Car makers are usually good at offering good settlement once their product’s defects have been uncovered. This is what has happened with Nissan Altima. There were a number of models from different years that were facing transmission failure. The cars would suddenly stop without turning on the brake lights, which is very dangerous on roads, especially on freeways. Its a perfect recipe for rear-end collision.
The company has agreed to settle the class-action by paying out millions of dollars. The Altima models in spotlight are from 2013-2016. The problem was that consider yourself cruising down the freeway and suddenly your car slows down to 20 miles an hour and sometimes even stop completely. No brake-lights mean that this could easily result in an accident.
After Altima owners faced this problem they brought their vehicles to Nissan service center. They got their vehicles fixed but were forced to pay $3,000 or more for it. So what Nissan is now doing now is if you have the paperwork you can go to the dealership and get a refund. In case that you have the Atima model from those years but have not faced this problem yet, Nissan has extended the powertrain warranty for 24,000 miles or 24 months. This will help out the customers who are facing transmission issues. $3,000 is a good amount to money, so make sure you get your paperwork done properly to get a refund.
Another issue with Nissan fixing the transmission is that some cars were left with more defective parts. So they were replacing bad parts with more bad parts. But people were still out of $3,000 and the problem persisted. If you own Nissan from those model years, pay close attention to it, any sign of slight problem with slowing down, take it to the service center and get it fixed for free.
Nissan has also agreed to pay $5.9 million to the lawyers representing the Altima owners. Also keep in mind that you could be denied coverage of this settlement if Nissan deems that the transmission problems are caused by “damage resulting from alteration, tampering, improper repair, misuse, environmental conditions, and lack of or improper maintenance”. Additionally if the repairs were made by a Nissan dealer then full amount will be reimbursed, but in case it was repaired by any other repair shop, then you would only get refund of up to $5,000.
