u/digitallyloitering

UPDATE: So I was looking at replacement cars for the EV6 after this whole debacle and came across the i4. Immediately started researching issues with that car and with how BMW treats customers who break down far from home. Came across BMW Trip interruption coverage. Started to wonder if Kia had the same type of coverage. GUESS WHAT?! Turns out they do and it covers all new vehicles under Kia's roadside assistance. It covers any car being repaired for warranty reasons, left at dealership overnight, over 100km away from home. That's my situation to a T. So why the flying fuck are their customer service agents so ignorant that they don't know their own policy? This could have made this experience so much easier on us and instead they would rather have the bad press and negative customer sentiment. Fucking crazy. I have reached out again to their customer support for one last chance to make this right otherwise I've confirmed I qualify for CANVAP and will be filing immediately.

My wife took our 2024 EV6 GT line 2 on a short road trip up to Kelowna from Vancouver (approximately 350ish km) with her parents and the ICCU failed a few hours after she got into town. Had the car towed to Kelowna Kia (first big mistake) and had to go to the dealership in the morning to see about getting a loaner/rental until ICCU repaired.

Kelowna Kia service reps tell us no, they dont have any rental vehicles available and to reach out to Kia Canada. I browsed all the reddit discussions about what happens if your ICCU fails when it comes to Kia helping you out. Well, something must have changed because every person i spoke to at corporate was rude AF. Constantly cutting me off, not letting me explain the full details, etc etc. The one "manager" who handled my case kept cutting me off to tell me that "our policy is we don't cover or compensate for rental or loaner vehicles with a warranty repair". I told her that I have seen multiple cases of them providing at least something along the lines of $45 a day for a rental car plus gas. She was like "where? I don't see anything?" Instead of a genuine attitude of wanting to help in a bad situation, all she wanted to do was deny and hang up.

So my wife ends up having to rent a car in our own expense because she's already paid for the hotel for 3 days and doesn't want to just give that all up. The car rental place she ends up renting from is the place that actually handles Kelowna Kias rental/ loaner cars. She tells my wife that she'll try to work something out with Kia so that they can convert that rental into a warrant repair loaner. Says they do it all the time.

What does Kelowna Kia say? No. The entire time they are telling us they are trying everything they can to help us etc etc. My wife can't wait around in Kelowna so on Wednesday, she pays $300 to bus back to Vancouver with her parents because she doesn't want to risk renting a car and then having the iccu take weeks to get there cause Kelowna Kia couldn't guarantee a time frame.

They then call us later on Wednesday before my wife gets on the bus that the part should arrive Thursday and car ready for pickup Friday. She still can't stay so comes home. Friday morning, we arrange to borrow her parents car to drive up to Kelowna to pick up the car (8 hour round trip). They call us 10 minutes before we walked out the door that the ICCU that they got was damaged from the warehouse. They have to order another one. Thank God I had a work thing I had to take care of that morning otherwise we would have already been about 2 hours into that drive when they called. At which point we would have been in the middle of the mountains with little to no signal.

Kelowna Kia now tells us that because the part that Kia corporate sent them was defective, they "should" cover a rental now since our car is now taking longer than expected to repair and it was an extenuating circumstance. This was Friday morning. They told us we could just go rent a car now and they will try and hash it out with corporate. I was super sketched out at this point so i asked if they were sure and they said 80 percent sure. I told my wife that's the dumbest fucking thing to tell a customer because 99% chance is corporate says no, Kelowna Kia isn't going to pay for it either and we'll just get stuck with another massive bill. So we chose to go carless for the weekend and cancel most of our plans.

At this point they tell us most likely the next iccu wont arrive til Tuesday and so we'd possibly get the car back on Thursday or Friday. Told us that they submitted the rental car claim to Kia Canada and will let us know as soon as they hear back. Nothing for the rest of Friday. Kia Canada is closed over the weekend. At this point, we are pretty fed up and just ask Kelowna Kia at the very least to charge our car to 100% for when we eventually pickup so we can get there, get the keys and go home without having to stop and charge. They agree to it and promise it will be done.

Monday morning they contact us and tell us they actually got the ICCU in early on Saturday and fixed it over the weekend so the car is ready. We ask if the rental car situation is sorted out so we can rent a car and go up and pick up our car. They say nothing yet. We make plans to go up to pick it up on Tuesday but we are still holding out for a rental. We contact the dealership multiple times on Monday asking for an update. No updates from Kia Canada at all. We again ask that our car be fully charged the next day as we can see on our app that the car is still at 33 percent. They again confirm they will charge it.

