Barry, I keep wondering why you've listed your d.o.b. in your signature? Were too many young girls stalking & emailing you, or are you looking for S2000 birthday presents in a few months?

 

to all that think we are ridiculous for wanting HONDA to repair our engines......... one day you will be asked to fork over $10,000 to repair your $33,000 car and you may feel different. my car was taken to TAMERON HONDA after i owned it only 90 days and 4k miles. it has been there for 40 days and even though i have the best lemon law attorney handling my case contingent(no fee tome
i am currently bumming rides or renting cars and still paying my car note!

 

I don't think anyone thinks it is rediculous to WANT Honda to pay for it. EXPECTING Honda to pay for it is another story.

 

do you just like to contridict everyone? that made no sense. i expect HONDA to stand behind the product and pay for it . thats what a warranty is for. before you start rambling on , i was a service manager at a dealership for 7 years and if the manufacturer isnt 100% sure then HONDA should give the customer the benefit of the doubt...."the customer is always right"

 

I totally agree with this statement.

Since we don't have all the facts in most cases, it's rather pointless to debate the merits of any of the individual cases. If we take what the owners are saying at face value it would appear some dealerships are real pricks and others just the opposite. However, the thing that puzzles me is the appearance that this difference in treatment is not resolved at the next level at American Honda.

Then again, not having all the facts, maybe the same principal is being applied. Barry is always saying that in the end Honda does make things right. However, if we are to believe that owners need to resort to obtaining attornies -- that does not speak well for Honda willingness to work out a solution.

Based on our small sampling at this site, it would appear that younger driver's have a more difficult time convincing the dealers that it was not abuse.

It's a fine line between owner abuse and manufactuer defect, but as su701 said "if the manufactuer isn't 100% sure then HONDA should give the customer the benefit of the doubt."

We have several S2000 owner's that are connected with Honda in service, sales, etc. and I don't recall anyone of them tooting their horn that the above principal is being applied...... so I quess we are left to draw our on conclusions.

 

Honda does stand by there product I see that EVERY day. My DSM was in here Thurs. and I showed him this thread and the only thing he said was that the person who started this thread lied. He said #1 a mistake happened ( car was overrev) #2 the owner did not admit to it. I asked if this car came into our dealership and this is what he said. If this car was a loyal customer ie service maintenance by the dealer, previous owner of a Honda and was honest about what happened he would of covered this repair. His #1 complaint about covering repairs is dishonesty. Honda is aware this situation can happen. I have seen warranties applied on the obvious abuse cases and this all relates to loyalty. Everyone here wants to take take take from Honda like they owe you for buying the car even if you beat the crap out of it. Well guess what they do give if you also give in return.

 

No. Barry is always saying that in the end Honda usually does make things right, even when they don't have to.

toofast4u declined Honda's offer and paid $4,500 for a rebuilt. He had typical #4 scoring, but he was also down 1.5 quarts of oil and didn't check the oil except every 3,000 miles. Honda denied his claim that they should have picked up the whole repair.

dhess in Australia seems to have had a typical oil starvation failure but his claim has fallen on deaf ears.

eleki-SD-Calif. has eight bent valves with no explanation and denies ever causing over-revving.

I'd say that Honda pays for the expensive repairs in better than 90% of the cases. In addition, several members here have admitted to machine abuse (drag racing, over-revving, letting the car run low on oil) and still hae had Honda pick up the full cost on a one-time-courtesy-repair basis.

Make of that what you will.

 

Wow, I don't know how I have missed this thread, I just read through all of it. I have to say, I am SO glad I discovered this forum, it has been so informative and generally helpfull, a LOT more than the dealer or owner's manual.

In my opinion, Honda should give out this s2ki.com URL with every S2000 they sell.

There is one problem I have noticed with Honda service so far, and that is in my experience it seems that most Honda mechanics do not know this car very well. It is NOT a Civic or Accord.

I bought my S from a very large dealer with a very large service department. The first time I took it in for my 7500 mile service, I had to tell them not to rotate the tires, they tried to tell me that was part of the normal service! I mean, I had to actually insist to get them to believe me! Later, when the spark plug TSB came out, I went to talk to the dealer about this, and I had the TSB printed out from this site. Their head mecahnic came out and told me it was "flat out impossible" for the S2000's spark plugs to come loose. A week later, they called and told me to bring it in (I had just gotten the "product update" card in the mail), and then they asked me to bring my copy of the TSB with me so they could use it!

All of this did not lend confidence to their service and repair abilities. Later, an incident I don't want to go into here happened, and I vowed to not go to the dealer again for servicing.

I dread the day if something drastic happens when I HAVE to take the car to the dealer for something....

I wonder if some of these mechanic diagnosis by Honda mechanics could be because of their inexperience with the S2000?

 

su, I take one issue with the comment "the customer is always right." This is a nice rule of thumb, but is highly naive in practice. Gernby is saying, effectively, that Honda has to look at failures on a case-by-case basis.

If you feel you are being discriminated against or somehow overlooked by the dealer, then you have your right to keep after them. Honda is trying to avoid getting screwed by someone who might be hiding something or misleading them.

The bottom line is that AHM is a business and the customer is not always right. Any business that assumes the customer is always right will die under its own service load.

Good luck.

 

OH, BTW, Luft... Yours is a valid concern/observation that has been repeated numerous times on the board. The simple fact is that there's only about 25,000 of these cars (that number's maybe a little low) in the US, and Honda dealers don't usually see S2000s a lot.

There are two perspectives to this:

1. Familiarity breeds contempt: Your friendly neighborhood Honda tech likes to have opportunities to poke around an S2000. Those times are rare, and a good tech will be excited about that.

2. Unfamiliarity breeds mistakes: Well, that speaks for itself.

Vigilance and patience are pretty important in S2000 ownership. Bottom line is that this ain't your daddy's Accord.

Many folks have debated whether Honda would've done better selling the S as an Acura in the US. It's certainly a reasonable discussion, both from the sales point of view and the service point of view.

Like anything, your luck is going to vary with the dealer. My advice, for what it's worth, is try to talk to the tech who works on your car. Maybe buy him/her a coffee. Always remember, your car is just a machine which can be fixed by the right people.