New PacHy Owner with Issues Already

8968 Views 30 Replies 14 Participants Last post by jwar, Apr 2, 2022

jwar

Discussion Starter · Aug 12, 2021 (Edited)

*EDIT

Hi all,

I was able to find a '21 PacHy Touring L in Ceramic Gray with S Appearance Package/UConnect Theater Family Group/Premium and Safety Sphere Group, with 6 miles on July 28th. We were ready to go to the dealership (1.5hrs away) to sign the paperwork and pickup the Pacifica but I got a text that afternoon from my salesperson and was told the Pacifica was being diagnosed. I was like, "What? Why?". Apparently the charging system was not working, throwing an error "Service charging system" or something like that (from what I have seen here on the forums to be a common error for the newer PacHy). The dealer had a Chrysler Engineer come out the following Tuesday 8/3/21. The report back is that the wire(s) from the charging port to the module/battery was pinched between the hybrid battery. So now they have to replace the entire Engine Wiring Harness!!! This is very disappointing and doesn't give me confidence in the Pacifica at all. This is not going to make the Pacifica feel "New" anymore...if you know what I mean. The only good thing is we are leasing it for only 3 years, so everything should be covered if we run into other issues (knock on wood).

I was told the new harness could possibly take until the second week of September to arrive plus you have to factor in replacing/installing it, ugh! We needed another vehicle since my wife is a teacher and needed to drive to work and drop-off/pickup our foster boys during the week. We were in a pinch but our salesperson was very helpful and was able to get us a loaner vehicle ('21 Jeep Cherokee) until we get our Pacifica delivered, so we are appreciative of that. And I talked to them about prorating/skipping/covering our monthly payment(s) until it is delivered and our salesperson is willing to work with us.

But I am glad the dealership found this issue before we picked it up but it's kind of annoying that the plant DID NOT catch this at FINAL INSPECTION before it left the plant.

I will post more updates as I get them. I really want to enjoy this Pacifica since I was able to find it in the color I wanted and don't mind the Touring L trim (really wanted the Limited but are hard to come by right now and we needed something).

7/27/21, at dealership, pre-inspection

Car Wheel Vehicle Tire Vehicle registration plate

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Brindledog

· #21 · Feb 25, 2022

jwar said:
Update #4

177 days later

FCA has approved our van as a lemon and we are getting all our money back!

Our van was fixed and they delivered our van to us on January 20, 2022. First time driving it. My wife and I were starting to fall in love with the van. Saved on gas, lots of room for the kids and our dogs in the back with the third row stowed. Then, what I suspected came true. The van already had problems. We get a "Service Hybrid Electric Vehicle System" at 197 miles. VERY DISAPPOINTING!

I did some research and found that it could be an internal leak with the battery heater core? So I looked under the hood and looked at all the coolant reservoirs, all of them were at or above the min level. One month, 1200+ miles later, the far left reservoir is completely empty! So that confirmed my suspicions.

No plans to take it to the dealership because of the long wait for appointments and we are surrendering it anyways. We are already in the final stages of our van being repurchased by FCA, getting out of our lease, all of our monthly payments and down payment back since its been in the dealership shop for the first 5-6 months and we haven't even driven it. Its too bad this van was a lemon. We love it. But we don't want to deal with more issues down the road.

View attachment 49226 View attachment 49227

Definitely made the right choice in getting rid of it. I wish I'd done same months ago. Going with an attorney now so I don't have to deal with it anymore. So frustrating.

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Landshark

· #22 · Mar 12, 2022

jwar said:
Update #3

169 days later

On December 29, 2021, we contacted a Lemon Law attorney for Colorado, told them our situation with our PacHy and we had them put a case together and was sent off to Chrysler the week of January 3, 2022. The process can take 6-8 weeks. And according to the attorney, out of ALL of his cases he has worked with, our case takes the cake and is the worst in terms of a not being able to fix it, making us wait 5-6 months, and we haven't even taken possession of the van, and we are in a lease, making monthly payments when we haven't even driven it once (lesson learned!!). And they are very very confident we will get out of this lease and get all our money back (down payment and lease payments).

Got a call today, 1/12/22, from our contact on the Chrysler Customer Retention Team, telling me that the dealer contacted them that the van was fixed.....I was like, "Okay, but we contacted a Lemon Law attorney and letters were sent to Chrysler. We are not taking possession of the van. So that is the direction we are going." And he said "Alright, we will stop commutation with you and let our Chrysler legal team take care of the matter.". So that is that.

We really wanted this van but after reading a lot of posts on here about the '21+ PacHy issues, I am glad we are getting rid of it. We will never get another Chrysler again and will be looking at leasing a '22 Subaru Ascent (have had many Subaru's and never had issues).

