Just bought a 2020 Honda accord sport off the show room floor with 52 miles. Once I drove it off the lot got a half a mile when the check engine light came on it became hard to drive, all the different messages came on had to drive it back to the dealership and was told service is closed and they said it was the battery. any advise will be helpful. The car started fine and the lights stayed bright. do you think it was the battery or is it a computer problem?
Does not matter what I think or anyone else . You have a warranty so just let them solve this. If they can’t solve it after several tries then you need to find the corporate contact number in your owners manual . Also research your state Lemon Law .
15 Likes
As Volvo says, it doesn’t matter what’s wrong. A new car with 52 miles shouldn’t break down.
7 Likes
I would agree with the others. It’s Honda’s problem. I hope the dealer provided transportation for you.
I doubt that any diagnosis made when you took the vehicle back is valid. The service department was closed, so a mechanic didn’t look at it.
6 Likes
Friend got new accord 10yrs ago in town 100 miles from home. Drove 50 miles and motor overheated. Maybe it was 40 miles? Thermostat was to blame. Had it towed back to dealer. Update. Blew head gasket too. Fixed it. Had it 3 yrs, no other issues.
After concluding a deal on a car, we have usually had to stick around for an hour or so while the final prep is done. Gotta believe that would include the battery condition but a thermostat would be unusual.
With 52 miles on this vehicle I suspect that you are not the first buyer of this vehicle to be disappointed, someone else may have experienced the same problem and unwound the deal. Vehicles parked in the showroom don’t accumulate miles from road tests.
I doubt recharging the battery will solve the problem.
4 Likes
As was already stated, this is Honda’s problem, not the OP’s problem, and the OP should not be trying to diagnose this himself/herself or have anyone other than the dealership perform the diagnosis. In case the OP doesn’t understand why I made that statement, if he/she tells the dealership to replace “X”, and if that repair doesn’t work, then the cost of that repair will be completely on his/her shoulders.
- Demand (politely) a free loaner car while they diagnose/fix the problem.
- Allow them to diagnose and fix the problem, rather than offering a diagnosis/fix.
- If the dealership is unable to resolve the problem to your satisfaction, contact Honda of America. Contact info can be found in your Owner’s Manual.
- In the meantime, start researching the details of the Lemon Law for your particular state.
- Be sure to retain all documentation of their repair attempts, because you will need this evidence if you have to go forward with a Lemon Law complaint.
Sincere good luck with the problem!
9 Likes
With 52 miles on it that means someone else’s fingerprints have been on it; either a buy back from a customer or a dealer demonstrator. I’m a bit surprised to see that with 52 miles it was even placed back on the showroom floor.
2 Likes
And whatever you do, get everything in writing, including this first trip back to the dealer. You want to be able to document things if this turns into a lemon law case.
3 Likes
A buyback is a used car. They can’t sell it as new. If they do, that creates other problems for the dealer. If the dealer put tags on it, this implies it was registered.
2 Likes
Before this gets too far afield, I suspect what he/she/it was talking about was that he drove it for 52 miles and then the problem, not that it had 52 miles in the show room. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense if it already had 50 miles and he drove it awhile and developed the problem.
Sorry but it doesn’t look like it. The OP said:
He/she apparently got half a mile and the car started acting up. He/she returned to the dealership but the service dept. was already closed. Someone, maybe a sales guy trying to be helpful, suggested it might be the battery.
2 Likes
OK, I’ll rescind my comment.
1 Like
It is possible most of the 52 miles racked up were from driving the car from one dealership to another. Nothing nefarious about that.
7 Likes
I don’t believe that people come here to ask these questions so they can learn how to repair new cars. They want to understand the weight of the problems that may follow if they choose to keep this new vehicle that can’t make the trip home without failure.
If I were in this situation, I wouldn’t be looking forward to be “saving all of the repair invoices”, I would explain to the salesperson/sales department that I want a different vehicle, sell this one to your mother.
Now if you click on the digit next to the like button in the first reply, you can see which people think that the OP should go though the meat grinder.
@thegreendrag0n How would you react if your new Honda showed signs of failure within 30 minutes of possession?
4 Likes
Unless the guy driving it was related to the guy who drove a new Subaru from the corporate office in San Antonio, TX to the dealer I worked for in OK City. He left a little after 5 in the morning and pulled in at 11 A.M. He did not want to stick around for free lunch and just wanted to get to the airport.
It was discovered the car would barely run, the turbocharger was barbecued and so was a part of the paint on the hood due to turbo heat. The turbo must have been glowing red the entire way.
He covered 467 miles in under 6 hours and that included going through 4 metropolitan areas; one of them Dallas/Fort Worth at morning rush hour.
Failures sometimes do occur right away with a new vehicle or any new appliance. There is a statistical distribution that describes this. It is called the negative exponential distribution. The probability of a defect is higher when s car is first put into service, but declines exponentially over time until the expected life of the vehicle is up.
I bought a new Toyota 4Runner in 2003. It had a terrible chirping sound in the engine. The dealer replaced the belt and two days later, the chirp was back. The belt was again replaced. Not only did the chirping noise come back, but the belt was installed improperly and the crankshaft oil seal was pulled out and the vehicle leaked oil. I took the 4Rinner back. A new belt was installed and the oil seal replaced. Two days later, the chirp was back. This time when I returned to the dealer, I had a copy of the lemon law. I said the dealer could either buy it back or he could give us a loaner and would have one more chance to fix it. The problem turned out to be a weak spring in the belt tensioner. We still have the 2003 4Runner and it has been trouble free since that time.
I bought a new refrigerator. Two days later everything in the freezing compartment melted. Then it refroze everything. Three days later, it went through the same cycle. The independent appliance store sent out the repairman who had a great reputation and he had repaired my parents’ appliances years before. He checked the refrigerator and couldn’t find the problem as it was working perfectly. Just as he was ready to leave, the refrigerator stopped cooling. He immediately went to the phone, called.the store and had a new refrigerator sent to my house.
A few years later, we decided to buy a freezer. I went back to the store where I bought the refrigerator. They offered me a great price on a freezer that had been returned because the compressor had gone out in the first week. The technician I trusted had installed a new compressor and the freezer came with a new warranty. The freezer was trouble free for 35 years until it finally gave out. By that time, the independent appliance store and repairman were long gone.
2 Likes
Well, even before I learned how crappy Honda treats their customers the moment ink dries on the sales contract…
If it broke right on the first ride, I would turn around and would kick the dealership’s manager door open right away, requesting the deal cancellation.
Unfortunately for me, my 2019 Accord broke later, and keeps doing that like a clock-work ever since.
For your entertainment, folks, “brakes failures are not safety concern” pitch, by American Honda:
4 Likes
Sounds like my local Jeep dealer - I scheduled a repair and dropped the car off the night before so it would be ready for them first thing. This required getting a friend to follow me to the other side of town and bringing me home. The dealer called me just after they opened and said I could come pick the car up, they didn’t have the part they had scheduled to replace.
Another trip across town to get the car after work and the salesman said my car was in the service department which was locked so I couldn’t get my car.
Surprisingly, when I stood in the middle of the showroom floor with lots of perspective buyers talking to salesmen and asked in a loud voice, How in the name of all that’s holy can a dealer be as incompetent as this one? Voila! Someone found a key.
4 Likes