ZAXDude

Hopefully someone can answer or offer up some insight. Why, given all the technology we have at our disposal today, does Acura instruct its technicians to "center punch" above a pre-defined character in the engine bay VIN when performing recall related work?

Wouldn't it be much easier to simply store it in a service record for each automobile? It just surprises me such a "manual" process is utilized to record whether or not a certain repair was completed.

Thanks.

jlukja

Not defending Acura here, but, records can be erased or altered, communications can be disrupted. equipment can be on the fritz, etc. This is a tried-and-true method. ( unless they punch in the wrong spot )

derbaff

Honda wants to make damn sure they only replace the recalled part once on their dime.

acn684

think about it the other way, if it wasn't punched in and the computers said you did, you'd be outta luck.

ZAXDude

Ok...all are good "arguments", but I would hafta say that technology today is tried an true in terms of storage mediums. and there are proven backup storage methods as well. i still think the "punch" method is unnecessary.

I don't think Acura (or any other car manufacturer) is gonna change for me. So I do hope that there are more required repairs by Acura than the number of VIN characters.

derbaff

I disagree, did you catch the story a last week about the Alaskan IT guy who accidently deleted a $38 billion account from both the server and its first backup, and then the second backup failed to restore the data? The only way they had to restore the info was from paper files. I think computers are great (I'm a programmer), but things do go wrong, and having non-computerized backups of data when possible is always a good thing IMHO.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259842,00.html

swirlie

Part of my job is dealing with backups. So far they've worked the majority of the time, but they're definitely not foolproof. And I can just imagine what a wreck that guy was when he realized what he did!