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Posted: 05/04/2010
After a several months of some intermittent disengaging, the transmission in our 2002 Odyssey failed completely at just over 80,000 miles. After finding out from these websites that there might be a chance of some financial assistance from Honda I decided to contact American Honda to see if I might be one of the lucky ones. American Honda agreed to review my case with their “no guarantees” disclaimer if I would take it to a Honda dealer to diagnose it.
The first service rep. at the dealer initially told me that the warranty on this van had been extended to 109,000 miles and that the diagnosis showed an “incorrect gear ratio” which he said was “not caused by anything I did.” He then asked me to fax him any transmission service records that I had. I faxed him the records which showed that the transmission fluid was changed at about 30,000, 60,000, and 71,000 miles by an independent Honda mechanic. It was changed at 71,000 miles because it was starting to disengage intermittently at that time.
A few days later, a different service rep. called me and said he reviewed it with the regional Honda rep. and they were not going to offer any help (or accept any responsibility for an obviously defective transmission). He said it was now up to American Honda, and encouraged me to be patient because “these things usually turn out good.” I asked him if American Honda had copies of my service records and he said he was sure they had.
A few days later I got the call from the American Honda rep. who told me that they were going to go with the regional rep’s recommendation and not offer any help. I asked her what the reason for denial was, and she said that the service records I sent were for “oil changes” and it was out of warranty anyway. I asked her if she had seen the service records and she said she had not. I told her that the service records were clearly for transmission fluid changes, and that the regional rep. had misinterpreted them. She said she would "re-review" it with him and call me back. A short while later she called back and told me they were going to stand by their decision to deny any financial assistance. I asked her if I could talk to the regional service rep. who made the decision and she said she could not give me his phone number but could ask him to call me back. I requested this call back, but nearly a week has gone by and he still has not called back. I called the dealer service rep. again and asked him what he thought the actual reason for denial was, and he told me that because it wasn’t serviced at the dealership, they didn’t have an adequate service history on the vehicle.
What I gathered from this whole frustrating waste of time is that unless you are the original owner (I am the second owner) and you have enriched your local Honda dealer by paying their exorbitant prices for service, you are screwed. I ended up taking the van to an independent transmission rebuilder who is charging less than half what Honda would have charged, and this transmission will have improved components – not the same defective crap Honda would have put in. I let Honda know that I will never buy another Honda, and I will keep spreading the word about this problem as so many others have. Apparently, Honda has chosen to adopt the Toyota approach which is basically to stonewall and deny responsibility for obvious defects at great cost to their reputation and customer loyalty. They deserve the same consequences as Toyota and another class action lawsuit.
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