This week’s sour mood has been brought to you by Nissan.

“I’ll just leave this right here,” I thought, as I sneakily left a Nissan brochure on my dad’s nightstand on the last day of my Puerto Rico vacation. That was seven years ago.

A few months following that, I turned 18, walked across the stage, received my high school diploma and a shiny, new 2009 Nissan Altima. Life was perfect.

This little car took me on so many adventures, starting with my very first speeding ticket and car accident (back-to-back because I was a terrible driver) to getting caught on every red light camera in Central Florida (you’re welcome for the influx of cash, City of Orlando).

But little did I know that this car had a secret bubbling inside of it, waiting for the perfect moment to blow up in my face and leave me questioning everything in life…

On Monday, I drove my car to the shop because the two front tires needed to be replaced. I thought nothing of it and my husband took me to work, come to find out that by midday, my car still hadn’t been worked on because the mechanics couldn’t start it. They said the smart key’s signal wasn’t connecting with the car.

I decided to do some online snooping and quickly came upon pages and pages of Nissan customers who specifically bought different Nissan models in 2009, complaining about steering lock mechanism failures. That had to be it.

One tow truck and one Nissan dealership diagnostic transaction later, that was indeed the problem, and a costly one at that. The part I need replaced ranges from $400-600, plus labor, rounding up to a whopping $1,000 (not to mention I still haven’t even replaced my two front tires!).

Turns out that Nissan was and is aware of this issue and a few years ago, extended the warranty for the fleet of cars affected by this. My vehicle registration number falls in that group. However, because I missed the window of opportunity as I was unaware of this warranty (warranty ended March 2015) and because I’ve driven too many miles (silly me, should’ve moved to a state in which everything is a lot closer together), I do not qualify to get financial aid (I believe they pay up to a percentage).

Their regional offices tried to explain the above to me (after having me wait an entire day to call me back), justifying why they could not help me but I could care less. If I owned a business and I know I sold you a sh**** product with issues, hey, let me make it better for you. Let me help you out. They also tried to pin this on me by saying, “Well, the last time you brought your car in was in 2009…”

THAT IS BECAUSE MY CAR HAS NEVER HAD A PROBLEM. I WAS HAPPY WITH THE PURCHASE. I CHANGE MY TIRES. I CHANGE MY BRAKES AND SERPENTINE BELT AND WIPERS. I GET OIL CHANGES. I AM RESPONSIBLE.

Luckily my car gave up on life at a shop. I cannot imagine having gotten stranded somewhere at night and having to figure this out on my own.

If you’re one of my Twitter followers, I apologize for the barrage of tweets towards Nissan, but they really struck a nerve with me this week.

I’ll leave you with this so that you can laugh:

Have you ever been let down by a company or received less than stellar customer service? How did you deal with it?

xx