I'm Boycotting Honda

This is my own personal rant about Honda so if you're not in the mood for it, just stop reading now. If you agree with me, please feel free to pass on my sentiments to all who will listen. I realize this really won't change anything with Honda or fix the problem, but I'll feel better having said my piece, and if I can cause Honda to lose one more customer, then my job is done.

Here's the story in somewhat condensed form. Three years ago my son, Brent bought a Honda Fit with manual transmission. At 50,000 miles the clutch went out. Of course, the clutch plates are considered a consumable wear item and are therefore not covered under the 60,000 mile powertrain warranty. So according to the Honda dealership and Honda Corporation, tough luck, it will cost $1,000 to replace the clutch. Not being very satisfied with that answer I encourage Brent to follow the Honda process for arbitration. Quickly stated, you have to file paperwork with the auto division of the Better Business Bureau. Now, six weeks after first contact with the BBB, they finally respond by saying the cars mileage is too high for them to consider pursuing our complaint. In other words, tough luck, it will cost $1,000 to replace the clutch. Where do you go to file a complaint against the BBB?

Now, you may be thinking I really have no complaint because everyone knows that a clutch is a consumable item not covered under the powertrain warranty, and you would be correct. I knew that, and to the letter of the law, we really have no recourse. But that doesn't make it right.

If you've ever driven a manual transmission, under normal driving conditions (not racing on the local drag strip), then you know that a clutch typically will last at least 100,000 miles and I've known of clutches lasting up to 200,000 miles. I have a Nissan Frontier that went 140,000 before I had the clutch replaced. So, with that being the "norm", certainly Brent's situation is out of the norm. To see if our case was a one-off bad luck situation, we went to the internet and searched for others with similar problems. Would you believe there are hundreds of reported cases of premature clutch failure with Honda Fit cars, and all of them tell the same story... no recourse with Honda... shut up and pay up. Some of these other cases are even worse than Brent's. Some had clutch failure at 30,000 or less.

I owned a Honda CRV for 13 years and never had any problems other than standard maintenance. In that regard, Honda lived up to its reputation for building quality vehicles that hold their value. Based on that experience, I've encouraged others to buy Honda products. That may have had something to do with Brent buying the Honda Fit. But now I think Honda is resting on their reputation and thumbing their nose at their customers. I've heard other people say the same thing, that Honda is not working to maintain their reputation, they're just riding its coat-tails.

You cannot convince me that Honda thinks it's normal or "ok" for a clutch to fail so soon. They just know that according to the book, they don't have to pay to fix it. They have shown that they are really not concerned with the satisfaction of their customers. Well, if they don't care about me, then I no longer care about them and will do everything in my power to discourage others from buying their products. They could have easily saved their reputation for customer satisfaction, and saved at least 2 customers by making some pretence to work with us to make it right, but they chose not to. Since the clutch was effectively half used up, we would have been happy with them paying only half the repair cost... but noooooo! When the dealership found out we were taking it to arbitration, their attitude said "take your best shot". To avoid paying $500, they have now lost at least 2 customers, and with any luck there will be many more lost customers.

Call it sour grapes if you want, but that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

P.S. If there's a silver lining to this cloud, maybe it's that due to Honda's crappy product and even crappier service, some local American-owned business will get paid to replace the clutch.