Team Kia of El Cajon

Service department is disorganized, unprofessional and not customer oriented. You walk into their building and they do not assist or ask if you’ve been helped. They don’t have the paperwork and are asking me multiple times the kind of service I needed which was incorrect. Called me about one service that was completed but then I received no calls about the completion of the next service I needed. The service advisor is asking me if they called me. I had to call and go back to the dealership to find out the status of my vehicle. Service departments in dealerships supposed to be a gold standard. I might as well go to my neighborhood garage and get more specialized service.

This dealership charges a $240 fee for a diagnostic when the other Kia dealerships in the county charge $190. Their diagnostic showed one catalytic converter failed and quoted me $4,100 to fix. Competitive quotes received later were half that amount. I then inquired with Kia of El Cajon whether this quote was for one or two catalytic converter replacements. They confirmed it was indeed for TWO (even though only one had failed, and the other was still fine). There was no indication on the estimate that this repair was to replace both. This was intentionally deceptive upselling. I called on other Kia dealerships in the area to do the actual repair, because I lost trust in this one. But the other dealerships only saw the diagnostic and immediately contacted Kia of El Cajon, who then contacted me back. Then the other dealerships refused to call me back so I was stuck. If you must go to a San Diego Kia dealership, start first with a different one than El Cajon. My 2016 Kia Soul's catalytic converter failed. It had a 2019 recall for this. Kia claimed that since the catalytic converter had not yet failed when I responded to the recall in 2019, they merely did a system reset to the car's computer and that fulfilled their recall requirements. Now when it did fail in 2024, they claimed they could not honor the recall because I had responded to the initial recall and received the computer reset. Isn't a recall usually to fix the actual problem part that tends to fail?? My car was still under the mileage for the warranty on the catalytic converter, but I had just surpassed the 8 year mark. Kia's warranty fine print reads that it is good for the 80,000 miles OR 8 years, whichever is FIRST. Even though I was still under the miles and this was a known issue with a recall, Kia would not do a "goodwill" repair. Service Adviser Laura Ayala at Kia of El Cajon said they best they could do is provide an estimate for repair, and then they provided a grossly inflated one. If anyone is considering purchasing a Kia, I highly recommend researching the issues going on with the catalytic converters and engines in these vehicles and pay attention to the online forum discussions from current owners' experiences with Kia. The warranty sold me initially, but Kia's customer service did not deliver.

If I could give them zero stars I would. The service department here is incompetent. They make up false causes for issues are incapable of following repair procedures. Do not follow manufacturer recommended guidelines or suggestions. Simply the worst.