I baby my car. However, the driver's side arm rest has cracked underneath the fabric. In short, Honda Service says I must have hit it with something as it is not traditional wear, and they will not cover it. (They also said it isn't a noted issue amongst Fits) I say it's a defective part as it's cheap plastic that has worn out w/o abuse after 13,000 miles.





I'm going to challenge this...keep you posted.

 

Keep fighting- this should not happen when your car is this new! I have never heard of this happening, but you should do a search here to see if anyone else had this same problem.
My carpet wore a hole in less than 11,000 miles. I brought it into the dealer and they replaced it. About 6 months later, I got a call from Honda Corporate asking me all these details about what type of shoes I wear when driving- if I usually wore heavy boots, cleated shoes, etc. I told them no-it was a problem with the quality of the carpet they put in the car & referred them to this forum. I told them I have a 1995 Subaru with 155k miles and no holes in the carpet!!
Good Luck!

 

I am guessing as you only have 13K on your car that you are still covered under 3 year/36k "bumper to bumper" warranty?

A new door panel cost $164 bucks (retail) you would think they would just replace it under warranty instead of taking a chance of not doing your maintenance or buying your next car from them.

If they decide to be $%^&*, you have a few options you can get a complete used panel on eBay for $50-$100 or I would think you could repair it VERY easily for the cost of epoxy and some elbow grease.

Keep us posted,

Schwimm

 

Well, I've got 40,000 miles on mine... no crack. There are also plenty of others that also have not cracked theirs.

Personally, I don't think you abused it, but you most likely applied a lot of pressure on it. It's pretty easy to put your elbow there and use that as leverage to lift your body when you shift around your seat.

First thing I do when i get out of the car is slam my shoulder into the b-pillar. Usually hurts me more though.

 

This is where I get confused, and I think Honda is more aligned w/ what you are saying Goobers. Let's say you're right, worst case senario that I did this w/o realizing it (which I'm not sure I did)...shouldn't even an economy car be built to a level of quality that can endure such an event?

 

Well... that depends on your definition of "economy car"... and asking me what one should expect is a BAD idea. I don't expect much out of anything.

It would be great if even the cheapest economy car were sturdy enough to handle anything a person throws at it... but not all drivers are equal. Some can do plenty of damage, without even knowing they did it.

Now, if this happened to many more people, then, at the very least, there's something to show for it.

 

In some sense this is the definition of a true "warranty". I would say if you were under say Lexus or a Luxury car brand, it'd be taken care of without the stonewalling.

They should expect a percentage of customers to have weird behavior or results with their car.
Even though this is an unexpected results, and you were the only person, in some sense it's equally plausible that the explanation is you got the 1 bad part out of the batch.


So the first response that "we're not going to cover it" is a sign of an economy company as much as it is the economy car.

 

I think if you do a search on this forum, you will find quite a few people who have had this same problem and I do believe that Honda replaced the portion as well. This is definitely their problem and must be covered under warranty. This is not an unusual occurrence and I am sure Honda has heard numerous concerns of this issue in the last.

 

I'm going to see if honda will warranty my car because I left the window down in the rain and now my car smells funny

 

water contamination usually is specifically mentioned as not covered. zing.

 

Thanks

Holy balls! This has turned into some kind of abstract argument about the line between reasonable quality from a company and consumer responsiblity for knowing the limits of their parts.

 

There's an item for this in the TSB thread stickied at the top of the forum.

Here's a link to the TSB thread. Scroll down to "front armrest is cracked."

Dunno what year yours is but I bet they'll sit up and take notice if you bring in the TSB showing it is a noted item. heh.

 

I also believe there was a TSB on this, so don't worry you'll be covered.

 

Thanks for getting to the bottom of this everyone...well, almost everyone.

 

TSB09-032 for exact same problem on 09 model. Take the bulletin in with you to dealer, call honda and advise them that the problem is not resolved. Maybe they will initiate another TSB for all model years, as it appears they did not fix the problem with later model years. Good luck.

 

You're not alone mine is the same on the driver door and passenger door. I plan on going in soon to fix it before my warranty is up.

 

Honda is killing me. Called the service manager back and he said the TSB only applied to 09's. (I understand that, but find it suspicious that it is happening only a year later.) Honda Customer Service said that if the service manager said it was from abuse that was their call, and they were closing my case. I know that everyone says they don't abuse their car, but given the car's overall condition, I would hope that Honda would at least say it's a 50/50 chance of cheap parts, instead of jumping to the "abuse" conclusion.

I'm calling the BBB next.

 

im going through a similar situation except it involves my hood siiting lower on one side and higher on the other than the fenders. this was noticed about a week after i got it. ive been told by the svc manager that its a small defect( not a small one to me!!!!), it is what it is, all cars have some defects, and that they can repair it but cant gaurantee it cause it may develop a wind whistle noise in my cabin! im like what???? lol so your telling me a 8mth old car (now after fighting this for 7mths!!!) has an issue like this thats visibly noticeable and you dont wanna touch it but if i say to you will but cant gaurantee it?? ;-/ sorry but i feel wronged and dont know what to do! hope your issue gets resolved and i dont get it myself!

 

Do you have another Honda dealer in your area? Have you spoken to the Gen Mgr at the dealership? This dealer sounds like a jerk-- Warranty should be good at any dealer.

 

I've actually taken that piece out before to refabric, and i really can't see how it could of broken on its own. i say that because i did accidentally step on mine, and it never broke so..... so good luck on you claim.