Under new car bumper to bumper warranty, it kind of sucks that most dealership service centers want a diagnostic fee upfront. Even if it results in fully covered warranty work. If the problem(s) are somewhat enigmatic or intermittent, it really makes whether you want to proceed with the "possible" work, a tough decision.

You lose the diagnostic fee, IF they come back and say they can't find anything wrong.

Having said that?
I suppose I can understand why service centers operate this way. It probably raises the bar just enough that they don't get a whole lot of people bringing their vehicle in for "Warranty" work, over every little creak, or imagined possible problem.
And it protects them IF there really isn't a problem. Otherwise they could be devoting a lot of time and labor to constantly hunting down imagined problems.
We may lose the diagnostic fee IF they don't find anything wrong.
But if they don't find anything wrong, and they don't charge a diagnostic fee? Then THEY, don't get paid anything for the time and labor they have applied.
It would be nice, but I can understand why they don't want to operate this way.

 

So someone who's not a mechanic, and maybe can't reproduce an intermittent problem, is going to be charged for bringing in a car under warranty? I can see the dealer saying "Sorry, tire wear/fluid replenishment are specifically not covered by the warranty." But otherwise? In my case the window motor groaning noise is coming from the door but the dealer said it was the gasket at the top of the window (so I'll be bringing to a different dealer).

Sorry, folks who disagree with me, but I think this is both awful and possibly a violation of the warranty. Some parts of the warranty are required by federal law (seat belts, emission controls, etc.).

 

When I applied to service adviser position long long time ago, one of the requirements was to sell the customer as much service he is able to pay for. And, according to the dealer (per my experience) anything that needs repair is caused by either: a) not bringing the car to them for recommended severe service maintenance (such as changing oil every 3 months (regardless of the mileage) and ATF every 15,000 miles or b) you are abusing your car (accelerating fast, braking hard and farting loud into the driver's seat)
The dealer's service consultant want make you to believe that Honda walks on the water and floats in the air, therefore it's very difficult to get warranty items or recalls to be done in some locations.
Buena Park Honda Express oil change guys a) overfilled the crankcase on my car , b) tried to start idling car (left on by their technician).
Nowadays cars are no longer represent a pride of the people who designed and built it; they are more likely (look and function) like a cheap toaster sh*t found on the shelf of discount store. Therefore as long as you have a good payment history, lease a car, treat it like a garbage, detail it at the end, bring it back on Friday evening, be done with it and lease anther POS, with navigation LCD screen automatic door locks, plastic engine parts, paper fenders, explosive airbags etc, etc etc, Ps The paper of warranty booklet is stronger than the steel used to fabricate body and mechanical parts

 

The whole warranty repair scene has become a travesty anyway. Manufacturers hype their warranty coverage and extended warranty coverage, yet they find excuses to sidestep the work and they all seem to do it. I hardly pay attention to vehicle warranty blather these days, as I've rarely had a warranty claim worked to proper conclusion without protracted discussions, phone calls to a Corporate office and repetitive visits to the Dealer. I'd rather drive an older vehicle that's reliable than a new vehicle with a full manufacturer's warranty that I can't make use of.

 

But the crux of the point, is that the dealership ISN'T saying the repair and the even the diagnostic fee won't be covered under warranty, ONLY that they want the diagnostic fee upfront, and there is a chance they won't find anything wrong, and thus you'd be on the hook for that diagnostic fee.

In your case, the fact that you think this specific dealership is wrong about their unofficial diagnosis....is a separate issue.
Misdiagnosis, by the repair facility doesn't have anything to do with the warranty. If you don't have faith in the repair facility as a whole? That's a different issue.

What we are talking about here, is the requirement or application of an upfront diagnostic fee. I think it can be a real pain, and sucks that most dealerships charge that "refundable" if a problem is found fee, but I don't think doing so is a violation of the warranty. They aren't refusing to do warranty work, since they refund the diagnostic fee IF warranty work is found to be needed, then I consider inconvenient, but not a violation of the warranty.

We also aren't talking recalls here or wear items such as tires, or fluids.

 

To be fair, they didn't charge it so much as tell me they might.

But again, how do I know whether something is a covered item unless I have them look at it? Nowhere in the warranty does it say that it might cost me to find out that something's normal. I do happen to know a bit about cars but there are those who don't. How would they know whether a noise (the A/C cycling on and off, or a brake squeal, or the noise power steering makes when you turn the wheel all the way, for example) is normal or a symptom of a problem?
I don't know whether this particular dealer would actually charge $187 for the minute it takes to diagnose and explain, but they could.
And that's horrible.
I've had intermittent problems that took a long time to diagnose. What if the dealer simply gave up, saying no problem found, and charged for their time?

