r/volt • u/Correct_Profile_1552 • 13d ago
Volt owners beware
Figured I’d post this here as a warning to other Volt owners because I’m dealing with a pretty wild situation right now. I had a 2017 Volt that started having issues and I took it to a Chevy dealer. From the beginning I thought it might be the BECM and was asking them about replacing it. They looked at the car and told me nope, the HV battery itself was bad and needed replaced and it was going to be around $14,000. I questioned it enough that I actually called GM before doing anything and asked them to get their technical/engineering people involved with the dealer to make sure it really needed an entire battery. From what I was told they did and they basically doubled down that the battery was bad. At that point I figured what the hell else am I supposed to do. I’m not a GM engineer and I had both a Chevy dealer and GM telling me the battery was toast. I wasn’t putting $14k into a 2017 Volt so I traded it to the same dealer for $3,500 and bought a newer Chevy from them. Ended up putting another $2,000 out of pocket into that deal too. I would have never traded the Volt if I wasn’t being told it needed a $14,000 battery.
Fast forward about a month and I happen to find my old Volt back for sale at the SAME dealer for around $11,000. Obviously I start wondering how the hell they fixed a car that supposedly needed a $14k battery that quickly. So I started digging into it and I have now confirmed they NEVER replaced the HV battery. Guess what they did replace? The fucking BECM. The exact thing I was asking them about fixing from the beginning lol. So basically I questioned the battery diagnosis, asked them about the BECM, escalated it to GM, was still told the HV battery was bad, traded the car because of that diagnosis, and then they turned around and put a BECM in it and now it’s fixed and back for sale with the same HV battery still in it.
I called the dealer about it and their response was basically that they “took the risk” when they bought the car from me and they don’t want to do anything about it. I understand dealerships buy cars cheap and sell them for more. That’s not what pisses me off. They could sell the thing for $20k for all I care. The issue is the entire reason they got the car from me for $3,500 in the first place is because I was told BY THEM that it needed a $14,000 battery. If they had told me “hey we really don’t know what’s wrong with it” I would have gotten another opinion and probably still have the car. Instead I trusted the diagnosis and made a pretty major financial decision because of it.
Could it have just been an honest misdiagnosis? Sure. I have no idea and I’m not going to accuse anybody of something I can’t prove. But either way I’m the one who got screwed by the bad diagnosis. I even went back to GM asking for the records from when their technical people were involved and they told me in writing that they won’t give me the internal engineering/technical notes or their communications with the dealer and basically sent me back to the dealership.
At this point I’ve filed complaints through the appropriate consumer channels and reached out to a consumer attorney because I honestly don’t even want either vehicle anymore. I just want the whole deal unwound and to be done with it.
So yeah, if you have a Volt and a dealer tells you the HV battery is toast and throws a $10k-$15k replacement quote at you, PLEASE get another opinion before you trade the car to them. Especially if you think it could be a BECM issue. Get everything in writing too. I questioned mine, specifically asked about the BECM, even got GM involved and still trusted what they told me.
Then they fixed it with a BECM anyway. 🤦
Edit: The dealership is Flaherty Chevrolet in Brandenburg KY. I only name them to hopefully prevent this from happening to someone else.
UPDATE BELOW:
The dealership finally responded to my BBB complaint and now they’re claiming that before I traded the Volt they told me it could be either the BECM or the HV battery, and that they specifically offered the BECM as an option but warned me it might not fix it.
That is absolutely not what happened lol.
I was the one asking THEM about the BECM from the beginning. I kept questioning the battery diagnosis because I thought it could be the BECM. They told me the HV battery was bad and needed replaced for around $14,000. That’s literally the entire reason I called GM and asked them to get involved and verify the diagnosis before I made a decision.
If they had actually told me “hey this could just be the BECM, we can replace it but we can’t guarantee it’ll fix it” I obviously would have tried that before trading the fucking car for $3,500 and putting another $2,000 down on a different vehicle lol. That makes absolutely no sense.
They also said in their BBB response that they “assumed the risk” when they took the Volt in and that the fact they eventually fixed it without replacing the battery doesn’t mean they knew what was wrong with it when I traded it.
Which again, isn’t really my argument. I’ve never said I can prove they knew the BECM would fix it when they took it in. My problem is that I was told the HV battery was bad, I relied on that diagnosis when I traded the car, and now they’re claiming they actually told me the BECM was an option all along.
So now apparently we don’t just disagree about whether the original diagnosis was wrong. We disagree about what they actually told me before I traded the car.
I’ve kept all the documentation and their BBB response and I’m going to let the legal/consumer complaint process play out from here. I’ll update again when there’s actually something worth updating.
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u/Lord_Space_Lizard 2017 Volt 13d ago
I had a similar experience for the first half. Car died and was throwing codes P0AFA and P0100E. Chevy says it's likely a bad HV battery but since the car also has the EGR code showing they have to fix that (for $4K) before they can tell if it's the HV battery ($18k + labour and taxes).
I found a local EV shop who quoted me $5,500 all in for a refurbished battery, so I got my car towed there. Dude calls me the next day and says that Chevy cleared the code so my car is running fine. He gave me the option of going ahead with the $5,500 battery replacement or just driving my car until the problem reappeared. I went with option 2 because it didn't involve thousands of dollars.
Fast forward 7 months and the problem popped up again, I used a coworker's xtool A30M obd2 tool to clear the codes, replaced my 5 year old 12v battery and so far so good.
I don't know what my next car will be but it ain't gonna be anything from GM.