Just purchased a 2014 Honda Odyssey CPO last week. It has 41K miles, so I asked why the battery had not been changed, and they said it was inspected and battery considered to be good. When I asked for the 182point inspection checklist for the car at the time of the sale, the owner of the dealership said he couldn’t find it, so would mail it to me. He also said I could go onto Honda’s website with my VIN number and download it. It has now been one week since purchase, and the battery is dead. I chatted online with Honda, and they say there is nowhere for me to download the inspection checklist for any CPO car. They will liason with the dealership to get the inspection records/checklist and to see if they can get me a new battery outside of warranty. Anyone with experience to say how Honda/ the dealership may handle this? Anyone see an inspection checklist “lost” this way with a Honda CPO car? Trying to get a sense how shady all of this is.
Well, you just found out why I say CPO only means it is certified to be a used vehicle. A battery can actually check fine in the morning and fail that afternoon. Batteries have their own warranty but at 3 years the prorate is close to zero. Just get a battery, you would have most likely had to do it soon anyway. As for the inspection, that is pretty much meaningless so I would just forget that also. You do need to read your contract to see what kind and how much warranty you have and what it does cover.
Thanks. I’ve read the warranty and it does not cover the battery, of course (I already knew that when I bought the car). I’ll definitely get a new battery, but have requested Honda to ask the dealership to pay for it and give me the inspection checklist (meaningless or not!)
odds are that it doesn’t exist. Or they are busy making one up as we type.
Yup. I was wondering about something like this… Awful.
I’m curious- if the warranty does not cover the battery, why do you think the dealership should pay for it?
BTW- you might hope that it is just the battery and not something more like the charging system is faulty. They may actually pay for that but could be more fighting ahead…
TwinTurbo: The battery was on their “182-inspection checklist”, so it should have been checked. Sure, it could have been fine when they checked it, and 1 week after purchase it is no good. But with the “missing” inspection checklist, I’m suspicious if in fact they ever checked it. I did pay the relative premium for a CPO, so it seems they should at minimum be able to produce proof that they actually inspected the car. (Note: if they don’t pay for the new battery, I am going to replace it anyway of course).
This is just flat out not true! You need to educate yourself about Factory Certified Pre-Owned cars and their warranties. The information is detailed by each manufacturer and is available online.
Dealers pay to have used cars certified and not all qualify. Many that do qualify require some items to be replaced or repaired to standards. I’m not saying costs are not passed on to customers, rather that the CPO cars are often a safer bet than a regular used vehicle.
I’m providing you this information based on my purchase of several wonderful pre-owned cars and I’ve received factory warranties equal to or better than a new car warranty. I have use the warranties with no cost to me.
I have obtained copies of the vehicle inspections and a show of which items were replaced/repaired when and where needed.
Please, quit telling everybody that factory CPO cars are no better than any old used car. You are doing a disservice.
CSA
The dirty little secret is that they probably didn’t actually check the car. Oftentimes the certification process for CPO is to give it a car wash.
You can insist on getting the proof if you want, but @BillRussell is right - they’ll just make one up and send it to you.
I’m gonna defend the Turbobrick man here and say he’s actually right. The factory is not sending factory technicians out to inspect the CPO cars. Dealership personnel are handling the certification process.
Dealerships are supposed to be inspecting and certifying it per factory requirements, but in reality what they’re often doing is just pencil-whipping the checklist and kicking it out the door. The dealership gets to pad the profit margin, and if something they didn’t inspect breaks, the factory will pay them to fix it.
I bought my Acura when it was a little less than 2 years old. They offered to CPO it for me - of course, it would raise the price by 2 grand. “It’ll only take 5 minutes.” Oh? Only take 5 minutes to pull the car in the shop and put it on a lift and inspect everything? Gee, I wonder how they pull that off.
Fair enough. I’ve bought enough used cars and some from dealers where they obviously just went through the motions on the “checklist”. I don’t give them any weight and prefer to check things myself. It will be interesting to see them squirm. Good luck, I do hope you get them to replace the battery but I’d want them to repeat the charging system test at the same time to ensure it’s not something more involved as to why the battery is dead.
