one”, shoved in a tiny envelope and sent it in the mail. That shoving kinked the fiber optic cable, making it even worse than the one I had.

Shortly after that, we got a nice letter not to touch the car, lock it out back and they would come pick it up. The car was brand new, rolling off the assembly line daily. We asked why they couldn’t walk in to the factory (in Alabama) and grab a harness. I was told MBUSI, who makes cars, was not the same company as MBUSA, who sells and supports cars. Nothing they could do about it.

I would think the problem isn’t that they no longer make the harness, but that it has to be made specifically for the car. That takes time, sadly.

Just in time manufacturing at its best.

Nah it has nothing to do with just in time since that applies to the manufacture of the whole vehicle not spare parts. Spare OEM parts are a totally different contract that has nothing to do with making the actual vehicle. Somebody at GM decided that there would be little demand for that particular part so they were not contracted to be made in volume. A quick look through the Camaro forums shows they were very, very wrong since this is a very common (and fairly serious) issue and they just don't have the parts to cover the demand. It isn't as simple as GM just calling up the factory and saying "hey, we need a couple of hundred wiring harnesses tomorrow".

You mean that autocross one? IMO that car acted as designed.

They had issues with Colorado ZR2s offroading as well - and redesigned the SRS programming and fixed all of them.

Blow the engine on one of their track models while at the track and they'll fix it no problem.

They have been better than Ford IMO.

3 or more repairs.. OR 30 days out of service IIRC.

I suspect he'd have a good shot.

OP, what dealer in Tampa has it?

there's been a few. off the top of my head, there was the rando camaro driving in circles, then there was a cts-v in a cone course.

i hadn't heard that they warrantied all the zr2's. last i heard, all the guys that had trail deployments either paid out of pocket, or were fighting it.

i still find it so very odd that gm products continually have this issue. guy's beating up trucks offroad isn't anything new, and neither are the cone courses. generally everyone uses the same sensor package, so i would expect to see more oddball deployments from all brands under similar conditions--especially autocross courses, but the only one's i'm seeing anything on even when searching is GM products. toyota had a side-airbag disable button for a while in their trucks, but took it out on the latest generation, but even so, i can't find any record of a toyota truck blowing airbags on a trail...

it just confuses me how something like that seems to affect vehicles across a single corporation, and none that i can find outside of it. i really just want to know what the root cause is...

Jim Browne Chevy. they've been very good and have let us use a loaner this whole time when they didn't have to. They do have the part now and they are fixing the car. However, I'm not sure how this will shake out. GM has referred our case to its legal dept. and told us to not contact them except through a lawyer.

A lawyer said that the Magnuson-Moss Act only stipulates 3 repairs, not a time period. I suspect the car will be in 2 more times because of the difficulty and complexity of the repair. I'd be amazed if they get it right the first time. But I'm not counting on that.

I saw the car, it is absolutely gutted. It also still has a bad odor from when the original damage happened. Smells like burnt wiring really bad. Even gutted with no interior at all, it smelled. I can only imnagine how bad it'll be with the cloth interior put back in.

MAN, that sounds uncomfortably and depressingly close to home somehow...


I really miss my car...