Welp... I took the TSX in on Thursday to have four things checked out. All were issues with the car since day 1. Alignment was a little out of whack, there was a rattle in the glove box, some scratches on one of the taillights and they put a scratch in the area where the license plate sits. Not a big deal...

So I take the car in, and note the mileage. 628 miles. I get the loaner car and I'm on my way.

I get the call yesterday... The car is done. The alignment was taken care of. Rattle gone. The taillight issue was GLUE... WTF I couldn’t get it off. But they did. And the scratch was buffed out.

I get the car, they washed it. Looks OK.

I get in the car... And I look at the mileage...

668 miles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF! They drove the car 40 miles!? So I stormed inside and asked to speak to the sales manager, and service was long gone for the day. I explained what happened and he looked mystified. He said there was no way someone put 40 miles on for a test drive. Long story short... I'll get a call from the service manager to get more info.

I'm pissed. Beyond pissed. Who in the hell needs to put 40 miles on a car? Did some customers drive the car? Did someone take it out for a joyride? Did someone take it home for the night? Was the car abused? Oh man.

OMFG. I'm so mad at these guys. Am I crazy, or is 40 miles a little out of line?

 

Ya 40 is way too much.

 

who takes a TSX out on a joyride anyways, they work at a dealership full of TLs, RLs etc., plus plenty of TSXs for test driving. Sounds strange, but totally unacceptable.

 

You left the car overnight, right? Here's the story - you complained about a rattle in the glovebox. Finding and fixing that is not going to be covered in the mechanic's flat rate manual so they don't have a way to get paid for stuff like that. Mechanics hate that. So, to find the source of the rattle, someone (either a shop manager or a mechanic) probably took the car home at the end of the day "to properly diagnose the problem". Whether that is what happened or not, this is probably the justification you're going to get. Hard to argue with if they really managed to find and fix your complaint. A lot of places would just blow you off with a complaint about a rattle.

 

I have learned this the hard way, but you should never take the car to the dealership or any mechanic to troubleshoot any type of rattle. I took my wife’s new SUV to Toyota to have them check a minor rattle that came from the steering column. It was a minor thing and primarily on the highway (I gave them a good description of when and how to reproduce the noise). What did they do? They took the new car off road and abused the heck out of it to “troubleshoot the rattle”. I found this out as I got to the dealership before they got a chance to wash it. The car looked like it had just come out of the Paris-Dakar Rally… Even worse, the rattle is still there.

 

The main reason the car even showed up there was to get the alignment adjusted... The rattle was an afterthought...

I can go from the dealer to my house and BACK in under 40 miles and I live in a different state.

Totally unacceptable.

 

I'd take the RL or even RSX

 

I have a rattle in my sunroof headliner whenever the sun shield is fully retracted, actually it's more of a creak.

If they want to drive my TSX - 40 miles, but can fix the stupid creak I have no problem with that.

As it is I know they're gonna bitch and moan, tell me to accept it, and prob. do nothing to fix it. 40 miles on the car but actually fixing a rattle is worth it.

Rattles are the most annoying thing that can happen in a car IMO.

 

I agree...40 dealer miles with no rattles is much better than 100,000 (your own) with rattles. There is no radio loud enough to mask those irritating squeaks, buzzes, grumbles & ticks.

 

Actually, there is.

 

That's bad. Either they took it home, joyride or even worse...used it as a demo car.

 

40 miles is a lot. But then, if that's what it took them to find and solve the rattle, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat.

40 miles is still just 40 miles (roughly 15-16$ wear and tear on your car). But a rattle can be the most annyoing detail to ruin one's enjoyable ride.

 

why did you buy TSX?
should have got the type S haha

 

I use to live a huge distance from my dealer, if they needed 40mi of drive time to trouble shoot my car I wouldn't even notice.

I guess I don't see 40mpg as a huge deal? I would wait for the explination before you blow your top.

They document the mileage when you bring the car in, did you get the odo documented before you left with the car? Else it could be your word against thiers since you had it all weekend. I'm just playing devil's advocate here, I believe you.

 

40 flipping miles got you riled up?

Lame....

 

Thanks. I appreciate your concern.


Can I borrow your car for 40 miles and do whatever I want with it?

 

I'd be pissed as well......l

 

I doubt they let anyone take it for a test drive....
Why? They aren't insured to let other folks drive your car all over the world, and even if you are a clean freak---I doubt your car was sparkle clean & new like the other TSX on the lot. It would look like an owned car, plus your plates would give it away wouldn't they?

2nd, do you have aftermarket equipment on your ride? If you don't why would anyone at the dealership want to drive your ride like a devil? Simple they wouldn't.

40 miles is at most 1.5-2 gallons of fuel, I'm not sure the gauge would even move. Odds are they did the alignment and took it out to make sure it drove correctly and to find the rattle. If they were in some traffic they may have needed 40mi to find some open road to make sure it drove steady at speed. And to find the rattle. It doesn't take me long to put 40mi's on a car in anycase.

Calm down, life is too short, wait for the dealer on Monday and get the issue resolved then.

 

But sometimes rattles are a pain to make them come around when you need them to. Its Murphy's Law that a mechanic when test driving you car will not hear the rattle cause the rattle gods hate you and never want the rattles gone.