First off, sorry to hear about that bad experience! We had our own bad experience as well, currently going through lemon law process and after many months we finally have the paperwork for FCA to replace our 2020 PACHY with a new one (which I started filling out yesterday).

I'm replying to your above comment specifically about the mention of the Subaru Ascent as an alternative. After our van fiasco, my Wife test drove an Ascent and she really likes it, so we are also very much considering purchasing one later this year. We our Subaru fans already though, our 2nd vehicle is a 2004 Subaru WRX with about 235k miles on it now (with only 1 issue in 230k miles! Compared to our 2020 PACHY which has a host of issues within the first roughly 6k miles). Did you ever end up with the Ascent or are you still in the van for now? I've been curious about people's experiences going from a minivan back to an SUV. We'd be looking at the 8 seater version which would give us more seating options than our current PACHY due to child car seats, etc.

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jwar

Discussion Starter · #23 · Mar 12, 2022

Landshark said:
First off, sorry to hear about that bad experience! We had our own bad experience as well, currently going through lemon law process and after many months we finally have the paperwork for FCA to replace our 2020 PACHY with a new one (which I started filling out yesterday).

I'm replying to your above comment specifically about the mention of the Subaru Ascent as an alternative. After our van fiasco, my Wife test drove an Ascent and she really likes it, so we are also very much considering purchasing one later this year. We our Subaru fans already though, our 2nd vehicle is a 2004 Subaru WRX with about 235k miles on it now (with only 1 issue in 230k miles! Compared to our 2020 PACHY which has a host of issues within the first roughly 6k miles). Did you ever end up with the Ascent or are you still in the van for now? I've been curious about people's experiences going from a minivan back to an SUV. We'd be looking at the 8 seater version which would give us more seating options than our current PACHY due to child car seats, etc.

@Landshark sorry to here about your story. Luckily no accidents happened with your issues! We’ve been lucky so far, with 2800+ miles on it, and that error message still on since 197 miles, we haven’t had any issues. Didn’t plan to fix it because we are weeks away from finally surrendering our van to FCA. Our plan is still getting an Ascent.

But also have been thinking about another Tesla, a Model Y this time. We love our Model 3. Electricity rates are low and don’t change in our area and haven’t done any maintenance in the 1.5 years we’ve had it, other than tire rotation.

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Landshark

· #24 · Mar 12, 2022

jwar said:
@Landshark sorry to here about your story. Luckily no accidents happened with your issues! We’ve been lucky so far, with 2800+ miles on it, and that error message still on since 197 miles, we haven’t had any issues. Didn’t plan to fix it because we are weeks away from finally surrendering our van to FCA. Our plan is still getting an Ascent.

But also have been thinking about another Tesla, a Model Y this time. We love our Model 3. Electricity rates are low and don’t change in our area and haven’t done any maintenance in the 1.5 years we’ve had it, other than tire rotation.

Thanks for the reply. We'd love a Tesla, but we need more seats (4 child car seats + 2 adults at least).

Bummer that there aren't any larger full EV options available yet. Maybe Tesla will make a minivan at some point.

Even after signing this paperwork for a replacement PACHY we were told it'd be a minimum of another 3 months before we actually saw the replacement vehicle.

Anyway, good luck on the rest of what's going on, hopefully it works out in your favor!

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Brindledog

· #25 · Mar 12, 2022

Landshark said:
First off, sorry to hear about that bad experience! We had our own bad experience as well, currently going through lemon law process and after many months we finally have the paperwork for FCA to replace our 2020 PACHY with a new one (which I started filling out yesterday).

I'm replying to your above comment specifically about the mention of the Subaru Ascent as an alternative. After our van fiasco, my Wife test drove an Ascent and she really likes it, so we are also very much considering purchasing one later this year. We our Subaru fans already though, our 2nd vehicle is a 2004 Subaru WRX with about 235k miles on it now (with only 1 issue in 230k miles! Compared to our 2020 PACHY which has a host of issues within the first roughly 6k miles). Did you ever end up with the Ascent or are you still in the van for now? I've been curious about people's experiences going from a minivan back to an SUV. We'd be looking at the 8 seater version which would give us more seating options than our current PACHY due to child car seats, etc.

What problems did you have, did you have an attorney, and with what model year are they replacing your 2020? I have a 2020 with a buyback offer, an am leaning more toward a replacement due to current car market. But with so many owners of 2021 vehicles having problems, not sure I want to deal with another potential lemon.

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Landshark

· #26 · Mar 12, 2022

Brindledog said:
What problems did you have, did you have an attorney, and with what model year are they replacing your 2020? I have a 2020 with a buyback offer, an am leaning more toward a replacement due to current car market. But with so many owners of 2021 vehicles having problems, not sure I want to deal with another potential lemon.

