Wednesday, April 7, 2010

What a HACK

5:30ish pm cst - Recieved a call from J at McGrath Honda that our vehicle was ready to be picked up. So i call my wife and let her know.

She picks up the car and as she is driving away she hears the break pedal squeaking again. She decides to drive around the neighboorhood again just to make sure. It is definitley still happening so she takes it back. Before she does, she checks the moonroof. When she opens it she notices something strange but cant put her finger on it. After she opens it and closes it a few times, she realizes that the pop-up wind guard is gone. She looks at the paperwork and it states "Tech line advised to remove the wind guard to fix the issue". Based on this logic, i should just drive with the radio really loud so i dont hear the issue with the brake pedal anymore.

When she gets back the service confirms that this was the fix hack for the moonroof then he jumps in the car to check out the brakes. As they start to drive away (not even outside of the service building, they hear the squeak.

Zara sits in waiting area for approx 30 mins and is told they need to order a new part. She needs a booster for the brakes. Rather than keep her car until they fix it the correct way and giving her the same rental she just returned, they give her back the car and claim it is safe to drive (even though it has brake problems).

I was unhappy with many things about this so as soon as she came home i jumped in the Pilot and drove back to the dealership. I was very upset and had many questions for them. Here are some of the main questions and their responses (paraphrased to make it as short as possible):
Me: I understand you need to order a new part, how long will that take?
Rep J: I will order it in the morning and it would take a day or two, i will call you as soon as i order it to let you know.Me: Is this going to be how the rep called us last time, which by the way we still havent received a callback to the message we left on Wednesday.
Rep J: No, we will call you because I have an open ticket for the vehicle.
Me: There was an open ticket last time also, and we didnt hear from you on Monday or Tuesday like we were told. We actually called on Wednesday and left a message and nobody ever called us back.
Rep J: I guarantee we will call you back.
Me: Is the vehicle safe to drive? This concerns me that you are sending my wife back out in a car that has issues with components in the braking system.Rep: Yes it is absolutley safe to drive.Me: It still doesnt sit well with me, couldnt you hold on to the car until you fix it the right way and let us keep the loaner. (and this is where i just get furious)
Rep J: There are none.
Me: What!?!?!? What about the one we just returned less than an hour ago?
Rep J: That one has to go to another customer in the morning.
Me: hahaha (simply laughed in disbelief)

At this point I was just boiling. But again, I stayed calm and was very nice to the rep.

Me: And about the moonroof? Is that the only solution, remove that piece?
Rep J: Yes, that is what the tech line told us to do.
Me: I am dumbfounded on that one, that seems like a hack to me, not a fix.
Rep J: We do that all the time for plates and other things like on exhaust systems and transmissions.
Me: Ok, so what is the purpose of that peice, since Honda included that as part of the car they obviously did that becuase it served a purpose.
Rep J: The engineer said all it does is cut down on wind noise.
Me: Ok, so all the other Pilots out there get to drive around with less wind noise but I dont becuase you cant figure out how to fix it properly.
Rep J: According to the tech line this is the correct fix.

Since we didn't seem to be getting anywhere, I decided I would discuss this again when we come back with the car for the brakes.

8:30ish cst - We are about to leave the dealership and I was told the booster part would be ordered Wednesday morning and Jerry would call to let us know it was ordered and how long it would be.

On the drive home, we decided to take a look at how much wind noise that pop-up wind guard acutally blocked. As we were driving only about 30 to 35 mph, there was a significant increase in the amount of wind noise as there was when the part was still installed. And it wasn't just wind noise, because we had the windows closed, we had that high vibration pressure feeling of the wind entering the car (similar to only having one window open in a car while driving at high speeds). We did not have this issue while on our road trip just 2 weeks earlier.

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