Got my wife a 2018 Honda HRV about 25 months ago, brand new off the lot. Perfect little SUV for her, she's not into cars so she could care less if it were a prius or a Porsche. The thing has had zero issues in that 25 months time. About a month ago I get a notice saying the fuel pump is recalled, says no action needed because pumps are not available but my dealer will contact me when they are to have it swapped. So she says to me... "should I be worried about driving it?"


This is where my hatred for dealers starts to kick in. I tell her that its fine and that they have to replace it only because there's a slight chance it could fail. And now the main reason for this rant.......

2ish weeks ago she goes in for an oil change because we are about to take a 2200 mile round-trip journey and it was almost due. While she's there they tell her it has the recall but they dont have the pump. So she's waiting for the oil change and texting me about the recall just for conversation. I responded that its good they dont have it, I don't wanna have a new part installed right before a long trip. She thinks my metallity is foolish haha. Well an hour and a half goes by so she goes up to the desk and asks whats going on. Service informs her that they found a pump so they are installing it too and it's almost done. Well it is what it is........

I would like to point out for the rest of this long drawn out story that I dont blame my wife at all...... nor should I. This is not an I told you so/see im right story.

The next day her dash board is a lit up Xmas tree of lights. Cars acting funny..... She brings it back and says something is wrong, never had an issue till you did the recall. Takes them 3 hours to fix it and they say the fuel pump gaskets "failed" which caused the pressure to be off and hence the issues. Personally I dont buy it but hey.... whatever. She says to them, I'm leaving on a long trip am I going to have this problem again? Service manager says and I quote "I'd send my kid cross country in this car". We leave about 4 days after that for our trip and Spoiler alert, we made it about 900 miles when the dash kit up and the car acts like its not getting enough gas. Had to limp it down the breakdown lane for almost a mile just to get off the highway.

We call honda roadside assistance and they tow it 10 miles to the next dealer. Tell us we need to find our own ride because of covid haha. We are in the middle of nowhere too. I explained all this to the service department at this dealer. I mean....... what else could it be??????? Zero issues with this vehicle in 25 months and they touch the pump and now 2 different days of the same issues within a week. So the tech says there's no issues with the pump because he visually inspected it and it looks fine. I'm livid! He claims the valve springs are too tight and they need to be adjusted. So 8 hours of sitting at a dealership a long way from home and im about to flip out. I'm brought out back and shown the pump which is out of the car because I insist its faulty or installed wrong. So it's out and I say just put a new one in and try that... they won't because the tech said its visually fine. I say... so you can tell me that the electronic aspect of this pump is fine with a visual check? They still won't swap it. I also notice the heads are off the car to adjust the valve clearance. I march to the parts department and try buying a new pump since they have to install the other one anyway.....$415 bucks but parts doesn't have any. I tell them to put it back together with the valves adjusted since they are certain thats the issue. Sure enough, still not running right. At this point the head decision makers give us a loaner and we leave on our way and we'll pick it back up in a week on our way back.

So days pass and we get a call. They found the issue! We got bad gas and thats why its running bad. Total cost to clean it out and put new gas in is......... drumroll please...... $415. Funny how its the same price as a new pump. Also funny how the gas gauge was exactly where we left it. I call bullshit. I truly believe they didnt wanna admit it was the pump after the huge scene I made and just came up with this story. Part of me wants to believe they also wanna protect the brand and by documenting it as the fuel pump would give it 2 strikes on the same issue towards a lemon law case. (3 needed for lemon law in my state)

I paid the bill and left. I can't prove what the issue was and I'm sure they know that.

I'd love to here anyone's thoughts whether you agree with me or not.

Thanks for the Omega Shoulder space to cry on

 

Seems extremely unlikely that mis-adjusted valves or bad gas would light up the dashboard. Sounds like you ran into a couple of incompetent Honda service shops.

By the way: you said the heads were off for valve adjustment. Did you mean the valve covers were off?

 

My blood was boiling just reading your story. Bad gas...what a crock of sh*t! It might be worthwhile sending a letter to corporate.

 

How do you have bad adjusted valves on a new car with self adjusting valves????

