I like my Honda Civic, it’s been a great little car, every bit as reliable as my old pickup, and the gas mileage (46 MPG) is nothing short of amazing. But I don’t think I’ll buy another one. The problem isn’t the car, it’s the company.
Because I drive a hybrid, I’m stuck going to the dealership for my oil changes. I’m certain pretty much anyone (even me) could do the oil change, and for quite a bit less than the $50-60 Honda charges, but the dealership is the only place I’ve been able to find the specific synthetic oil I need. (10W-30 is easy to find, even as a synthetic, but good luck finding 0W-20!!)
The problem is, for the past four years, the local dealership’s version of an “express oil change” has been a pretty consistent 1 1/2 to 2 hours. (I’ve more than once fell asleep waiting for them. One time, after 90 minutes, I discovered I’d forgotten to give them the key – they never noticed!) Couple that with completely failing to follow-through when I’ve left complaints for the service manager and it becomes clear that this is not an organization that’s overly concerned about customer satisfaction. (I’ve never received an apology, but they do send letters periodically suggesting I buy another car from them.)
A week or so back, the check engine light came on. Between hybrids being slightly different from most cars and the fact that it was almost time for another oil change, I decided to take my car to the dealership. Not the one here in town, but one just a mile or two from my office.
They repaired the car just fine, I’ll give them that much. Then they claimed to have had problems starting it and suggested I should buy a new battery. The only time I’ve had trouble starting the car was when I left the headlights on. Taking it to the dealership that morning, it started up no problem, and again with no difficulty when I picked it up in the evening. Still, I’m one of the vanishingly few people who know how to drive a manual transmission, so I wrote off the problem with not starting as someone who just wasn’t familiar with manual transmissions. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe they really were trying to sell an unneeded repair.
Running errands this morning, I noticed a yellow sticker inside the frame for the driver’s door. Unless I want to know the correct tire pressure, I don’t pay a lot of attention to doorframe stickers, but this one caught my eye. Taking a closer look, it turned out to be from the dealership that did the repairs, with the phone numbers for the sales and service departments. In short, they put an ad on my car.
I don’t wear T-shirts with company names on them. If Nike, Adidas, or some other apparel company wants me to wear an ad for their product, I feel they should at the very least give me the shirt for free. No way am I going to pay for someone else’s ad. And that’s essentially what’s happened here, the Honda dealership has put me in the position of paying for the “privilege” of having them slap an ad on my car.
If I were to go to the Honda dealership and put stickers on the cars in the lot (even on the doorframe), it’s a pretty safe bet that the police would become involved. So why is it OK for a Honda dealership to slap an ad on my car?
Update: Monday January 14.
The service manager at the dealership that put the ad on my car returned my call this morning. After his crew removed the sticker, he apologized and promised to put a note in the shop’s records to not do that again. But because the ad wasn’t visible to the general public, he doesn’t think they did anything wrong.
But he didn’t argue that it would be wrong for me to treat their cars the same way.