I’ve been thinking a bit more about our experience today with the Honda dealer’s handling of our broken transmission. Thanks to a tip from a friend who went through the same ordeal a month ago, I did a search on The Google for “flashing D.”
It turns out that failing transmissions in Honda Odysseys are a well-known problem to Honda. It also seems from the comments I’ve read that Honda has gone out of its way to completely paper over the problem.
What really makes me mad is that we’ve had the van serviced at our local dealer, Leith Honda, for two years and not once was anything mentioned about the potential for this catastrophe to strike. I think the service managers were simply crossing their fingers that they wouldn’t have to deal with it.
Or … maybe they weren’t. Maybe they knew the windfall they would get once it happened. What really pisses me off is that the first quote we got was almost $5,000 to fix it – to fix a problem that has been well-known to Honda for at least four years now. Only later did the service tech hem and haw and “check with his regional manager” to get us the still-outrageous $1800 quote. Yeah, the old “check with my manager” trick has filtered down to the service department.
And the replacement transmission will be just as broken as the current one, as its simply a rebuilt version using the same flawed design. Some owners report going through three transmisisons before their car ever cracked 100,000 miles.
Whether we get the van fixed or dump it, one thing is sure: Honda has completely burned through any customer goodwill I had for them, all in the space of 8 hours.
- Their failure to address this issue could have caused a catastrophic failure of my car’s transmission – endangering my life and the lives of my family.
- They pretended this issue is uncommon when it clearly is not.
- They attempted to sock us with an outrageous repair fee for what they should by right pay for.
Up until now it had been a nice ride, Honda, but you’ve totally screwed the pooch on this one. Find yourself another sucker.