Tuesday morning I message the dealership again. They tell me they finally got an answer from Kia Canada. They still said no. So extra time wasted for us, loss of use of our vehicle because Kia can't design a part that won't fail (let's be honest. Every ICCU is just a time bomb. It's just when it is going to happen not if). They won't even cover a car for 1 day for us to go get our car. I called Kia Canada myself to find out why and got hung up on twice while being transferred with no one calling me back despite them asking for enough information to steal my identity. And then on top of that i got a super rude agent who at first i couldn't even hear her cause her audio was messed up and all i said to her very politely was "hey, sorry i can't really hear you. Your audio isn't really coming through well. Can you try adjusting your mic or something?" She then says a bunch of garbled words that i can't make out but what i can hear sounds angry. Then i suggest " is your mic on your headset turned up instead of in front of your mouth? I used to do that all the time" but before i could even finish saying that her audio gets fixed and she's starts saying in a very aggressive tone "nothings wrong. I didn't do anything" with the attitude of someone who sounds like they were just accused of something. I was just trying to help. My wife and I both work customer facing jobs and both of us were like if our Co workers or direct reports said anything like that to a customer, they would be fired or reprimanded on the spot.

Anyways, obviously i got nothing from them. More repeating of basically screw you. So we end up asking my wife's parents to cancel their plans for the day so we can borrow their car to go up. They lend us the car, we start making our way up around 1030 am on Tuesday. We update the dealership to let them know we are coming and our approximate arrival time of before 3pm.

We get to Merritt which is about 2 hours in and we check the app, car is still at 33 percent. We are 1.5 hours away. We message the dealership and ask them to charge the car. The message back saying it will be done.

We get into Kelowna and are 15 min away. Car is still at 33 percent. We message them again asking what's happening? They said "car is plugged in but on the slow charger. Will move to fast charger now that sales is done with it". First of all, what made you think a level 1 charger was going to do anything in 15 minutes? Also, what did you think a 30kw "fast" charger was going to do in less than 10 minutes? When we got to the dealership, the car was just hitting 40 percent charge. They added 7 percent in 2 and a half days. I could have charged the car faster if I attached a generator and a bicycle in 2.5 days. The only thing they could tell us is "oh sales was using it, you can wait here for an hour and you'd have a decent charge.."

Lady, you acted all nice all weekend trying to convince us that you were on our side. You even shit talked Kia Canada to us on the phone and in text mesaages. And yet, the one thing we asked you to do that was 1000000000% easily doable for the dealership and would have cost you less than 10 bucks was to charge the car to 100% and not waste our time when we already had to do a 8 hour round trip drive. They acted like it wasn't their fault that they didn't charge our car and was like "i don't know what you want from me" attitude. Just shoulder shrugged and walked away from us.

Needless to say this experience has taken me from loving my car to absolutely hating the fact that I'm driving an advertisement for such a despicable company. I do not recommend anyone buy any products from Kia or Hyundai at this point because if you get stranded due to their piss poor engineering, well that's your fault for trusting in your vehicle and they will only do the bare minimum so cover their obligations to the contract (warranty) you signed with them.

TLDR: Kia Canada and to an extent their dealerships do not give a damn about you and will not help you in any way when their bad design stands you. Be prepared to pay big for their mistakes!

My wife took our 2024 EV6 GT line 2 on a short road trip up to Kelowna from Vancouver (approximately 350ish km) with her parents and the ICCU failed a few hours after she got into town. Had the car towed to Kelowna Kia (first big mistake) and had to go to the dealership in the morning to see about getting a loaner/rental until ICCU repaired.

Kelowna Kia service reps tell us no, they dont have any rental vehicles available and to reach out to Kia Canada. I browsed all the reddit discussions about what happens if your ICCU fails when it comes to Kia helping you out. Well, something must have changed because every person i spoke to at corporate was rude AF. Constantly cutting me off, not letting me explain the full details, etc etc. The one "manager" who handled my case kept cutting me off to tell me that "our policy is we don't cover or compensate for rental or loaner vehicles with a warranty repair". I told her that I have seen multiple cases of them providing at least something along the lines of $45 a day for a rental car plus gas. She was like "where? I don't see anything?" Instead of a genuine attitude of wanting to help in a bad situation, all she wanted to do was deny and hang up.

So my wife ends up having to rent a car in our own expense because she's already paid for the hotel for 3 days and doesn't want to just give that all up. The car rental place she ends up renting from is the place that actually handles Kelowna Kias rental/ loaner cars. She tells my wife that she'll try to work something out with Kia so that they can convert that rental into a warrant repair loaner. Says they do it all the time.

What does Kelowna Kia say? No. The entire time they are telling us they are trying everything they can to help us etc etc. My wife can't wait around in Kelowna so on Wednesday, she pays $300 to bus back to Vancouver with her parents because she doesn't want to risk renting a car and then having the iccu take weeks to get there cause Kelowna Kia couldn't guarantee a time frame.

They then call us later on Wednesday before my wife gets on the bus that the part should arrive Thursday and car ready for pickup Friday. She still can't stay so comes home. Friday morning, we arrange to borrow her parents car to drive up to Kelowna to pick up the car (8 hour round trip). They call us 10 minutes before we walked out the door that the ICCU that they got was damaged from the warehouse. They have to order another one. Thank God I had a work thing I had to take care of that morning otherwise we would have already been about 2 hours into that drive when they called. At which point we would have been in the middle of the mountains with little to no signal.

