‘Don’t know whether to cry or laugh’: Woman’s Kia starts shaking 2 hours before her trade-in appointment, and she shows up anyway

A woman named Bre (@beepboopboopbeepbeepboop) was just two hours away from trading in her Kia when the car’s transmission light came on and the engine started shaking. She shared the experience in a TikTok clip that has been viewed over 7,232  times. Instead of canceling her appointment, she decided to go through with the trade-in anyway, shaking car and all.

“I seriously don’t know whether to cry or laugh because I was about to trade my car out and now my transmission light is on and my car is shaking,” Bre says in the clip. “I just wanted to trade this car out, and now are they gonna take it if the transmission’s light on? Probably not.”

According to Motor1.com, Bre tried to fix the problem herself by adding oil, thinking a fresh top-up might settle things down. But the car kept shaking and the warning light stayed on, turning what should have been a simple, straightforward trade-in into a stressful and frustrating situation. With her appointment just around the corner and the car showing no signs of improvement, she had to make a quick decision on what to do next.

Trading in a shaking car comes at a steep financial cost

In a follow-up video, Bre found out the problem was a misfire linked to one of the ignition coils, not a failing transmission, but still a real issue. She replaced the third coil hoping it would fix the rough running, but the car was still shaking after the repair. She was now short on time and had spent money on parts with nothing to show for it.

Kia owners dealing with unexpected dealership news, like an Atlanta woman who bought a Kia Sportage she loved only to be blindsided by what the dealership told her, know how quickly things can go wrong. With the car still not running right and her trade-in appointment already there, Bre decided to go ahead and hand the car over.

The dealership accepted it, but she owed around $12,000 on her existing loan and only received about $7,500 on the trade. That left several thousand dollars of negative equity that got rolled into her new loan, bringing the total to around $32,000.

In the comments, viewers turned the video into a live troubleshooting session. Some suggested she should have kept working on the problem, saying that clearing the error code and continuing to diagnose the misfire might have led to a fix. However, clearing a code can turn off the warning light temporarily without actually fixing the root problem.

Others focused on the trade-in value itself. One commenter suggested she might have gotten more money by selling the car through Carvana instead of a dealership. Bre replied that Carvana had offered her just under $8,000, and she asked how to use the platform. Kia vehicles have been making headlines for a range of surprising reasons lately, including a driver whose Kia kept moving safely on the highway after he fell asleep at the wheel following a 20-hour shift.

Later in the comments, Bre said the actual issue appeared to be a vacuum leak at the intake manifold gasket, with a repair estimate of around $500. While that sounds like a manageable fix, it was unclear at that point whether it was the only problem or if something else would have come up. Facing that uncertainty, Bre chose the guaranteed outcome, a lower trade-in value and a higher monthly payment, over the risk of more repairs.