Chevy paid me $33,000 after it recalled my Bolt EV. Here's how I got my money back.

After Chevrolet announced the second battery fire recall on some Bolts, a new wave of customers started calling for their money back or a new car. As someone who was part of the original grumble brigade and successfully got a handsome buyback, let me tell all the money-seekers: Be prepared for an annoying, confusing process that seems to shift depending on where you live.

Chevrolet has spent $800 million on Bolt EV recall costs, but it's been responding to customer calls for buybacks on a case-by-case basis. The laws around buying back or replacing defunct vehicles — known as Lemon Laws — are a patchwork across the U.S. Unfortunately, that means car companies tend to pick and choose who gets their money back.

And it's not just varying Lemon Laws that prompt unequal treatment. Automakers also bet that only a portion of those demanding buybacks will keep up the fight.

"There's a cold calculus that goes on at their end," said Joseph Kaufman, an attorney whose been handling Lemon Law cases since 2003. He now represents consumers, but until 2016, he worked for automakers.

"If 10 people call and ask for a buyback, the car company knows that only one or two will keep pushing," said Kaufman, the founder of Joseph Kaufman and Associates in the Los Angeles area.

If you're trying to find a method to the madness, GM isn't sharing that publicly. "We continue to weigh buyback requests individually and will continue to do so until we have completed the necessary replacements," Kevin Kelly, senior manager of product and brand communications for GM, wrote in an email. Chevy will still offer buybacks on a case-by-case basis, Kelly said, even after announcing that it would replace battery modules with manufacturing defects — not the whole battery pack — in recalled Bolts starting this month.

Earlier, Chevy offered a software patch in June, but serviced cars continued to catch fire. Chevy recalled 2017-2019 Bolts in November, but its engineers struggled for months before deploying the faulty software fix.

How I got Chevy to pay up

Chevy repurchased my 2017 Bolt in June after months of dealing with customer service hell. My car had about 20,000 miles on it, and I got $32,700 back after a usage fee was deducted. I had paid around $36,000 for the car. Not bad.

I believe I got my car repurchased because I complained early and often. Living in California may have also helped, due to its consumer protection laws. Just because there's a safety recall, that doesn't mean you automatically have a Lemon Law case. "To have a Lemon Law case, your vehicle needs to comply with state statue. It just so happens that in California, we have a strong Lemon Law," Kaufman said. That's because in California, legal precedent recognizes a written warranty, but also an implied promise that the vehicle will work for its essential purpose.

"If you have an electric vehicle with a battery that can catch fire in your garage, then that vehicle is not fit for its essential purpose," Kaufman argued.

Others on the r/BoltEV subreddit from California, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, Minnesota, and Massachusetts have shared stories of getting their cars repurchased with similar outcomes as mine. In the past two weeks, a Massachusetts owner posted that they were offered a rare car swap, too. Bolt owners in Arizona and Texas have posted about having less luck.

The strength of a state's Lemon Law comes down to politics, said Cathy Lesser Mansfield, a consumer law expert and professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. "It depends on what the state legislature feels like doing and what the business lobby is like in the state," she added.

Kaufman noted that Wisconsin used to have one of the best Lemon Laws in the country, forcing automakers to pay up within 30 days after getting notice of a defective car — or rack up civil penalties that could double damages. It was gutted years ago during Republican Gov. Scott Walker's administration, despite objections from consumer protection advocates. There's a federal warranty law, but it doesn't have a lot of oomph, and some state laws have more teeth.

When I first spoke to my Chevy customer service rep in February, I had already read a lot about others' experiences on Reddit, and a few people said they were offered either a buyback or a car swap. I asked if I could get a breakdown comparing the two options, but alas that wasn't possible. Swapping and repurchasing were handled by different departments, and the only way to compare was to go all the way down the line with one department then repeat the process with the other. I investigated the swap first because I was mostly happy with the Bolt minus the whole battery-may-catch-on-fire part. After four months of calls and emails to corporate and a local dealer, I finally got a lead on a 2020 Bolt that was available for an even trade. Then the trail went dead. I sent an email once a week for six weeks to find out what was going on and got crickets.

