Audio By Carbonatix
Bella Graye is a TikToker who daily drove her beloved Jeep Grand Cherokee L. But after a bizarre breakdown, she took her car to the dealership. Six months later, her Jeep still had techs scratching their heads.
So how did it all start? “I got home. I put my car in park, tried to turn it off, and it wouldn’t turn off.” That’s right—Graye hit the Grand Cherokee’s engine start/stop button, but nothing happened.
Graye ended up asking for help. “I call my mom, and I’m like, ‘Mom, my car won’t turn off.’ She’s like, ‘Do you have it in park?’ I’m like, ‘Yes.’” Her dad said, “I don’t know what to do.” Her mechanically inclined neighbor said, “I don’t want to mess with it.”
With no other options, Graye drove her car to the Jeep dealership. The dealership’s response? “That’s so weird.” It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. The techs told Graye, “You’re going to have to leave your car here.”
When she called for an update, she found the problem was even more complex. “Once we got it turned off, now we can’t get it turned back on.” They ordered a new part—but it didn’t work. Graye remembered, “I think they did that a couple times, and then they were like, ‘Okay, you can come get a rental car.’”
The Jeep the dealership couldn’t fix
Bella Graye likely thought she’d only be driving a rental for a few days. But she says every time she checked with the dealership, they were ordering new parts—and those parts weren’t solving the problem. The dealership told her it had ordered and installed 10 separate parts, hoping each one would solve the issue. None did. Finally, she admitted, “I haven’t had my car for four months because the Jeep place can’t fix it.”
At that point, the dealership called in a specialist to troubleshoot Graye’s Grand Cherokee. Finally, Graye received a long-awaited phone call. The dealership said her Jeep was ready to pick up. She arrived at the dealership, grabbed her keys, went outside to where her car was parked, hit the button to unlock it… and nothing happened. When she finally unlocked it by hand, she pressed the engine start button—and again, nothing happened. Four technicians began to inspect her car and finally concluded, “We thought we fixed it, and clearly, we didn’t.” So Graye went home empty-handed.
It was 107 days after Graye dropped her Jeep at the dealership that it was finally ready to go. She arrived as excited as could be, drove the SUV home, and noticed a weird noise coming from one wheel. When she brought it back to the dealership, the service technicians told her they needed to keep it longer and address an issue with the brakes. That’s when Graye decided, “This car is cursed.” You can see that update embedded below:
Graye trades in her Jeep, ‘so sad’
One year later, Graye posted a video titled, “Cleaning my Jeep before trading it in.” At this point, her SUV was parked in her driveway and appeared to be in working order. But when commenters asked why she was trading the Jeep, Graye said, “i’ve had SOOO many problems with it! it was in the shop trying to get fixed for 6 months ?”
Graye test-drove a few cars and chose a Cadillac. She said of her Jeep Grand Cherokee woes, “It’s so sad because they’re such pretty cars!”
I’ll add that other Jeep owners have reported problems with the engine start/stop button. Mechanics have even shared procedures to take the start/stop button out and use a traditional key-in ignition instead. But it’s not a common enough problem for the NHTSA to require Jeep to recall the Grand Cherokee. Because Graye’s dealership needed a specialist to troubleshoot it, there probably isn’t even a service bulletin from Jeep corporate addressing the issue.
