Question Of The Day: What Are Your Warranty Repair Rants and Raves?
My almost-three-years-old Acura TSX has been developing an annoying cosmetic problem: the plastic bumpers and sill trims have slowly but surely been turning a different color from the rest of the car. We live in a mild climate and I work from home, so the vast majority of the time that car sits protected in a garage out of the way of the sun’s UV rays. Even so, the sheet metal is still blue-silver while the plastic bits are turning a pale green. Argh, I know that over time it is just going to keep getting worse, and my warranty is almost up (45k miles down out of 48k).
So, I decided to try my luck with the dealer for an in-warranty repair. Honestly, I expected the “they all do that” brush off and was thinking about how I would pursue escalation. Much to my surprise, the service writer’s first impression when he saw that car was “wow, that’s pretty bad, it looks like those bumpers came off another car”. He said he couldn’t commit to getting it fixed, but would get the service manager to look at it and that “Acura is pretty good about this kind of thing.” I left feeling surprisingly optimistic and well treated. But, later that night my blood pressure went back up when the service writer called and said he would need the car overnight to get a second opinion from the body shop manager. It seems that the service manager was inclined to go the “they all do that” route after all. Oh boy, here we go.
Much to my surprise and delight, the next day I got another call with word that Acura would be paying to repaint all of the plastic bits and would give me a loaner car for the duration. How would next Tuesday be? This kind of when-in-doubt-take-care-of-the-problem-and-the-customer attitude from Acura will keep me a loyal Honda/Acura customer for quite some time. Had my past experiences with Volvo and GM been so positive I probably never would have tried Honda at all. Count mine a rave. How about your warranty service rants and raves?
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The good: 2006 Mazda3 hatch, came with 4 years/50k miles warranty. So far I have 37k on it. Under warranty and with no issue from the dealer (SMITH CAIRNS FORD Yonkers), replaced 2 lower control arms in front suspension and one engine mount that the dealer found out that it was leaking, I did not even noticed. All repairs were done quick and with no hassle. The bad: The clock is running slow since I got the car new, the display need to be replaced, I'm just lazy to go do it, it's surprising that such low tech instrument will fail, they do have a TSB on it. The rear brake pads needed replacement at 30k, the front are still good, very weird, none of my other cars will eat the rear quicker than the front. The tires, Good Year RS/A (205/50-17) are the worst ever tires on earth! not only worn out at 25k, they never had any grip in snow, ice or rain, all season tire that was good only on dry, the only place this issue was covered is on internet blogs, Good Year fail to admit it's a bad tire and still put on many cars on the market, I now have Dunlop sp sport signature that cost exactly half of the Good Year and can handle 500% better at any situation, I leave in NYC.
"The rear brake pads needed replacement at 30k, the front are still good, very weird, none of my other cars will eat the rear quicker than the front." I've seen some modern Hondas do that as well. The rear pads are much smaller and thinner than the fronts, apparently enough so that the rears wear more rapidly than the fronts.