I gave up on the car swap, was rerouted to the repurchasing department, and racked up a slew of unanswered emails. I finally got an email in June that Chevrolet had agreed to repurchase my car. I signed the paperwork and about three weeks later drove to my local dealer to pick up my check and forfeit my car. While there, a rep said she had been following my saga over email and felt sorry for the rigamarole I went through. She explained car swaps were difficult because dealerships didn't have enough Bolts available and more weren't coming from corporate.

While Californians tend to be the ones reporting the most buyback success stories online, California is also home to the most EV buyers. Interestingly, Lesser Mansfield floated the idea of wildfire prevention during our call. Perhaps GM's lawyers worried a blazing Bolt could spark the next roaring California wildfire, she opined, making Chevy the face of death and destruction, much like Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) was during the horrific Camp Fire of 2018. A PG&E power line is once again being accused of sparking this month's historic Dixie Fire. But that's just conjecture on her part.

Battery recalls and EV reputations

Car recalls happen all the time, but this is one of two recent, high-profile incidents for EVs. Electric vehicles are becoming more popular, yet there's still a lot of battery-related anxiety. One reason I felt safe buying my Bolt as an early adopter was the 8-year battery warranty. As people weigh range anxiety and high price tags before purchasing an electric car, EV evangelists don't want those on the fence worried about battery fires. Generally, gas cars experience battery fires more often than electric cars, but EV battery fires like those in Teslas and Bolts make headlines.

How Chevy has responded to this recall may have an impact on the marketplace's feelings about EVs in general. Chevy dragged its heels on replacing the battery cells, whereas Hyundai was quicker to make an even bolder call when two of its EVs were also recalled over battery fires. Hyundai shelled out $900 million to replace entire battery packs for about 82,000 Konas and Ioniq EVs. That's close to what Chevy has already spent, before moving on to replacing the modules, which contain the cells, in its roughly 68,600 recalled Bolts. Both Chevy and Hyundai used LG lithium ion batteries. GM, which is set to only produce electric cars by 2035, plans to use its own brand new battery system called Ultium on future electric vehicles. The Ultium battery is more flexible and cheaper, and Chevy hopes it'll help drive profits.

Despite my experience, not every Californian asking for Chevy to repurchase their Bolt has triumphed. Dave Scozzaro, an IT professional in California, is one of the unlucky ones. He reached out in November to get a car swap and had weekly meetings with a customer service rep until the software fix rolled out in June. If he couldn't get a swap, he wanted a whole new battery.

Working in IT, he was afraid a software solution wasn't going to fix the battery's hardware problem, but he went along with Chevy's recommendation hoping it was a stopgap until another fix came into play. He was giving Chevy the benefit of the doubt because he admired the company for its EV efforts.

"But then my red flag started going up a little higher and higher," he said.

Soon after Scozzaro got the software fix, he spotted the news of a Vermont lawmaker whose Bolt caught on fire after getting the same software treatment. He was horrified. He's since asked Chevy to repurchase his car. The company's reopened his case, but has yet to budge.

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"They're cutting individual deals for some people and not others," Scozzaro said. "It's not the right thing for us as consumers."

Lesser Mansfield said she'd be curious how Chevy's individual deals stack up in the end. May there be a pattern of inequality when it comes to race or gender? Discretion tends to lead to discrepancies, she said, which in turn could lead to legal action. Some more general class action lawsuits have already been filed against GM over the Bolt recall.

Scozzaro wishes Chevy would be more transparent about why it's only replacing battery modules versus the entire pack. An Ohioan recently wrote on Reddit that a Chevy rep offered to put them on a waitlist for a full battery replacement. That raises the question: Is Chevy giving some people all-new battery packs while others just get fresh modules?

Scozzaro hasn't completely lost faith in GM yet, but said, "This may leave a pretty bad taste in my mouth." I feel the same way, and I hope he gets the same buyback deal I did.

I thought about buying Chevy's new Bolt EUV with my cashback, but I reconsidered because Chevy's check won't fully cover the cost and I'd prefer a car with the new Ultium battery. I'm currently looking into other EV companies that still qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit. (Chevy and Tesla have sold too many cars to make the cut.) I may even wait until Congress votes on changing the rule, a subject of heated debate.

For now, we're a one-car family sharing a Hyundai Ioniq plug-in hybrid. As our lives continue to change due to COVID, perhaps we won't even need two cars for a long time.