I was wondering if there is any protection mechanism against double billing from an Acura dealer? Specifically can they deny a warranty claim for some reason (wear and tear, mods, etc ...) then bill the customer and also Acura if the claim is collectable under Acura's warranty?

It's a very dishonest situation but if they can B.S. the customer into thinking their repair will not be covered under warranty they could stand to more than double their profit. The customer payment would be all additional profit as the parts and the contracted hourly rate charged to Acura is covered. The customer would never know the dealer got paid twice.

Could this be the primary reason for often telling customers their mod voids the warranty service when it really has little or nothing to do with the problem?

 

Don't know. I haven't heard of this being a problem much. It's not like it's common place so much it would be a reason to not do warranty work. I mean the dealer could get into serious trouble for it. Is it really worth it to them to chance it?
Any dealer bill I got it was clear on the bill it was warranty, or it was paid for.

 

I've heard of this from friends that work at dealers, it's more common then we'd like to think.

 

I'm not aware of any way for a customer to know or to check and the dealer has so much to gain. Obviously very risky for a dealership but any time a customer thinks they are not covered the dealer has potential to collect both ways. Neither party knows because they usually don't talk to each other. I guess if the company suspects some funny business they would investigate and/or ask for the parts, if any, be returned to the company.

I've had a few warranty problems in my life when the dealer tried excluding the repair. One was with Acura over warped rotors in my previous car, a CLS. At 6,000 the cut the rotors and replaced the pads. That was no problem, fully covered. They were warped again at 12,000. They wanted to cut the rotors again and started talking about not being covered because brakes are a wear item. I told them that is not normal wear and they should be replaced as they're defective. They argued but agreed but they wanted to charge me for the pads and their installation! This time a fairly long argument and they finally agreed. I later thought about this thinking that if I buy the story of "not covered" and pay for the repair that they could bill Acura and collect since it should be covered.

Just how often does this go on? There are so many stories of people having their repair excluded from warranty for some reason or another. Abuse, mod'ing, normal ware and tear.

Sometimes even the opposite situation occurs when the repair is not under warranty and the dealer covers it. They seem to have a lot of leeway with their judgment and they probably don't abuse it. I wonder about mechanism that keeps them in-line. May be that's partly covered with the customer survey and dealer ranking. I didn't get one on either brake service but on other occasions I did! So it must be selective on their part.

 

Untill there's a industry standard among all car dealers, it's going to happen, or potentialy happen. Not much we can do about it.
Costs & coverage & general service varies with each dealer of any car maker. Just how it is right now. There really should be a system in place to settle this I agree.