I'll try to keep this short but try and keep up. During May of 2012 my wife and I went to a GM showroom in Gainesville, GA to purchase a low mileage pre-owned SUV. My wife fell in love with a red 2010 Equinox and we bought it that day. Still under warranty, it had 33k on it so we purchased the certified used car upgrade to allow it to be covered bumper to bumper up to 48k miles.

About two months after we had it there was a "grinding" noise coming from under the hood. Had it checked out at RH Chevrolet in Duluth, GA and was told there was a service bulletin for the timing chain. We left it to be worked on as it was still under warranty. A rental car was supplied.

We've also received service bulletins for software to be upgraded and loaded since then. All were covered but took time to schedule work.

During October of 2014 I noticed the steering wheel was coming apart, flaking off onto my hands. Negotiated with GM to replace the SW, me paying the labor, GM paying for the steering wheel, about a 50-50 split.

At about the same time we received another "service bulletin" about oil consumption in the engine. Left it again in November (I believe) to begin the three trip checking of the oil level. A pain in the rear, but did not want all of the oil to burn up in the engine.

A second trip in January was necessary to check and document the oil level.

In February of this year my wife had stopped to get us dinner after work and upon returning to her car, it would not go into reverse (or drive). Could not even push it away from in front of the restaurant! I called GM that night to try and figure out what the problem was. The girl in the Philippines offered to have it towed and pay for the diagnosis once again at RH Chevrolet. The next morning I met the tow truck where the car sat and had it towed to the dealership. Thankfully he had one of those special lifts to get it away from the curb!While it was there, they went ahead and replaced the pistons and head gasket due to the oil consumption problem. A rental car was supplied.

Again talking to GM, we are negotiating for a decent (not totally happy) settlement to order the parts and fix the transmission which had totally failed. The car only has 74k miles on it and went out of warranty last July 29th. Still waiting on the car and its been two full weeks. They had to tow it to another RH dealership close by because they didn't have enough transmission specialists in the Chevrolet shop.

And lo and behold, this year Consumer Reports advises against purchasing a 2010 Equinox! We are ready to wash our hands of this lemon and Chevrolet, and maybe GM, in the future. Too many MAJOR problems in such a short time

A couple of takeaways, even though I have been purchasing cars from GM since 1973. First, GM call center employees are not employees of GM, especially those twelve or thirteen time zones away. They just don't have the passion for helping those who pay their salary and keeping the customer satisfied. Second, does the executive who had final sign off authority at Chevrolet for the Equinox still have a job? And third, why does the regional VP for Chevrolet in Atlanta not get involved with the customer with MAJOR concerns?

Can anyone else match this horror story?

Update from Mar 6, 2015: As I was in final negotiations with the dealership over the transmission problem, two more service bulletins were brought to my attention, one for the emissions which required a software download and the second, a problem with the steering which will require a new power steering pump (and other parts) which is on back order. All in all my adviser told me the three major repairs in 2015 would run about $12k if I had to pay for it all, which fortunately I'm only out about $1,300.

Sorry but I had to loop all of this together, but as you can see, one (horror) story led to the next!