A woman has expressed annoyance and frustration at Kia after stating that they have denied her an engine change in her Telluride after it had done less than 80,000 miles due to two oil changes done at home. This is despite Kia stating it has an industry-leading 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty.
The story was picked up by WCVB Channel 5 Boston, and specifically by Ben Simmoneau, who runs the ‘Ben Has Your Back’ segment on the news channel. Amber Cichowsk is the woman who had the problem with her 2021 Kia Telluride after a sudden spike in RPM, with the car then failing to accelerate. And this happened twice to her in 2025.
The car is, of course, less than 10 years old, and she had done less than 100,000 miles in the SUV. So in theory, there wasn’t any reason for her to panic or be too frustrated. She could get it repaired under warranty, and with a new engine, right?
Well, apparently not. After the second time it happened, in the middle of I-91 on Christmas Eve, she was frustrated and found it quite scary. And even though Kia made a lot of repairs after the first time, she was then told that it would need a new engine…and they wouldn’t cover the repair.
What Would It Have Cost Outside of the Warranty?
Kia told Cichowski that the repair would cost around $11,000 without the warranty. But with Kia claiming an industry-leading warranty, Cichowski wasn’t worried. She just had to provide oil change records, proving that she had maintained and looked after the car. And that meant every oil change from when she had bought the car up until its failure.
She managed to get every single service receipt over the last four years, with just two exceptions. One of those was from 2022 and one from 2023, when her husband changed the oil at home. “Money was tight, and we had some family issues, so we did two on our own, thinking we were taking care of the car”. Cichowski didn’t think Kia would refuse the repair under warranty based on that.
Incredibly, that is exactly what Kia did. They decided to use those two oil changes as a reason to refuse the oil change for Cichowski. Naturally, Cichowski and her husband felt very defeated by this and quite shocked that they might have to fork out $11,000 to repair the car. They were perplexed at how they could buy a vehicle, expecting it to be covered under warranty if it broke, only for the manufacturer to turn around and go, “Sorry, just kidding.”
This Is What Happened to the Kia Next
Federal law does protect consumers from arbitrary warranty denials. This falls under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Companies “can’t condition a warranty on the consumer’s using any article or service”. In other words, paying Kia for the oil changes. They can, however, deny warranty coverage if there has been a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance. The Telluride needs oil changes around 7,500 miles, and Cichowski had records for eight oil changes at Kia dealers, including the last four.
Thankfully, this story ended on a good note. Simmoneau was able to confirm that Kia had reversed course and decided to pay for the repairs to the car. While they did state that proper maintenance records are required, as there was no visual proof that the engine had been neglected, they would pay to replace the engine. It will no doubt have come as a relief to Cichowski that she and her husband did not have to try to find $11,000 to get her car back on the road.