Another Nissan customer support 'FAIL': Why the brand is broken

Nissan Australia continues to prove that it will continue doing the one thing that it achieves with seemingly effortless excellence: throwing customers just like you under the bus. Here’s what will probably collapse Nissan, sooner or later…

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It’s bad when a mainstream carmaker falls from grace and it’s even worse when it repeatedly hits itself over the head with terrible products nobody wants to buy.

But things get properly, commercially dire and foreboding when customer service is the quickest, easiest way to cut costs amid the crumbling façade. Nissan Australia is in deep, possibly one-way trouble.

Bad customer service is the worst aspect to new-car ownership >>

I got this plaintiff cry for assistance recently from a dude named James Brewster, who told me, among other things:

I'm writing regarding me wife’s 2015 Nissan Qashqai. Unfortunately she bought it before we met, otherwise I would have tried to talk her into something else…

The car has been a total disappointment.

Most people like you reading this immediately had that expectation when you read “2015 Nissan Qashqai”. Tell me I’m wrong.

New car warranty doesn't matter: Only customer support does >>

Use extreme caution: What makes you think Nissan will look after you in future if they don’t for those who bought a Qashqai in the past? Best to keep walking…

Jimbo continued:

It's already had a shock absorber, the radiator fan and the air conditioning replaced under warranty. Luckily my wife got extended warranty with the purchase, which made dealing with Nissan easier.

Isn’t that an embarrassing backhander? As a brand, the customer service and reliability have been so terrible, the only thing that made ‘dealing with the brand’ less shit, was having paid extra to not have to go through consumer hell just to have your warranty honoured.

Besides all that - extended warranty is a rip-off, a scam and a outrageously bullshit falsehood. They generally offer you no greater protection than consumer law does anyway; they're just that continuum of ongoing dealer rip-off upselling that I detest.

In fact, according to the ACCC:

Extended warranties are optional. They are in addition to and do not replace the consumer guarantees which are pieces of legislation.

This is advice to the car industry from the regulator, here:

If you are selling extended warranties, you need to ensure that you're offering something of value to the consumer, something that does not simply mirror consumers’ rights under the law as this may be misleading.

You must not pressure consumers to buy an extended warranty or tell a consumer that an extended warranty provides them with additional protections when such a warranty does not provide them with any benefits above and beyond their consumer guarantees/rights.

It’s not even written in legal jargon. It’s right there in plain English.

This is why warranty is irrelevant when buying a new car >>

But Jimbo’s problems did not end at just getting the shitbox Qashqai repaired under warranty. Things got worse.

Recently the car began making clunking noises during low-speed turns. We took it to our local mechanic and he diagnosed that both drive shafts are worn out.

The car is just under eight years old and has 78,000 kilometres on the clock. Our mechanic suggested we should take the car to Nissan and ask them to assess the car and make a ‘goodwill claim’ as Nissan calls it…

This would be the constant velocity joints (CV joints), and they’re part of an engineering challenge (to put it one way) that is involved in front-wheel drive cars. The wheels at the front need to bounce up and down relative to the suspension, and they also need to turn relative to the steering. But some of those angles are quite large.

CV joints are used, but are kind of expensive because of their complexity, because they allow the smoother operation of the drive shafts regardless of how hard the wheels move in the vertical and rotational plane relative to the drive shaft… They allow for bouncing up and down, and turning left or right, regardless of what speed you’re going, basically.

ATTENTION: If you’re buying a new car, you need to know who are the Worst carmakers, named and shamed: Here's why they suck...

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Nissan’s consumer law conflict resolution

We've had the current version of Australian Consumer Law for 12 years and the old ‘goodwill’ notion was replaced by actual legislative guarantees about things like acceptable quality.

There's no excuse for anybody going down this path of goodwill. In fact the ACCC has a document for the car industry (which you can download) called Motor Vehicle Sales and Repairs: An Industry Guide to the Australian Consumer Law >>. This has been in publication for five years.

