- A Kia customer is engaged in a bizarre legal spat with Taylor Kia of Lima, Ohio.
- Tiah McCreary bought a ’22 K5 but it was later repossessed due to finance issues.
- She then registered Taylor Kia of Lima’s name and sent a cease and desist letter.
If revenge is a dish best served cold, as the old saying goes, then one disgruntled Kia customer from Ohio has delivered it straight from the freezer to a dealer after the two sides fell out over a used K5. The result is a legal battle between customer and dealer in which the dealer is fighting for the right to use its own name.
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The story starts in February of 2024 when Tiah McCreary settled on buying a 2022 K5 sedan from Taylor Kia of Lima, Ohio. McCreary signed multiple documents in the showroom offices and the dealer‘s finance rep applied her electronic signature on an arbitration document, Auto News reports.
Related: Kia Is Making Its Cars More Expensive Without Raising Prices
All was good until a few weeks into McCreary’s ownership of the car when Global Lending Services, which had given her the green light to purchase based on initial checks, decided that her income wasn’t high enough to qualify for the loan. McCreary’s car was then repossessed.
Having your car repo’d isn’t only inconvenient, it can be humiliating, and while investigating her legal options the one-time K5 owner stumbled across a way to return the favor. She found that Taylor Automotive Group had failed to submit a renewal application for the name Taylor Kia of Lima, causing the Ohio Secretary of State to cancel the registration.
McCreary pounced on the opportunity, registering Taylor Kia of Lima under her own name before sending cease and desist letter to the dealer group, which owns two other Kia showrooms, two Hyundai dealerships and a Cadillac outlet.
A full-on legal spat ensued in which McCreary filed a complaint alleging the dealership group and Global Lending Services violated the Consumer Sales Practices Act, while simultaneously asking for an injunction to stop Taylor Kia using its own name. And the dealer and the finance company in turn filed a motion insisting that her name was on an arbitration agreement, something McCreary says was done electronically without her permission. These agreements mean disputes are settled by a supposedly neutral third party and prevent a customer taking a matter to court.
In this case the court decided McCreary had consented to arbitration regarding the K5, but ruled that the used of the Taylor Kia name was a separate matter. That second matter is still rumbling through the court system and presumably racking up some big legal bills that one side will have to eventually pay. McCreary might not have got her Kia sedan back, but she’s certainly made life difficult for the people who took it from her.
Via Auto News
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