A dealership in South Jersey has claimed that a customer who bought a Nissan from them in 2024 came back with a transmission issue. They then discovered that the Carfax report on the Nissan she had bought was changed after the car was sold.
The dealership in question is SJMotorTrends (@sjmotortrends), a used-car dealership that says it is “South Jersey’s #1 Premier Used Car Dealer,” and they discussed the problem in a video on their TikTok account. The whole ordeal has caused quite an argument between the two sides.
The dealership posted a clip over two minutes long onto their account running through the situation. The clip shows a staffer talking to a manager and reporting the complaint to them with the caption “Carfax made us look bad, and now the customer is angry.” At the time of writing, the clip had nearly 52,000 views.
In the video, we also hear what has changed in the Carfax report and why it caused such an issue for the owner of the Nissan. As well as this, the situation put into perspective how mileage can be a problem for a car, given its impact on the warranty.
What Caused the Trouble With the 2024 Nissan?
@sjmotortrends Carfax made us look bad and now the customer is angry #bts #behindthescenes #dealershiplife ♬ original sound – SJMotorTrends
The staff member explained in the video that the customer of the car reached out to Nissan, who informed them that the transmission on the car had been replaced. However, when the dealership pulled the Carfax report it had on file from the car’s sale in 2024, it didn’t state anything about a transmission replacement. All it said was that it was checked and reprogrammed. Given the customer was reporting a transmission problem, alarm bells were ringing.
However, the dealer then took a look at the newer Carfax report, the one that Nissan would have looked at after the owner contacted them. “Same date, same mileage, same everything that it was checked. And then look at what they added: ‘trans replaced,'” said the dealership in the video. The dealer then called Carfax, but they had a generic response, stating that Carfax “receives millions of history records every day from thousands of sources.”
Clearly, while it frustrated the customer, it also annoyed the dealership. They were confused as to why it was reported one way initially, before Carfax went ahead and just changed its report. On the flipside, a vehicle history report is only as current as the records feeding it. So in theory, the Nissan could have had a transmission replacement before the dealer sold it, but it just hadn’t been put on the Carfax report. But that doesn’t seem to be the problem here.
Mileage for the Nissan Will Affect the Warranty Coverage
With the owner reporting an issue with the transmission, the other problem they’d have to deal with is the warranty. In under two years, the customer had put 73,000 miles on the car. A new vehicle warranty from Nissan covers repairs on components like the transmission for 60 months, or 60,000 miles, whichever comes first. Unfortunately, some of Nissan’s CVT transmissions, which this car has, are known to be slightly troublesome.
This might leave the customer in a tricky spot. In terms of its mileage, there is no way the car would have been within its warranty. So the manager of the dealership decided to call Carfax to see what they could do, and if that went nowhere, to offer the customer $1,000 in parts at cost if she does the work with them to get the transmission fixed.
Was Anyone at Fault for This Mess?
Naturally, there was some debate as to who was at fault in this situation. Was it the dealer for not being more thorough with Carfax initially, or Carfax itself? Some argued that the transmission replacement being missing from the initial Carfax report lands all the blame on them. Others said you couldn’t blame the dealership as they only acted with what information they had. Whatever the case, it’s not an ideal situation for either party.