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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/WordWizardx on 2024-06-21 06:19:25+00:00.

My wife and I bought her car 2.5 years ago and it’s had weird mechanical problems ever since. It was a few years old, but since it was a $BRAND car and we bought it from the $BRAND dealership, they included a half-assed dealer warranty that basically said if we brought it to them for repairs, they’d be more liberal in what was considered “their fault” for recalls and whatnot. In practice, it meant that we paid for a series of useless little fixes out of pocket because they kept tweaking something small and swearing the car was fine to avoid admitting that fixing the problem correctly (on their dime) would probably involve taking the whole engine apart.

A few days ago we got a letter in the mail saying they’re DESPERATE to buy back our car, they’re so in demand, they’ll offer $5K over blue book value! At that point, the car had been sitting in their shop for three weeks straight and they had stopped returning our calls, so my wife and I decided it was malicious compliance time. You want to overpay for a lemon? You’re welcome to it!

Of course, when we got there they backpedaled so fast you could practically smell the smoke - corporate sends those letters, not them, that’s only for a car in perfect condition, ours clearly has serious engine trouble, etc. My wife turned it back on them - SURELY the car was in good shape, right? After all, the last three times they’d given it back to us, they claimed everything was fixed!

As much as I’d like to say we stuck it to them and everyone clapped, we actually came out with a pretty reasonable deal (especially considering our theoretically-$6K car probably needed $10K of repairs.) They gave us blue book value for it in good condition and waived the service fees for the last three weeks (which probably would have been another $1500), and we bought a new car from them instead of from someone else. Now they have their lemon back and we’ve got a vehicle with an ACTUAL warranty. It feels good!