I suppose it depends on the car make and the dealership. I can’t speak for Honda or Toyota. I do know quite a bit about one car make and the process and at the particular dealership where my wife works.
I believe a GM CPO car would cover a battery problem/replacement, for example.
The cars are actually inspected (and refurbished if necessary) according to a factory checklist by a dealership technician who is paid for this. He signs off on the certification and a dealer principal signs off as well.
Perhaps not all car brands and not all dealers are legitimate, but I have no information on those.
I have purchased CPO cars with fewer than 10,000 miles that have needed nothing, but I was give additional warranty to add to remaining factory warranty (in one case warranty coverage was beyond new car coverage) and the coverage is the exact same quality of coverage at any dealer anywhere in that car line.
My dirty little secret: I’d buy another Factory CPO car in a heartbeat provided the price compared favorably to a regular old used car. 
CSA
I think if you take the car to the dealer they will replace the battery and give you the inspection report. It doesn’t surprise me that the owner couldn’t find the report, they are rarely involved in used car sales unless this is a very small operation.
Nevada_545: By “owner” I meant the owner of the Honda Dealership who sold us the Certified PreOwned car. The dealership was the one who said the inspection report was missing from the glove compartment, that he would try to find it and mail it to me, but that I could easily look up the inspection checklist myself by typing my VIN number into a honda website. Unfortunately, the last one was a lie, and I fear the first 2 points may have been lies as well.
TwinTurbo: Yes, I contacted Honda directly because I am definitely interested in seeing the dealership squirm a little;) I expect the dealership will just feed me some more lies, so I thought I’d be better off letting them explain to the Honda mothership why they don’t have evidence of having done the inspection, but still selling the car as Certified PreOwned. Thank you for the recommendation around repeating the charging system test- I will ask for that to be done.
What is the verification process to see that this procedure is actually being carried out? How does the customer know, for instance, that it didn’t get really busy in the shop one day and so the inspection technician was pulled into the regular service bay to do tire rotations, and the cars he was supposed to inspect ended up going out without inspection?
What will happen to the technician if a CPO car comes back with something broken that was on the check list? And how do you fairly hold the technician accountable for his inspections while simultaneously recognizing that parts can look good and still fail two weeks later?
Point being, maybe you’re really lucky in that your dealership actually is doing honest CPO inspections and refurbishment, but that does not mean all or even most dealerships are following their lead.
At least once a month on this board a topic comes up in which it is explained that the only time you can be sure a car salesman isn’t lying is when he isn’t talking. Everyone in a dealership except the actual mechanics and the janitor is a salesman, including the guy in the back office who dictates how the dealership will deal with CPO cars. Blindly trusting that a dealership is doing what it claims it is doing to justify the extra expense for CPO would be just as foolish as blindly trusting that the old heap at Honest Earl’s Used Cars really is a creampuff that was only driven to church once a month by Grandma.
As an aside, the more cynical amongst us might suspect that you get special treatment with your CPO vehicles since your wife works there and you would therefore be on the (often very short) “don’t screw” list.
I’m nor big fan of Honda batteries and had one fail in three years. Luckily it was Sunday and the dealer not open so I got a battery from NAPA. Sure it was under warranty but the price was about the same anyway.
Both batteries in my wife’s two accords (87 and 96) were AC-Delco. Both lasted over 7 years. Not sure what brand they’re using now.
I wonder if the inspection reports are really kept in the glove box, it should be in the vehicle’s file. Someone from their used car department would have the answer to this.
The dealership owner is probably just mistaken in believing that people outside the dealers computer network have access to the inspection reports.
Nevada_545: You would think the dealership used car department would have the answer to this. But I can assure you we spoke with several people (including the manager of the used car department at the dealership), who assured us that it was Not in the file or glove compartment. I wish he was just mistaken about my being able to access the report through the computer, but I fear he was being purposely misleading. I think it is most likely that he is just going to make a checklist up now, and have someone sign off on it and post-date it.
This was a Honda CPO vehicle and not just a CPO label from the dealer independent of Honda America?