mlody

I wonder if every dealer is obligated (by Acura policy) to give an Acura loaner vehicle when needed. Let say I bought my car at dealership A; I come in to this dealer (A), request a service, and get an Acura vehicle loaner to drive home. Then I go to dealer B and request similar service and they send me to enterprise car rental to rent a car and their excuse is “you did not buy this car from us, we can’t give you Acura loaner car”. Is this a common practice? Is Acura warranty specific what kind of a loaner vehicle one should get regardless of a servicing dealer? thanks

emuyshondt

The dealers have a limited number of Acura loaners and use Enterprise when there is more demand than they can fill, which is most of the time. Usually they have more customers than they have Acura loaners

If I were the dealer I would try to give my regular customers the nicer loaners and send others to Enterprise. I have not seen anyuwhere that they have to give you an Acura.

My dealership even gave me a loaner (but it was a Dodge Neon from Enterprise) when I took my Honda Accord in for scheduled maintrenance. Their rates were lower than the Honda dealership and they are much more convenient to where I live. The service rep told me he had my name on the list for loaners but they had run out of Acuras right before the weekend (I came in very early Monday). I believe him.

BG74

Maybe a bit off topic...but I bought a new Audi A4 in 2002, which died a few months later from a bad ignition coil. No big deal, I thought, but it turns out that every 2001-02 A4 with the 1.8T engine suffered the same defect. When I brought it in, the dealer had 26 other cars waiting for coils. Long and short, Audi gave me an Enterprise Ford Escort to drive for 2 and a half months. Then, a month later, another coil failed and they gave me a Buick LeSabre for a month. When that damn A4 was finally fixed, I promptly sold it.

The point is, if Audi stuck me with those POS cars, I can't imagine Acura being any different. Heck, my father has an Mercedes E55 and was driving a Jetta loaner while it was being serviced.

03CoupeV6

I have an 02 TL and get TSXs, TLs, and even one 05 RL (I had for two weeks) for my service. Without fail.

SuperSteel

The best is when the manager at Acura tries telling me how great they are with loaners in comparison with Infiniti, after trying to give me a pontiac vibe while they worked on my 05 aspec. (Sorry I didnt spend 40k to drive a vibe, snotty or not)

The fact is with infiniti whether I had an appointment or not, there was ALWAYS a g35 or fx35 for me as a loaner. It's pathetic that acura even offers low end cars when they're pretending to be a luxury brand.

This is one of my biggest beefs with service, short of not fixing my laundry list of problems thus far.

mickey3c

Yeah I had the "we do no have enough cars to loan you one" deal and it was for my tranny. I said ok well I will come back tomorrow when you do. Acura did not like that. So I was in an enterprise neon as well. And remember they want your credit card to rent the car and ask if you want the additional insurance and all .. So a free loaner is not always free.

The infiniti dealer provide G35s for laoners... Don't know what happens though when they run out... I doubt if they say here you go we got this m35 that is brand new and we'll let you drive that for the week... Don't know and don't want to find out either...

SuperSteel

When they run out you get an fx, once I figured that out I always requested one.

3 years with infiniti, never had anything buy an infiniti loaner.

cM3go

The loaner policy is driven by the individual dealers, it is not a mandate necessary from Acura.

SuperSteel

Correct, yet I havent found one dealership, myself, that comes close to adequate. (2 that I've used) From what I hear on this site, it's the same all over.

mlody

I have dropped of my TL 2 times at the same dealership and when i requested any other car than RSX (my wife has one so i wanted to try something else), they always told me that this is what we have - still better than driving a enterprise rental, but i was hoping for at least tsx

R J Poseidon 6

No.

It is a courtesy to you not policy.

U'll get 1 if U make an appointment. How would U feel if U made an appointment for 1 & some dumbass jerk insisted on 1 earlier just b/c he's a pompous dick & he gets it....U show up on time 4 Urs & there isnt 1 there.....would that be FAIR 2 U?

Dennis in NH

Yes, what everyone else said.

What I'll add is that the better rapport you have with the dealer, the better they will tend to treat you (again, very subjective). In my case, I bought two cars from my Acura dealer (MDX, TL), I get treated ok (they don't really kiss my butt like some might expect, but it is ok). In general, this dealership is (at least ostensibly) really down with have good customer service (yet again, very dealer specific).

Bottom line, is find a good dealer you can have a good rapport with (e.g., shoot the shi* with the service manager, etc.). The investment in this is good. If they're good, give referrals and that makes them happy too and you get better service (sometimes) in return.

It's always best to call well ahead and request a loaner (in my dealer's case, you have to call at least 1 week in advance and mostly more and the work must be more than 2 hours to qualify for a loaner).

Getting a crappy loaner is not uncommon; I remember getting a Corolla after dropping a 1995 Lexus ES300 (bought used) off at a local Lexus delaer. My wife was not happy; I called and told them and then got some American mid-size car.

Dennis

R J Poseidon 6

Exactly........