If you sell cars for a living and you are not absolutely across the contents of this document, you're playing the game with less than half a deck. It's disgraceful to be going down this goodwill track.

If you are a consumer and you’ve got a warranty, service or repair problem with your dealership or their respective brand, download this document and have a read of what your expectations of them should be, and perhaps how you can leverage them by understanding your rights. The shortcut way of doing this is reading the Acceptable Quality Guarantees under Australian Consumer Law.

This is where Nissan Australia puts itself in hot water.

In that Industry Guide, the ACCC says:

as a matter of best practice and also to minimise the risk of contravening the provisions of the Australian Consumer Law, which prohibit misrepresentations and misleading or deceptive conduct eg: where the consumer has requested a remedy under the consumer guarantees, you should also, when providing a remedy, make it clear to the consumer when you are providing remedies under the consumer guarantee provisions, rather than simply describing such remedies as goodwill.

So anytime you see that word ‘goodwill’, that is a red flag that you are about to be bent over…

So what happened to Jimbo?

you won't be surprised to learn Nissan knocked us back, saying they believe a worn driveshaft at 78,000 kilometres is a wear and tear issue.

Okay, so wear and tear is not covered under warranty and it's also not covered under the acceptable quality consumer guarantee. The question is whether or not CV joints wearing out at 78,000 kilometres is actually wear and tear, because if I was asked to sit down in the witness booth in a court of law and be an expert witness on this stuff, I'd suggest that wear and tear generally applies to things like brakes, tyres and clutches - things of that nature - because they all have components that are designed to wear out in the course of their operation.

But for things like CV joints, which are just part of the powertrain, they're part of the driveline of the car, they're not specifically designed to wear out. Everything wears out, obviously, engines wear out etc.

But Nissan offered back in 2015 a three-year/100,000 kilometre warranty, which means that this vehicle has done about six years worth of average driving at 78,000 kilometres. If driven normally, driveshafts and CV joints, things of that nature, should survive therefore for about a 100,000kms if that's the length of the warranty that Nissan says goes with the vehicle.

Components in drivelines, of which CV joints are, shouldn’t be wearing out prematurely ahead of 100,000 kilometres if you drive normally and this vehicle has only done about three-quarters of the way to its warranty limit.

I'm not suggesting that the car is still under warranty - it's not. What I'm suggesting is that Nissan says that that vehicle is going to be free from defects for hundred thousand kilometres and this is the kind of mechanical component that wears out in relation to distance (not time) if the car is not abused and serviced regularly.

Jimbo is ‘considering his next move’, including taking action through fair trading and this is where Jimbo's making a mistake.

This is where most people make a mistake.

You've got to ask for:

a remedy under Australian Consumer Law

You've got to say that:

in your view the vehicle is in breach of the acceptable quality consumer guarantee because it has not been reasonably durable.

Then, if they deny your ‘goodwill’ claim, they look like misrepresentative, deceptive bastards and they don't want to do that.

People just go to the dealer and they act in good faith, which is always a mistake when it comes to brands like Nissan. It just is. You've got to say the words, in writing preferably.

don't accept anything verbally from them; it's got to be a response in writing, if they knock you back. it just does, because I'd suggest they won't go down this Goodwill track if you ask for this remedy. But if you just ask them to do the right thing, then all bets are off.

You've really got to play the Consumer Law card.

The other problem is in Australia Consumers who often expect someone to ride in on a white horse to save them, which is not how this works. Fair Trading has no balls, the ACCC doesn’t act for individuals (although you can use their complaint writing tool template >> to create a trail of evidence).

You've got to get your own advice and that means sitting yourself in front of a decent local solicitor for about an hour discuss your matter with them. Take their advice and proceed on the basis of their advice.

Sure, you'll have to pay $300-$400 for the solicitor’s time to get the advice, but the details really matter and if you want a multi-thousand dollar problem frown go upside down, then you really need to do that.

You need to make an investment in your own solution.

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