Faulty Datsun GO costing my my Holiday!

To Whom It May Concern:

On 17 February 2016, I took delivery of my brand-new Datsun GO from Milnerton Nissan, what an exciting day! Little did I know the absolute nightmare I will be going through over the coming year.

It all started with over promised sales expectations and under-delivered reality. I opted for a few “optional extras” which were all verbally quoted incorrectly, imagine my surprise when it came to signing the paper work. Of course the sales person left very shortly after I took delivery of my vehicle.

Within the first month my vehicle had to go back for a CV joint issue, this was supposedly resolved but my vehicle ended up going back twice more for the exact same issue.

I then moved from Milnerton to Tokai, I had my one year service done at Nissan in Tokai, who then spotted that there was still an issue with my CV joint but they refused to fix it, told me I had to take it back to Milnerton. Living literally 800m from Tokai Nissan, obviously I thought this was absurd. I started contacting the “Customer Care Division” and eventually the agreement was made that Tokai Nissan will tend to the issue.

My Vehicle went in to be worked on Monday, 27 November. My vehicle stayed there until Thursday, 30 November when I collected it. On Friday 1 December, I contacted Leon at Tokai to tell him that my vehicle is STILL making the exact noise and that nothing has been resolved. Leon promised to get in touch on Monday, 4 December to make arrangements to collect my vehicle from me in Cape Town, Green Point. On Wednesday, 6 December I had still not heard from him, and my vehicle had broken down completely in traffic in Green Point. I was unable to drive it at all. To me it sounded like the gearbox fell out! While inspecting my vehicle to be put on the truck I also noticed that my right-hand front indicator light had been broken from the INSIDE! This in all likelihood happened the last time they were “fixing” my broken CV joint at Tokai Nissan.

My vehicle was taken via flatbed truck to Milnerton Nissan. Since then I have been fighting with Milnerton and with customer care to give me answers, but I mostly got absolute radio silence! I emailed customer care repeatedly asking for the matter to be escalated as I have a booked and paid for holiday in PE that I was going to drive to on December 14. I subsequently had to cancel my holiday, resulting in a substantial financial loss due to cancellations and nonrefundable payments. And all of this due to an inferior vehicle and bad communication from all channels at Milnerton Nissan, Nissan customer care, and Datsun.

All of this has left a very bad taste in my mouth, and I cannot in good faith tell anyone to buy a Datsun GO. As a matter of fact, I would strongly advise against it! It has not proven to be reliable and the after sales service has been shocking to say the very least. Yes, they did attempt to fix the issue under warranty, but a persisting issue like that should have taken some serious investigation, and not at my expense.

Up and until me going to press with this, no senior person from any one of the institutions involved has bothered to contact me, not a single apology or offer of a loan vehicle. This is easily my worst decision I have ever made, I am seriously regretting buying a Datsun!