 

All of you saying the have plenty of TSX's for test drives are seriously mistaken... it took my dealership 4 days to get a 6MT w/NAV TSX in for me to test drive. If it was an automatic I might say ok, they probably had plenty, but if it's a 6MT they very well could've had no other options...

40 miles is fucked......

 

I worked in a shop, car battery was dying.
Customer said they don't want the car back until
it is fixed. Service manager told me to take it over the weekend.

I did maybe 200 miles did not have a problem.

Then monday morning car would not start. I jumped it, got to work
and started looking around. Here a courtesy light that was toggled on and
off by tipping the lens body of the light itself, just toggled itself on
by it's own weight.

Replaced the light, customer satisfied. If I did not keep the car 3 days
and 200 miles it might never have happened for me to find.

 

The number of miles is really not the issue, IMO... (I mean, I drive about 12-15k per year - 40 more miles is no big deal to me) What would piss me off is the fact that those miles were most likely unnecessary, thus whoever took it out *probably* beat on it like no other.

I have a friend who works at a dealership (Pontiac/GMC), and I hear a lot of "horror" stories where the porters, who are usually young "punks," fuck with both the customers' and the new cars (namely the GTO, and "nicer" cars like the Bonneville GXP, etc). I almost reported this (My dad bought a Denali from that particular dealership), until I realized no one would give a shit.

There's really nothing you can do when something like this happens... just have a beer and forget about it.

 

mansauce probly drives that much just to get milk

 

It's not even my car and I'm mad. 40 miles is a lot, regardless if it was needed to troubleshoot. Some people care less of who drives their car. I feel uneasy anytime anyone but me is sitting in my drivers seat driving MY car.

 

That sux so bad, sorry to hear that!

 

When service managers allow their technicicans to "replicate" the problem, they tell them to take it home for a drive for a thorough inspection. My friend who worked at Infitini (who now works for BMW), took home a G35 and put a little less than 50 miles on it in one night.

Obviously the technicians take advantage of the miles by doing the things the "owners" usually don't do (redline, hard cornering + braking most of the time), and that's why you're probably irritated, but there's really nothing you can do..

 

so can we learn from this lesson that the next time such circumstance comes up
we make it clear to them "I dont want you to test-drive more then x miles on my car..." ???

 

Same thing with my TSX - took it in to fix a rattle and it came back with tool marks all over the door panel.

 

I think people have argued this well in both directions, yes 40 miles is a wee bit excessive for a test drive - I don't think I've ever test driven a car for one problem more then 12 and that was an isolated case, typically 3-5 is more then enough to replicate rattles, noises, etc.... However, if they fixed it and the car is in no worse shape then when you dropped it off it seems like a small price to pay.

I recently dropped my car off at the dealership for a few things, including 2 rattles, one of which they fixed - thankfully it was the worse of the two. They put 15 miles on the car that day, of course it raced through my mind, what did they do, did they beat the car??? Then I started to realize I am going to keep this car for 3-5 years and it will have between 36-50k miles on it when I get rid of it, 15 is nothing. Secondly, I rationalized what could they do to damage it? short of over revving when its cold or obvious physical damage, they couldn't. Seeing as there was no physical damage, and it was in fact cleaner when I picked it up then when I dropped it off, and even if they revved the crap out of it cold it probably will have no impact on the car during my ownership, so it really was no big deal.

I also realized beating a car - running it to redline, going hard into corners, etc.... - really isn't something that most experienced techs. do. Of course its often luck of the draw as to who will work on your vehicle, but at the same time this isn't a chevy or ford dealership, I don't think Acura does intern programs with colleges, so you probably will not get a pimple popping, lead footed 17 year old working on/driving your car. Rightly so too, because Acura is charging $80/hour vs. $60/hour at the plebeian domestic brands.

 

Damn plebeian domestics and their $60/hour labor rates!!!

 

Install one of these and see how they drive your car the next time.

 

It could be worse. The dealer could have done this to your paint.

 

I know exactly how you feel... it's your car and people shouldn't f* with it. When I went to take delivery on my tsx, the dealer brought it to detailing... slaps it in reverse and he friggin floors it (I heard the high pitch whine honda engines have) I was gonna go nuts... Yea well find out what the manager says first then file a complaint if anything is wrong.

 

IMHO the REAL issue here is not the 40 miles.... and if the car had >10K miles on it it wouldn't even be that they beat on it a little... it's that the thing has < 1000 miles on it and is still in the break in period and got beat on.... THAT is what's f'd up....

 

[Crazytree]Arbitrate[/Crazytree]

 

Old skool.

 

The only solution then is to align it yourself and fix your own rattles. Do all your own maintenance and repairs. Never let your keys leave your hands.

 

 

How do you assume the car got beat on?

 

i had the sunroof rattle also and was fixed at the dealer with "special tape" lol

also when i had my ep3 with type r kit etc
i was driving by the service dept for the local honda dealer
and some tech pulled out a customers stock ep3 and wsa lighting the tires up behind me at the light, and racing me on the local streets
i called the service dept and pulled up after he went back

to point the guy out
i heard thru a friend at the dealer that the kid was later fired

i kept yelling on how i dont wanna bring my car for service at this dealer, and how i was going to call corp honda...

and with all that the owner of the car wasn't any the wiser........sadly