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Tom Francis

On Mon, 07 May 2007 22:51:10 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 07 May 2007 11:45:06 -0500, lid wrote:

Chuck Gould wrote:
Honda Marine announces that a five year warranty previously available
on some Honda outboards is now offered with the entire product line.
Probably good news for outboard owners, other companies may improve
warranty coverage to remain comepetitive.

I have no recent experience with other companies' warranties. But with
Honda, I'd say their coverage (and quality control) could definitely
use some improvement. Example: My new (in May '05) 20hp outboard, for
which I paid $2750, has been in the shop far more than on the water.
My maintenance/repair bills total $1,115 so far (that's 40% of what I
paid for the motor). The warranty has covered nothing so far. Maybe my
motor just has a case of the bad MoJo.... but needless to say, I'm not
a "happy" Honda customer (obviously, JD Powers didn't ask customers
like me). It ran ok yesterday though. and today I think it would run
if I gave it a try.... but I wouldn't count on it.

When I was looking for a motor I walked around dealer shops as much as
I could. Usually if you stay out of their way they assume you are a
customer and leave you alone. I saw as many Hondas titts up on the
bench as any other brand. The mechanics had no special love for them.
I went with a Merc 4 stroke (2002) and it just came off warranty. I
only had one problem and Merc took good care of me. I did have to
find a dealer who would really acknowlage it was a problem and pursue
it tho. That is always the real issue. BTW buying a motor from a
dealer is no gurantee that he will back you up later. I had to shop to
find one who would really support me. "Sales" has nothing to do with
"service". They are two different profit centers these days and might
as well be in two different states..

True story. I was actually at the dealership when this happened.
Honda rep walks in to talk about the dealership taking on Honda as an
engine. Owner asks about service training and parts support. The
Honda rep said with a straight face:

"Honda's don't need service, thus no service schools and parts are
available IF they are needed."

So they took Honda on temporarily. Couple of weeks later, a Honda 225
shows up with some kind of weird problem. Called tech support and
they were totally useless - it was like talking to a support tech at a
computer repair center - reading off a prepared script.

Resolution? They went to the local Honda car dealer and had one of
their techs look at it. He found the problem. :)