I literally have the last car made on the planet that doesn’t have self adjusting valves, and even when it went into production in 2000 it was the only car out there as everything on the planet had had them for years if not decades. The engine went out of production in 2006.

 

correct. thats the harley guy in me. we just take the whole head and rocker boxes off to make adjustments haha.

he was just adjusting the gap at the valve springs. he showed me how they were off with feeler gages but I wasn't paying attention because it was all BS and I was so furious

 

I feel your pain, where I live we avoid dealers like the plague. In fact, the local Audi dealer refused to do the recall on the 2.0 tfsi engines with the oil consumption issue. The independent place where I take my A4 B6 isn't exempt from paying the idiot tax either. I took it in due to a failing crankshaft position sensor. I could have done it myself but the weather was crappy and I don't have a garage.

The guy there calls me to tell that it needs sparkplugs as well. Fair enough I said, they haven't been changed in quite some time.
I go pick it up, the engine starts sputtering like mad. I complain about it and he just nods.

He had the wrong sparkplugs in it, antifreeze all over the paint and the timing was off. All sorts of stuff happening, airbag light on and totally messed up. It taught me a nice lesson and I ended up buying my own diagnostic tool and fixing it up myself. Funny enough, this is the first time I've ever had an issue with this shop.

 

I (mercifully briefly) worked as a salesman at a dealership.

I would bet my favorite Seamaster your issues had little/nothing to do with the gas - sadly, many, MANY times this sort of things happens.

We had a young guy come in once, just wanted to trade his 8-9 year old Camry toward a Fiesta or something. We had the guys in the shop look it over, put in all the info, and the computer corporate has trades based on basically says, we can offer the guy 2400 hundred and still make at least 2k, after we do the detail and tune-up. The manager was furious, and refused to accept it. He walked out to the guy, sat down, and proceeded to basically chew the guy a new one for his car's condition, the ONE dent it had, and that is was missing a hubcap (a less than $20 part, wholesale to us) - the poor guy was lucky we were even willing to consider it, and out of the goodness of his (the manager's) heart, he'd knock a thousand off any price on the lot, but that was it. The poor guy looked near tears, and asked what it would take to repair his own car - a new alternator, a few hundred bucks probably, which hadn't been verified yet. My manager scoffed, said it was worth more as scrap than it would be to fix it, he'd be lucky to get home in it, etc, throwing out numbers like 4-5 thousand. After an hour of this conversation, and much to my own dislike, the customer took the deal.

After the guy left in his new car (don't even get me started on the terms finance stuck to him; he's probably still paying a note) I remember asking the manager if he had any problems with what he had just done. "No, the whiny little blah-blah-blah ask for the estimate papers if he wanted to see the real numbers!"

So I asked him if he would've shown the guy what corporate was telling us to offer the guy on his car, if the guy had even known to ask. Or if he'd even had service fully check it out to know everything the car needed, besides the alternator.

The manager laughed in my face, said "F*7k no; I'm here to sell f*&king cars, not f%*king welfare."

A few days later after detailing, the alternator replacement, and nothing else to my knowledge (maybe the hubcap), that Camry was on our lot advertised as "best deal on the lot, low mileage, just given blah-blah inspection, pay up and drive cross country starting today!" - the manager had priced it just under 9k. It sold in a couple of days at 8k-ish because, I distinctly remember his Bronx accent saying, "you simply don't find cars in this condition for this kind of money any more."

Happily, I soon after left that position, and have not worked for a dealer since. It soured me enough that the last two cars I bought I specifically requested no factory or dealership warranty so I could use an independent-only shop for service work. A Nissan dealer tried to talk me out of it and into more warranties. He reminded me of my old boss...let's just say, I did NOT end up buying a Nissan.

I love cars with a passion. But I have lost any and all enthusiasm for the dealership experience in any capacity.

 

I do not know about how it works in the US but here you are suppose to receive a detailed invoice of what was done, including the amount of fluids + unit cost. Meaning it should show how much gas they put back in..
If you have the same constraints in the US, then you can check if in all their BS they at least pay attention to put a number that matches more or less what was in your tank... It could be difficult using this against them directly as you use the car since, but it could worth a shoot to add that info when contacting Honda USA.

