So the vent to the left of the steering wheel on my 2015 Fit broke at 8K miles. The little bracket inside it snapped off that holds the fins together in the same alignment. I took it to the dealer, got it back 3 days later with a broken dashcam wire, a new vent assembly, grease all over the area/window, and a $200 bill for the part and the repair since the warranty claim was denied. Oh, and they also charged me some bullshit $12 environmental fee too.

I paid it because I needed my car back, but have any of y'all ever had a warranty claim be denied and what did you do to resolve it? The dealership warranty person isn't in until Monday, when I'm planning on getting the details for why it was denied, in writing, and contesting it. What order do I go in here?

Dealership warranty person,
Dealership owner,
Honda North America,
American Express chargeback,
Small claims court?

I know this seems excessive because of a $200 repair bill, but I feel taken advantage of and want that money back. This is the worst car dealership service department I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with, as not only did it cost me $200 to get my car fixed while it's under warranty, but also it took 3 extremely uncommunicative days for them to do the rear grab bracket recall. Not to mention how they left grease all over the left side of the dashboard and recently tinted window.

 

Did they notify you that the warranty claim had been denied before they did the work, and did they notify you why it was denied?

I wouldn't bother with the dealer any longer. Go to Honda customer service.

 

Nope, not a word until I came in to pick up my car.

That's one of the reasons I'm so damn pissed off. And yeah, once I get it in writing as to why they denied it I'll be calling Honda.

 

What was your mileage AT the day your Fit was serviced/repaired. You gave a repair order generated, that's enough documentation to bring it to American Honda's attention.

They failed to tell you that warranty has been denied without reason. (Like obvious neglect, poor use, etc.)

They failed to tell you that there will be a charge for this service/repair.

 

Broken dashcam wire? So was that panel previously opened?

 

good catch. did u remove the vent panel to route the wire through there? how did the vent break really?

 

It broke at 8K and I brought it in shortly thereafter. I was never told the warranty claim was denied until I was informed that I had to pay $200 to get my car back, 3 days after I dropped it off.

 

No, I routed the wire down the weather stripping of the driver's doorframe and underneath the dashboard in the bottom left below where the fuse box is. Never took apart any panels to do it, and honestly I'm not too pissed they broke the wire... It appears to have simply been pulled so that the connectors on the ends of the wires got pulled off. Probably happened when they were pulling the vent unit out of the dashboard.

The vent broke because I tried to move it from pointing at the cup holder to pointing it at the steering wheel when my hands were colder than my coffee. I'm honestly not surprised or bothered that something minor like that broke given all the issues that the '15 Fits seem to have. I am surprised and bothered by that Honda dealership holding my car hostage until I paid them 200 dollars for something they said would be covered by warranty when they ordered the part and when I dropped it off.

 

Sounds like you have a right to be pissed, for sure. Take your case to Honda. or maybe first to the Service Manager, calmly, if you haven't tried that already.

Were it I, I'd be thinking my end position, assuming Honda won't eat the claim but will beat on the dealer just for good measure, is to agree to buy the part but the dealer eats the labor since they didn't do such a great job of it anyway. If that's the right part, even at list of $36.58, seems amazing they got to $200. But I don't know how far apart you have to take it to put the part in.

 

The charge was $50 for the part, $100 for labor, plus a $12 charge that simply states "PORTION OF LABOR THAT GOES TO ENV. ACCOUNT" plus tax.

Yeah I'm going to take it to their in house warranty person first, then the service manager or GM if I can get them, and if none of that works, calling Honda. All politely of course

EDIT: All prices rounded heavily because paranoia

 

Hmm, I guess things break on cars eventually.

 

Warranty.

It's a wonderful thing, a guarantee that if something is defective in materials or workmanship, they'll replace it at no charge. It's not a promise to fix everything you manage to break for 36,000 miles.

Should Honda go after their interior trim supplier for shipping them a faulty vent, or were you simply able to break a thin piece of plastic on a cold day? My left side vent gets smacked by my travel mug on a regular basis because I'm looking at more important things. If I do break it, it's not going to be Honda's (or their supplier's) fault.

Not telling you that it wasn't covered is bad, but the way you phrased things at writeup time may change things. They aren't going to get stressed about a $50 part if you said I need you to fix the vent, call me when the job's done. Whatever happens at this point, Honda isn't going to pay for it because broken ≠ defective. You're stuck trying to browbeat someone into deciding that the service department is going to pay for the vent you broke.

You'll probably have better luck going after the dashcam wire. Make sure you have the replacement cost at your fingertips, but they're probably going to just maintain that they can't be expected to know what the customer has placed behind every trim panel.

 

At what point is it lack of quality,, vs Breakage?
If a brake line broke its their fault but a bad vent design isn't?

The dealer has to call in my state if the repair is more than the quote before they do the work or you don't have to pay..

Lesson there is make them wrote a quote even if you think its a warrantee issue.

 

That's the reason I bought a new Fit rather than a used Fit. I understand the thought process is "a piece inside the vent shouldn't break, so obviously this dumbass must've broken it himself!" but by that reasoning, nothing would be covered by the warranty aside from the car blowing up as you drive it off the lot. A defect in materials or workmanship is the reason the part broke, and part of the cost of a new car is the warranty that comes with it.

EDIT: Also it broke while i was readjusting the vent with my fingers like someone normally would. I didn't smack it with a coffee cup to try to re-aim it while driving.

EDIT2: Oh, and as far as the dashcam goes, I've already stripped the broken section of wire out, I just need to go to Home Depot for some wire nuts and spend a bit of time getting everything re-installed. Next time I'll pull the add a fuse out along with the dashcam before I drop it off at the next closest dealership if I get another recall.

 

Update: After calling the in-house warranty person at the dealership and being told she had no idea why I had to pay for this, they're refunding me. I'm assuming someone in service didn't bother to submit the warranty claim to her in the first place because she didn't remember ever seeing it, but regardless, I got my problem resolved. Now I just have to finish fixing my dashcam.

Never taking my car back to that dealership again though.

 

Not going back to them is a good move, they don't deserve your business.

There's a whole world of conditions and abuse that can break things that aren't the fault of the manufacturer, but the assumption (and not just the customer's) is generally that things are covered- and that's the way it should be. For the service writer to give you the car back as a customer pay repair without checking into it was a big problem. Everyone involved should have been surprised to see it as customer pay, and the writer who closed the RO and then handed things off to you (if they were different people, that's another one who dropped the ball) was the worst offender.

The way warranty effectively works is that the dealership gets to play good guy: I jumped through some hoops for you and convinced the factory to pay for it for you. If they can't or decide not to, it's because they know they can't get away with it. They don't really care who pays the money that comes in, and they benefit if the customer is really happy. I was going on the assumption that the tech had decided that it was clearly not defective, but damaged- and the writer agreed. An incompetent writer hadn't occurred to me.

I'm glad it worked out.

 

My dealer does great work.....if you pay for it. If it is warranty work, they squeal like pigs over it, and the work is way sub-standard

 

honestly for something that simple, i would've just asked the service guy if the part is covered, if not, then gone to the parts dept to pickup the parts and did the work myself. .. or ordered the parts cheaper online.