Just purchased Certified Pre Owned Jeep Grand Cherokee and transmission broken

terencealfred82

Hi. Last week I bought a Certified Pre-Owned 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited 4x4. I live in LA and drove to Phoenix to pick it up. When I arrived at the dealership the salesman said the battery was struggling but as it was Sunday he couldn't have it replaced until the morning. I stayed overnight and when I returned the next day he assured me the battery had been replaced and all seemed fine. I finalised my paperwork and was about to leave when the salesman noticed a noise coming from the hood when the car was idling. The noise was only apparent when the AC was on which is why they missed it when they were replacing the battery. He took it into the service centre and told me that xx part needed to be replaced and that they would have it in on Friday. They paid for my rental car and I drove back to LA awaiting delivery of my repaired Jeep. Friday came and the part wasn't delivered. Today I finally spoke to a sales manager and he informed me that the car is in fact having the transmission and flexplate (this was the part I had been told about but it hadn't registered that it wasn't the AC) replaced.

The transmission being replaced on a one year old vehicle seems like a fairly big deal. I assume I paid a premium for the fact the vehicle was 'certified pre-owned' and the fact that a noisy transmission somehow escaped the 125 point inspection seems pretty suspect. I assume that if the car had a replaced transmission on its Carfax report then it would have been priced considerably less. I'm also guessing the car is going to be harder to resell if it has had the transmission replaced so early on in its life.

The repairs are all covered by the warranty but I was wondering if anyone had any advice?

A ) Do I cancel my purchase and then have to go through the laborious process of trying to find a replacement car and finance?

B ) Let them replace the transmission, get them to pay for a rental car until it's done and ask for some money back? If so, how much?

Thanks.

qbrozen

How many miles are on it? How long will it be covered by warranty?
It all sounds kind of suspect. I’d probably not purchase it at this point. It is a story I would not want to relay when it is time to sell it, and I’d imagine it will impact its resale value.

kyfdx

Agreed... Would you have bought it, if you knew the transmission had been replaced? I wouldn't.

oldfarmer50

Yeah, a bad tranny on a one year old car? Manufacturers defect? Severe abuse? Seems fishy. This wasn’t an ex rental was it? As far as CarFax, I doubt the repair would show as anything other than “vehicle serviced”.

terencealfred82

qbrozen said:

How many miles are on it? How long will it be covered by warranty?
It all sounds kind of suspect. I’d probably not purchase it at this point. It is a story I would not want to relay when it is time to sell it, and I’d imagine it will impact its resale value.

Thanks for the replies.

It has 19,000 miles on it. It has a 7 year/100,000 mile powertrain warranty but I upgraded that to cover everything else on the car as well.

terencealfred82

oldfarmer50 said:

Yeah, a bad tranny on a one year old car? Manufacturers defect? Severe abuse? Seems fishy. This wasn’t an ex rental was it? As far as CarFax, I doubt the repair would show as anything other than “vehicle serviced”.

Yes it's an ex rental car.

andres3

Personally... on a Chrysler, I'd consider transmission replacement par for the course. It doesn't surprise me one bit it occurred at 19,000 miles.

I had major issues at all miles, starting from about 35, 36,000, 45,000, and 60,000. They are notorious for receiving the most black dots from Consumer Reports, all the way until they stopped giving out black dots to appease the snowflakes in the automotive industry.

roadburner

The GC uses the ZF 8HP autobox. It's extremely reliable and is used in everything from Ram trucks to Hellcat Chargers to Jaguars to the BMW M5. CPO cars are only as good as the dealer that sells them. I worked at a dealer and the CPO cars werte thoroughly inspected and there's no way we would have put one on the lot with a weak battery and audible mechanical noises. The dealer sounds borderline incompetent.