 

You don't. You go in with the expectation that if it is it will be covered and if it's not they've given you the cost of the diagnostic fee that you will be responsible for ahead of time. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You don't get to say "spend your time and resources on diagnosing this issue but if it's not covered then give it back cause I don't want to pay anything." If you owned a repair facility is that seriously how you would run things?

 

Yes, I would. I would not hold people responsible for knowledge they couldn't reasonably be expected to have. We're talking about warranty work. Not "something's wrong and I expect you to work on it for free but I might take it elsewhere" work.

As I've said, I've owned a bunch of cars and until now nobody's ever suggested I might have to pay for something. And with every previous car I've owned, I've had to bring it in at least once for a few random items.

This is not having my cake and eating it too (and by the way it should be eating your cake and having it too, not the other way around). It's the dealer/Honda who's doing that. I'm only asking for my car to be brought up to what it was supposed to be- with no defects. How is that getting something extra for free?

Two weeks ago in my business I spent over a half-hour speaking to a lawyer who didn't know me, to discuss a project. He didn't charge me for that time. He charged me for the 2 1/2 hours he worked on my contract.

In my business I put proposals together hoping to get work from it. I sometimes spend hours on the phone with people, because they don't understand what I do, how it works and what's involved in working together. I do try to minimize the proprietary information I give them so they can't take it elsewhere. But then again this isn't after they've already given me eighteen thousand dollars.

 

It's funny that a repair shop never talks about a diagnostic fee when they try to add on work while they're already doing something that I've asked them to do...

My wife took in our old 4runner for an oil change. They suggested about $1500 dollars of work. Not a dime was a diagnostics fee. They must have been feeling generous that day...

 

This is why it's an untrusted profession. My ex-girlfriend brought her 8 year old Lexus to the dealer- for an oil change or state inspection or something else minor.
They gave her a list of $1500+ worth of stuff that needed to be done.
I had her get it in writing and she scanned and emailed it to me.
Stuff like a wheel alignment. "Does your car pull to the side? Steer crooked? Is the steering wheel off-center? Did they say anything about uneven tire wear?" No, no, no and no.
Then you don't need one.
Lots of stuff like that. Some stuff I couldn't refute without seeing the car but most of it was hokey. Like spark plugs at 60,000 miles when the manual says 100,000.
She ended up spending a few hundred dollars.
Even though they said everything was necessary.

That was two years ago. The car has not broken or crashed or exploded.

Two weeks ago she brought it in. They told her there was a tiny oil leak "But unless you plan to keep the car for a while, don't worry about it." Which sounded either fair, or salesmanship.

I asked her to have them show here where it's leaking and to clean it off. Because sometimes what you think is an oil leak is just a spill or splash.

She came over last week for a few hours. I put a tray under her car. Was clean when she drove away. I also suggested she look at her assigned parking space whenever she pulls in (not out, because there'd be A/C water drip). So far, not a drop in her space.

So do I trust a dealer to fix something cheap under warranty when they can charge me $187 and say it's normal? No.

 

It works the exact same way for the dealership. They can't reasonably be expected to know whether or not the issues you are having are covered under warranty until they do some work diagnosing the issue. Having a tech that you pay an hourly wage to pull a car into a bay that you spent money to build using tools that you spent money to stock with a regular chance that there is zero expectation of recuperating any costs is not a sound business principle.

It's nice that you and your lawyer are willing to offer the equivalent of a diagnostic for free. As I noted before with your example of suitcases and tire gauges, and now this... it's not the same thing. Note even close. You're not working at nearly the same scale and you both net way more on a successful contract than a dealer does on car repairs. Apples and oranges.

And as I said, they will absolutely charge if the issue isn't covered. They just didn't tell you up front. Repair centers that regularly give away services for free don't stay in business very long. Did you think they would just give the car back if it wasn't covered and you didn't want to pay for the repair?

It is how I wrote it. It's been that way for quite awhile.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...%20eat%3B%2Cc0


I have zero clue what this has to do with the original question. You wanted to know if it was normal for a dealer to explain that there could be charge if something was found to not be in warranty. Yes, that's normal. Ipso Facto. Whether or not you can trust the service center because of a single bad experience, that's a whole other subject for which there is no objective answer.

 

Okay- re the cake. That most people have been getting the expression wrong doesn't make them right. The idea is- you can't eat your cake and still have it afterwards. Hence eat and have. Have and eat? You have to have it to eat it.

Re business- scale or not, businesses don't run at 100% efficiency and it's not fair to expect the consumer to know more about a car than the people who studied how to fix it. So to expect the consumer to pay to find out that something's not covered? That should be either the dealer, or more reasonably, Honda.

And car dealers earn a lot more than I do. Frankly the idea that anybody in a service department- service writer or mechanic- could be paid on commission leads to bad results.

And as I said- this seems new to charge for someone asking for warranty service if what they complain about is normal.

 

To be clear- yes, I've learned that this is now common. I still think it's wrong and possibly illegal.