Kelowna Kia now tells us that because the part that Kia corporate sent them was defective, they "should" cover a rental now since our car is now taking longer than expected to repair and it was an extenuating circumstance. This was Friday morning. They told us we could just go rent a car now and they will try and hash it out with corporate. I was super sketched out at this point so i asked if they were sure and they said 80 percent sure. I told my wife that's the dumbest fucking thing to tell a customer because 99% chance is corporate says no, Kelowna Kia isn't going to pay for it either and we'll just get stuck with another massive bill. So we chose to go carless for the weekend and cancel most of our plans.

At this point they tell us most likely the next iccu wont arrive til Tuesday and so we'd possibly get the car back on Thursday or Friday. Told us that they submitted the rental car claim to Kia Canada and will let us know as soon as they hear back. Nothing for the rest of Friday. Kia Canada is closed over the weekend. At this point, we are pretty fed up and just ask Kelowna Kia at the very least to charge our car to 100% for when we eventually pickup so we can get there, get the keys and go home without having to stop and charge. They agree to it and promise it will be done.

Monday morning they contact us and tell us they actually got the ICCU in early on Saturday and fixed it over the weekend so the car is ready. We ask if the rental car situation is sorted out so we can rent a car and go up and pick up our car. They say nothing yet. We make plans to go up to pick it up on Tuesday but we are still holding out for a rental. We contact the dealership multiple times on Monday asking for an update. No updates from Kia Canada at all. We again ask that our car be fully charged the next day as we can see on our app that the car is still at 33 percent. They again confirm they will charge it.

Tuesday morning I message the dealership again. They tell me they finally got an answer from Kia Canada. They still said no. So extra time wasted for us, loss of use of our vehicle because Kia can't design a part that won't fail (let's be honest. Every ICCU is just a time bomb. It's just when it is going to happen not if). They won't even cover a car for 1 day for us to go get our car. I called Kia Canada myself to find out why and got hung up on twice while being transferred with no one calling me back despite them asking for enough information to steal my identity. And then on top of that i got a super rude agent who at first i couldn't even hear her cause her audio was messed up and all i said to her very politely was "hey, sorry i can't really hear you. Your audio isn't really coming through well. Can you try adjusting your mic or something?" She then says a bunch of garbled words that i can't make out but what i can hear sounds angry. Then i suggest " is your mic on your headset turned up instead of in front of your mouth? I used to do that all the time" but before i could even finish saying that her audio gets fixed and she's starts saying in a very aggressive tone "nothings wrong. I didn't do anything" with the attitude of someone who sounds like they were just accused of something. I was just trying to help. My wife and I both work customer facing jobs and both of us were like if our Co workers or direct reports said anything like that to a customer, they would be fired or reprimanded on the spot.

Anyways, obviously i got nothing from them. More repeating of basically screw you. So we end up asking my wife's parents to cancel their plans for the day so we can borrow their car to go up. They lend us the car, we start making our way up around 1030 am on Tuesday. We update the dealership to let them know we are coming and our approximate arrival time of before 3pm.

We get to Merritt which is about 2 hours in and we check the app, car is still at 33 percent. We are 1.5 hours away. We message the dealership and ask them to charge the car. The message back saying it will be done.

We get into Kelowna and are 15 min away. Car is still at 33 percent. We message them again asking what's happening? They said "car is plugged in but on the slow charger. Will move to fast charger now that sales is done with it". First of all, what made you think a level 1 charger was going to do anything in 15 minutes? Also, what did you think a 30kw "fast" charger was going to do in less than 10 minutes? When we got to the dealership, the car was just hitting 40 percent charge. They added 7 percent in 2 and a half days. I could have charged the car faster if I attached a generator and a bicycle in 2.5 days. The only thing they could tell us is "oh sales was using it, you can wait here for an hour and you'd have a decent charge.."

Lady, you acted all nice all weekend trying to convince us that you were on our side. You even shit talked Kia Canada to us on the phone and in text mesaages. And yet, the one thing we asked you to do that was 1000000000% easily doable for the dealership and would have cost you less than 10 bucks was to charge the car to 100% and not waste our time when we already had to do a 8 hour round trip drive. They acted like it wasn't their fault that they didn't charge our car and was like "i don't know what you want from me" attitude. Just shoulder shrugged and walked away from us.

Needless to say this experience has taken me from loving my car to absolutely hating the fact that I'm driving an advertisement for such a despicable company. I do not recommend anyone buy any products from Kia or Hyundai at this point because if you get stranded due to their piss poor engineering, well that's your fault for trusting in your vehicle and they will only do the bare minimum so cover their obligations to the contract (warranty) you signed with them.

TLDR: Kia Canada and to an extent their dealerships do not give a damn about you and will not help you in any way when their bad design stands you. Be prepared to pay big for their mistakes!