This is all about money.
A dealer makes money on warranty repairs too. The sent it to Kia and Kia pays the dealership.
True, but the OEM's make more money when a customer pays than the OEM. When the repair is done under warranty, the OEM gives the parts to the dealer, and pays a certain repair time, and a certain hourly rate.
However, when a customer pays, the repair time for the same job is longer, the hourly rate is higher, and the dealer sells the part to you at a greatly marked up price.
That is why the dealers are incentivized to deny warranty claims any time they can. They're also incentivized to state "no problem found" whenever they can.
Just like tax court where the burden of proof is upon you to show that you did in fact pay your fair share of income taxes, it is also upon you to prove that your mod did not damage the working components of your car.
No, that is not true. The Magnusson-Moss act states that it is up to the dealer or OEM to prove that the part in question damaged the vehicle. The problem is, to force this law into effect, you have to take it to court. Most consumers do not push the issue for fear of the legal costs. While the golden law is true (He who has the gold, makes the rules), the reverse is also true. The OEMs usually cave soon as the legal route is pursued. They will spend a fortune fighting it in court.
SEMA SAN - SEMA ACTION NETWORK
This act does not protect you from modifications to your car -- it protects you if you use normal OE-like aftermarket replacement items such as sparkplugs, filters, oils, mufflers, wiper blades, tires, etc.
That is not true. The law does not distinguish between a cold-air-intake, or an OEM-style replacement system. Again, legally, it's up to the OEM to prove the aftermarket part, whether high-performance or not, caused the problem.
And then you would be arrested for fraud.
The police would never come knocking on your door for something like this.
I think what we all need to keep in mind is we make changes to our cars to make them exactly the way we want them. We all know there are potential consequences when we do this. If what we do causes an issue we need to be prepared to pay for that fix ourselves. If you can't afford to fix the potential problems, then you should be leaving the car the way you bought it.
While it is definitely immoral to reverse mods, it's equally immoral to deny warranty claims without cause. In my opinion... the two balance eachother out. For every guy who reverses a mod, there's a grandmother somewhere who was denied warranty coverage because she couldn't find the reciepts for her oil changes.
Exactly, this is the best advice you can give. We sell our intakes and exhaust to
Kia
Dealers and they install them and they do NOT void the warranty because of it. We just brought our Turbo Koup back to the dealer we got it from to show them the progress we have made. The service manager was interested in offering our intakes and exhaust at that dealership too. Best bet is to be honest with your service manager about the mods you are considering...
More evidence that this is all about money. If Kia, or the dealer get to mark up the parts, and make money off the install, they're more than happy to take the infinitesimally small risk that a CAI will damage a transmission.