A father who bought a used Nissan Pathfinder so he could go and regularly see his daughter in the hospital now says he is an extra $8,000 out of pocket. This was because, just 48 hours after buying the car, the check engine light suddenly came on.
TikTok user Drum Naysh (@drumnaysh) posted a video to his account, showing that despite having purchased a warranty with the used car, he was forced to sell it. He was only able to sell it for less than a third of what he had originally paid for it.
The car was a Pathfinder, and Naysh said that at the time, he was driving an old Honda Accord. As he didn’t have a regular income stream, it was hard to budget for a monthly car payment. So buying a used car outright was the easiest thing for him to do.
Yet despite everything looking great with the Pathfinder, and being assured by the seller that it was fine, it only took two days for problems to arise with the car. Yet an OBD-II scan didn’t help work out what was actually wrong with the Nissan.
The Nissan’s Problem Needed Further Investigation
@drumnaysh Follow along as I crash out over a used car dealership screwing my family out of nearly $8,000 cash. 🧵👇 We saved up $10,992 cash to buy a 2020 Nissan Pathfinder outright from Royal Premier Motors in Dallas—sweating through 100-degree Texas heat in a broken Honda—just to avoid a monthly payment. Instead, we were handed keys to a vehicle with a pre-existing, catastrophic engine failure logged in Nissan’s corporate database weeks before we ever bought it. 4 independent automotive facilities documented severe engine sludge & failure. The dealership’s in-house shop was the ONLY ONE out of 5 that claimed the car was fine. To top it off, they sold us an aftermarket warranty that couldn’t cover pre-existing damage. After 2 months of dead ends while commuting 100 miles back and forth to Children’s Medical Center in Dallas for our daughter, we were forced to trade it in for $3,000 wholesale value—leaving us $8k in the hole and right back into a car payment. Full paper trail, receipts, and state complaints logged. Drop a comment and tag DFW news desks! #dallas #dfw #dallastexas ♬ Mischief Moves – Demonico Pizzaro & Henry Keys
A rep from an O’Reilly Auto Parts store had decided to scan the car to assess what was wrong. But the codes that came back didn’t display anything wrong with the Nissan, so that left Naysh incredibly confused. However, when he bought the car, Naysh had opted for a powertrain warranty, for an extra bit of peace of mind as the car was used and not brand new.
This aftermarket warranty should have foot the bill for anything catastrophic that went wrong. The stipulation was that the warranty required the car to be driven a certain number of miles before a claim could be made. After doing this, Naysh took the car to three different shops, and all of them diagnosed a huge number of problems with the car. The worst of those was that the car had suffered a “catastrophic engine failure from engine sludge” in the past.
The warranty covered the timing change that Naysh ended up needing. Yet it wouldn’t cover the engine sludge issue, because it was a “pre-existing condition.” The shop also said they didn’t want to fix the sludge issue, as there was no guarantee that it would work. Yet the sludge problem was known about and diagnosed on the car six weeks before the dealership sold Naysh the car. The dealership also refused to compensate him, and the seller took too long to get back to Naysh about the problems on the Pathfinder.
Naysh Traded the Car in for a Loss
In the end, Naysh had to trade the car in for a loss. Having bought it for $10,000, he was only able to sell it for $3,000 a few months later. “We’ve only had the vehicle since July. It’s been in the shop since the middle of September. So whenever our local Nissan dealership was unable to really do anything with it, they offered us a trade. They offered $3,000 for the vehicle. We had to trade it in to mitigate our losses,” said Naysh.
As Naysh and his family urgently needed a car to visit his daughter in the hospital, who was receiving care, they had no choice but to look for a replacement car. Naysh, however, is determined to get some money back. “We wanna get compensated for the money that we lost. The used dealership is basically saying, you know, hey, sucks to be us,” said Naysh. Hopefully, a solution can be found that keeps all parties happy after the drama with the Nissan Pathfinder.