Another thing you could do is ask your wife or a friend to call them and ask:
"I have a CRV, I think I filled the tank with the wrong kind of fuel. I realized it just before starting the car and leaving the gas station, so there should be no damage... A friend can tow me to your shop. How much it will cost to drain the tank and clean the system?" Then you ask them + Honda USA why you did not pay the same..


My brother is a mechanic BTW But the kind that pays attention to his customers, wherever they are only in town for one day or live close by. Sadly he is also well aware of what some people in the business are capable to do to get the most money they can... He opened his own shop around a year ago because of that: his old employer is now near to closing down

 

Bad gas my ass.

 

best they gave me was a detailed story on an official work order. when I was told it was bad gas they said they tested it. I replied with... ill get a copy of the test results at which they said yes. there were no results with my paperwork and I asked for them but they didn't know where they were. I just wanted to get on my way anyway and honestly I didn't trust the results. They can take any sample bottle, put some gas in and go to the sink and add water or a splash of diesel and then have that tested. For that reason I wasn't confident in "test results"

 

Document your entire story with as little emotion as possible with dates, names, locations and send it to the appropriate place in Honda USA. Sounds like you got stuck into a batch of seriously incompetent 'mechanics' and management that wasn't paying attention (by accident or by design). It happens. A lot of places don't have the appropriate personnel anymore with all the Covid stuff, some staff are staying home and collecting money, and some have moved on.

And unfortunately too many car places don't take a woman as seriously as a man when a car comes in with issues. Sad to say but it still happens.

 

@BradleyJ. The results obviously do not exists, but as you said, even if they existed they could have tested anything. That is why I was more thinking about the amount of gas they put back in the tank... and if in the US there is a legal obligation to have that kind of information in the invoice.

I understand that you wanted to get on your way, I would probably have done the same TBH. But now that there is more time to think about the situation, I think you are entitle to piss them off a bit and ask them about all the legally missing documents (insert :devil: smiley here)

 

My take on it is, how can I prove anything, and will corporate even care or just take the side of the dealership.....

I can assure you if it were at the dsaler near my house I would have left it there or even had it towed to an independent to have it fixed and documented. when you're 8 states away from home its hard to put your foot down because time is an issue. not to mention I had plans to get to on the way there and work to get to on the way back. I wasn't in the position to do much. still sour though haha.

 

With today's outsize social media's effect on people, corporate officers do care, especially if the story has a bad smell about it, as your's does. I'd still write it all up and send it in, they may choose to ignore or act on it. Not much to lose.

When you buy a new car today the manufacturer takes a lot of interest in your experience, how the dealership treated you, how the salesman did, etc. After American manufacturers had their clocks cleaned decades ago they had to change. The entire industry started surveying new owners to see how everything went because the dealership experiences had such a low opinion in most buyer's minds. They had to change.

 

this is true

 

In high school and start of college, I worked in the parts department for a dealership.
The s*** that I saw behind the scenes make me skeptical of every single service department on the planet.
I only have warranty work done at dealer shops and luckily for me, I buy/service all my cars at the dealer I used to work for and still know a lot of the management staff, so at least I know they take care of me...well, at least a little better than the next guy lol.

 

I try to avoid dealerships like the plague.... I agree with Evitzee, write a letter to corporate.

A little car humor to cheer you up.... a very, tiny, itty bit.

A patrolman was making his evening rounds in this small town. As he was checking a used car lot, he came upon two little old ladies sitting in a used car.
He stopped and asked them why they were sitting there in the car. Were they trying to steal it?

“Heavens no, we bought it,” replied one lady.

“Then why don’t you drive it away?”

“We can’t drive.”

“Then why did you buy it?”

“We were told that if we bought a used car here, we’d get screwed… we’re just waiting.”

 

BMW are no better, the simplest of issues with my X3, the sticky velcro tab on the floor mat folded over, the mat wouldn't secure on the floor and slipped around under the drivers feet, not safe. It took BMW and the local dealer 8 weeks to sort the problem and give me a new set of mats, and this was only sorted because I complained every day to BMW head office until they got off their backsides and sorted it.

 

worst part is I dpint anyone has anything positive to say haha.