The details of the problems we had are listed here. Short version: Transmission failure while on a family road trip 700 miles from home. Once that was fixed (2+ months later), we had the control arm bolts literally fall out of the control arm on the right-front. The left-front were also loose. The control-arm issue could have been MASSIVELY catastrophic, since the vehicle was basically steering itself in random directions regardless of steering wheel input. That put the van back into the dealership for another month only 2 weeks after getting it back from the transmission issue.

Since then, we've been having a worsening 'clunk' feeling/sound when pressing on the accelerator pedal or removing pressure from the pedal...it's when the engine takes load and releases load when driving (hard to explain over text here). Basically we don't trust it's reliability or longevity and it's our family hauler (family of 5, soon to be 6). The amount of risk/danger involved in having it die on the freeway without warning and having to get my family to safety with the requirement of child car seats, etc...it was quite a story and a hassle and we are super lucky overall in that we didn't end up in an accident, etc. Our experience with our PACHY has been far far worse than any experience with any vehicle we've owned in the past. That said, we actually do love the van! It's a great family hauler, drives nice, great on 'fuel' economy, etc. But safety and reliability have to be #1 concern for us and our family. The PACHY just isn't that.

Anyway, to answer the rest of your questions, we currently have a 2020 Chrysler Pacifica Limited "S" that is going to be replaced. We are working through a lemon law lawyer ($0 cost to us, which is nice). FCA offered us $5,000 as cash to keep, but with the car market right now (and since we don't trust our current PACHY) it feels like it makes more sense to have it replaced with a new one.

The legal wording in the replacement letter says they have to replace with whatever is on the lot at the dealership we bought the first one from, and it has to match all the features/options we have. This means it's highly likely to be replaced with a 2022 or perhaps 2023 model, not a 2021. I looked around and couldn't even find a matching 2022 version within 500 miles, so not entirely sure how they are going to replace it outside of literally manufacturing a brand new one for us. We'll see. They told us it'd be 3 months minimum before we see a replacement once the paperwork is sent back to them.

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snobrdrdan

· #27 · Mar 14, 2022

Landshark said:
Anyway, to answer the rest of your questions, we currently have a 2020 Chrysler Pacifica Limited "S" that is going to be replaced. We are working through a lemon law lawyer ($0 cost to us, which is nice). FCA offered us $5,000 as cash to keep, but with the car market right now (and since we don't trust our current PACHY) it feels like it makes more sense to have it replaced with a new one.

Did you ever consider taking the money, and then just selling the car off (since the market is high) to Carvana or Vroom or just trading it in or something?
I would assume you'd come out far ahead that way.

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Landshark

· #28 · Mar 14, 2022

snobrdrdan said:
Did you ever consider taking the money, and then just selling the car off (since the market is high) to Carvana or Vroom or just trading it in or something?
I would assume you'd come out far ahead that way.

Yeah, if the offer was closer to $10k we probably would have taken the cash and then traded it in for something different.

I'm not sure, but if the replacement vehicle qualifies as a PHEV purchase for the year, I'm wondering if we qualify again for the $7,500 tax credit. I called my bank today (that has the current auto loan) and they said the process for lemon-law replacement is they pay off existing loan and issue a new loan for the replacement vehicle (which is unfortunate with rising interest rates). I'm assuming we'll be signing sales paperwork again which would suggest we qualify for the $7,500 tax credit for next tax season.

Anyway, my thinking is that even if we don't qualify for the tax credit on the replacement vehicle the MSRP itself has gone up over $5k and I'm guessing this means the trade-in/private sale price of the replacement van would be much higher than our existing one. I'm gambling on that difference in trade-in value. I've got quotes from carvana and carmax for right around $41k for our current pachy. The $5k to keep puts us up near $46k value overall if we took the cash. So basically I'm gambling on the idea that a new replacement will be worth at least $46k to us if we trade-in or sell to carmax/carvana/etc. The bonus would be if we qualify for the $7,500 tax credit on top of all of that.

I never in my life expected to be in this position with a vehicle, but figured since we are in this situation we are going to do what we can to make the best financial outcome for us.

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badman

· #29 · Mar 30, 2022

Hey OP,
What is the cost to hire a lawyer for the lemon law process?

Thank you.

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jwar

Discussion Starter · #30 · Apr 2, 2022

badman said:
Hey OP,
What is the cost to hire a lawyer for the lemon law process?

Thank you.

@badman I don’t know if each state is the same but in Colorado, the manufacturer pays all the attorney fees ($3000) in our case. We paid nothing.

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jwar

Discussion Starter · #31 · Apr 2, 2022

Update #5

248 days later

We surrendered our van today. Finally happy to be done with it. Got all our money back (down payment, monthly payments x7, and lease paid off). We started to like the van but with the hybrid battery issue, we didn’t want to deal with it, especially for being a $52k vehicle. Enjoying our new ‘22 Subaru Ascent

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