Net Promoter® NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score™ and Net Promoter System™ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.
At signing reviewed the back end warranty products. My parents opted for the Sentinal product. They had previously had Safe Ride (an excess wear & tear warranty) & the manager asked if they would like it again. He verbally reviewed coverages at which time he stated that key fob batteries were covered under this warranty. At this point my father spoke up and said he wanted the coverage & inquired about 4 fob batteries he replaced & had to pay for on Odyssey. We were advised there was nothing that could be done as it was a Honda (manufacturer) issue. I directly asked for a service credit in the amount of the 4 batteries & was told he couldn’t do that. I asked to be contacted by the GM & that never happened.
I attempted to locate the GM’s email address but failed. I contacted Honda & they did not have it either. I filed a complaint w/Honda re: the issue & still did not get follow up from the GM. This forced me to file a complaint with the VT Attorney General Consumer Division. I received word from the AG on 4/26 that they had reached out to UV Honda & asked them to contact me. I received a call from Steve less than an hour later. I told him it was a bad time. He would not accept that & pressed for me to deal w/the issue in that moment while I was caring for a sick family member. He told me that fob batteries weren’t covered under Safe Ride but offered a free oil change. I accepted wanting to be done, until I read Steve’s reply to my AG. Complaint. He wrote: “ Good Morning, The Lyons did purchase both safe ride an sentinel. Neither of these products nor the factory warranty cover key fob battery replacements. In review of their service history I see no replacement of said batteries. I do see normal service and factory warranty repair items taken care of. After a conversation with their daughter this morning we are covering their first service on the new Pilot which cost $60 to offset the four batteries they purchased for the fobs @ a cost of $40. This is a gesture of goodwill on this matter.”
1. Honda covers fob batteries under factory warranty for the first 6 months of ownership per page 9 of the owners manual for both the traded vehicle and the new vehicle. Not sure if then incorrect information is the result of a lack of knowledge of the product or deceptive sales practices.
2. I cannot find any independent information for Safe Ride. At the time of the original purchase we were not given information about what this covers. It is not online that I can find and when I used the online chat tool on the UV Honda website I was told I’d have to speak with a member of their team. I declined as already the story has changed over and over again. It seems we are at the mercy of whatever UV Honda decides they want to cover.
3. Steve inferred that we were making this up. My parents verified that they paid cash for one set of batteries and didn’t have the service repair order any longer but found credit card receipts for 2 batteries replaced 3/3/2020 priced at $8.40 each.
The issue here is NOT the $33.60 that my parents spent on items that should have been covered. This is about repeatedly receiving misinformation, being lied to and being dismissed. UV Honda clearly has no problem taking advantage of elderly and vulnerable people who can’t or don’t remember what it is they are being sold on the back end. Seems the hope is to collect the money for the coverage and then charge customers for items that they said were covered. The coverage on the ‘18 Odyssey was just shy of $1,000 and yet they weren’t given the chance to use it as they should have been. This issue is still unresolved.
Finally, Ben sent an email to both of my parents and asked them for perfect scores on their customer survey. That was not cool and definitely not earned.