You are asking for too much
First two times, they did not care to open the hood it seems…
On the last (third) “repair” I indeed observed they messed with a driver chair as the saved positions were erased.
On the brake fluid, to my surprise, after 8 months and 7000 miles the fluid changed from “invisible/clear” to “visible/yellow-brown”.
It seems to be a little bit too soon to compare to my prior Subaru/Nissan/Mazda experience.
Still, I will not lift a finger to save Honda from replacing this car if it fails again.
To me it’s unbelievable that the display has zero details about what problem was detected. Two pages of text with no details. I get the average person won’t find it useful but put it on page 2 at the end. Ex: Diagnostic code: xyz123b: pressure feedback out of normal range
Something. Anything. Other than “problem”.
I get you don’t want to touch it now but I would be so curious to hook up an advanced scanner looking for brake codes…
Yes, I agree, it is total travesty to show message like that and than not keep the malfunction code inside the BCM for technies to diagnose, this is what techs told me on the first two occurrences.
On the third one, I was kept far away from getting any info beyond “official narrative”, as once they spoke to Honda tech line, they found I’ve already went 2 steps out of 3 on the dispute resolution check-list.
I’m into the software engineering myself, and it is always a tug-o-war between us and marketing on exposing any details to the end-users, what may be found “confusing”, we do not always win to expose even a bare “xyz123b”, spare concise explanation of what is wrong.
So, “Houston, we’ve got a problem” is all we likely will get from the newer cars.
By now I have vendor-specific “advanced scanners” for Nissan and Toyota, getting one for Honda is not yet on my Christmas shopping list, and I’m not even sure Honda will be in my garage by the next time Santa comes to town.
Knock on wood. It’s entirely possible the failed switch is the cause of that seemingly unrelated brake system error message. Depends on how the switch failed of course. But If you’ve ever had a computer keyboard switch fail in the “on” position you know what sort of weird symptoms that can cause. Such a switch failure confuses the heck out of the computer software & can make the computer unusable; and in certain failure modes it isn’t obvious at all why the computer is acting so weird.
In any event it seems you & the dealership are on the right track now: they acknowledge there’s a problem, they found a problematic switch, replaced it, and now everyone’s awaiting the results. Hopefully the problem is solved. If not, what you need from them is a promise to keep working the problem until you are satisfied with the result.
It’s curious why they appeared to at first ignore your complaint. I presume this b/c in many customer new-car complaints if they just ignore it the customer will discover the problem isn’t worth fussing over or that the customer will discover the reason for the problem themselves. Sort of like the physician’s “take two aspirin and call me in the morning”. A wait and see philosophy in other words.
The microsoft approach: this machine has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Want details?
Then spit out a 256 character alphanumeric string conveniently delimited by a hyphen every 128 characters.
Nice to have mfr specific scanners! My older Innova just outlived its usefulness and I bought a mid range Autel unit. PITA user interface but pretty capable scanner for the money… paid for itself on first job.
Hopefully they do, although it seems to be a slim chance.
If the same problem manifests itself again, it means they failed to repair the same problem 3 times and that car goes back to Honda with not regard if they pretend this is not a safety related one.
I filed complaints to Virginia Attorney General office, Consumer Protection branch and to BBB, they both accepted the case as “eligible”.
In the same time, Honda corporate seem to wake out of sleep (sure, I sent them one more certified letter) and assigned a new mediator to my case, who is much more sweet talking guy, not dismissive as the prior one… I’m not sure how far it will go, but they reached out and finally started asking “right” questions.
Today, I had the same failure AGAIN, on the speed of 25 MPH as I noticed a change in brakes “feel” and immediately it followed by the warning self-diagnostic message, which once again was carefully documented by me.
The car is back to the shop, Honda corporate rep received another load of photo-evidence… I’m waiting to hear if they want to acknowledge screw-up or if they really want to drag through the court system and spend even more.
I hope that you communicate this new information to the corporate folks at Honda of America, in order to bolster your case. And, now I am beginning to understand why Honda’s reliability rating took such a drastic nosedive in the most recent Consumer Reports auto issue.
I know that problems on new vehicles under warranty repair can be irritating , I have had them and they were solved. This goes way past just being annoying . I wonder just how large this problem is and what does Honda plan to do about it.
I wonder of large pre-owned sellers like Carmax have plans to avoid vehicles like this .
Guys, thanks for replies.
I will keep you posted.
They bugged me out of lazy posture I was taking before, I’m coming after them, including yet another complaint to NHTSA I will do.
I’m definitely not taking the OP’s problem lightly, but if the folks at the dealership tell him,
“They all do that”, at least–for once–they will be telling the truth!
