Honda likes to advertise that they offer above average service... Acura,
prides itself on being the luxury division so one might expect luxury
service. But given the following set of circumstances, what do you
think?
May 26th my wife's '06 Acura CSX was involved in a single vehicle
accident by narrowly avoiding the car running a red light at 11
o'clock on a Friday night. Unfortunately, the CSX sustains not only
body damage, but some pretty impressive undercarriage and safety
equipment damage.
We sent the car to the body shop where we get most of the work ever
required on our cars, Clear Collision. CC works with Manitoba Public
Insurance but in order to get several safety measures properly fixed
it needs to be sent to the dealer.
This is the part where Crown Acura, a Dilarwi Group car dealership and
the only Acura dealer in Manitoba, gets involved.
The car is brought to the dealership on July 9th. Looked and on the
10th and work starts on the 11th. It is now the 27th and various
parts are being shipped, have arrived, been mislabeled, not installed,
and safety checks not yet completed as a result. EIGHTEEN days to not
have the car even close to being road worthy yet. According to the
service fellow, they can build an entire CSX in under 6 hours... of
course, that is before they have your money!
So, with a vacation pending on Sunday, no car in sight, it would seem
reasonable that Acura would want to keep an unhappy Acura customer
slightly more mollified by providing them with some assistance in the
way of a rental car, or some such option, for the pending vacation. A
reasonable consumer might think that, wouldn't one?
The answer according to Acura Rental and Customer Care - is no. This
is not Acura's problem.
Let's see here, Crown Acura (Acura Canada's licensee) has had the car
for 18 days with no end in sight for the car being road worthy. Parts
have arrived that have been mislabeled and therefore useless - more
than useless, they have slowed down the repair process - and the
answer is not our problem.
Friday afternoon after an hour of watching the service fellow try all
the available avenues available to him, he passes the file over to the
service manager. At 4:15 he suggests that he will make some calls to
see what he can do.
We head back at 5:15, still no contact from Crown Acura. After going
around the "we're Acura customers that are unhappy" - "we're not
responsible" shtick a few times, the service manager comes up with a
solution that gets them off the hook for their part of this debacle...
they will strip out a shoulder harness from an '07 CSX and put it into
our '06. That way, Crown Acura has provided the most minimal level of
service required.
Does this sound like the level of service you might expect from a
luxury car company?
I suggest that you very carefully consider your options when buying a
new Honda luxury car... does it sound to you like Acura has any clue
what the expectations of its clientele are?
I have received far superior service from your run of mill North
American car dealerships. Why bother paying for the Honda/Acura name;
when you can save yourself $5-10,000 and buy local?