Quote:
Originally posted by tsxdoc
I, too, have had the "center stack" light problem. Was driving at night and blink, it went out. Went to dealer the next morning. They say that "You don't have an appointment, we can't look at your car today, next available appt 1 week later". I convince them to look at it because I had read that several others were having this problem and there was a backorder on parts. They look at car and say "Yes", that the entire radio must be replaced, part must be ordered, will be here the next week. I call the next week, part not here and when I press them on when it will arrive, they tell me that it is on backorder and they're not sure. Talk to service manager, he says that the service advisor I had seen originally had been fired because of multiple customer complaints. Offers to rent me an Enterprise Rent-a-car Chevrolet Cavalier or similar while waiting for part. Will not give me an Acura loaner. I told him that if I wanted to drive a Chevrolet, I wouldn't own an Acura.
Call the 1-800 Acura Client Service, the person takes my name, phone numbers, and brief description of problem, says that a case manager will be assigned and will contact me "within 3 days". When they don't call me back in 3 days, I call again; they say case manager is sick. I speak to a supervisor, he says part is on ship coming from Japan, will take 2 weeks to get there and then to my dealer sometime the next week. Supervisor says there is a national backorder, 25 persons on the waiting list for parts, but says that since there are 25,000 TSXs on the road, this is 'not a significant pattern problem". Supervisor says that the case manager will call me on Monday (talked to supervisor 1 week ago Friday). Case manager has never called me.
It has now been 17 days since taking the car to the dealership and 18 days since the lights went out. Still no word on when part will arrive. This is my first Acura and my first experience with Acura service. Pretty miserable I think!!!
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Yes, pretty miserable, on several counts.
Welcome, tsxdoc -- but sorry it's something like this that brings you here.
First of all, this bit about "only 25 out of 25,000" (yes, that's a paraphrase, but that's basically what you were told) -- it's complete BS. From these forums, we've seen that A LOT of the cars have the problem, and it's more and more as we go along. And, what's very important for how to view those numbers, the problem rarely develops early on; usually it takes a while. So.....25,000 might be the number of TSX's out there, but it's not the number of TSX's that have been liable for this problem -- YET. Probably most of the TSX's haven't yet reached the point where they're vulnerable.
And let's also take a look at the other number in their equation -- "25." It's like they're trying to lead you to believe that "25" is the number of TSX's that have had the problem. Obviously the number is much greater. Hell, I think more than that have been reported on these forums. 25 might be the number of people currently waiting for the parts. But a lot of other people have already had their cars fixed, and many many others just haven't brought their cars in yet. I myself almost didn't (as I explained). So, it's a lot more than 25 that have had the problem, and a lot less than 25,000 that have been liable for it yet. I give that supervisor an F in math, and an F-minus in character.
Interesting that you saw the problem happen right before your very eyes. I'm not sure that we've heard of anybody else having it happen like that. Most people just noticed at some point that the lights weren't working.
Seems like Acura must have some kind of arrangement with Enterprise -- that's also where my place sent me when they didn't have a loaner, and I was offered Chevy's too (and took one -- it was all right). A Chevy isn't an Acura, but I was grateful that they would even do that for me. By usual standards, that's good enough, I think. But when you're mad about the whole thing that's going on, I can understand that it wasn't good enough.
I gather that you're extremely eager to get the work done. But I'd suggest that before you give them your car for the work, you make sure that they tell you they know exactly what to do, and that they're prepared to do it immediately, and that they tell you how long it's going to take -- which hopefully will be a day or less. Not that this will guarantee anything, but it could help guard against further problems. If you're desperate for the work to be done, on the other hand, maybe you'd want to give it to them regardless, but I'd rather wait longer if that's what would be necessary for them to find out whatever more they might need to find out about dealing with this problem and to be fully ready. As you'll see if you look at my other posts on this, the work on my car was a minor fiasco, but now (it seems), all is well.
Good luck with it. Acura service traditionally was a lot better than this, and hopefully they will be again.