It is not just the product innovation and the durability of its products but a rot seems to be slowly creeping over the Honda customer service (both pre- and post-) as well. I have two personal experiences to narrate in this regard:
1. Post-sale service (damage repair) of our 2015 Honda City
Back in December 2017, our Honda City was rear-ended by a rash bus-driver in the outskirts of Ahmedabad, and our experience of the post-sale service was terrible.
The car had taken severe damage around the boot-lid and the right-side tail-lamps. We needed the car in roughly 7-8 days’ time, because it was to be used in a wedding procession. Far from being supportive, the CS-rep at Landmark Honda in Bopal, Ahmedabad refused to even start off the cashless claim process without receiving the originals of certain documents, which in mine and my dad's experience always suffice in photocopy or scanned form. This was a problem for us, since we live in Mumbai but the accident had taken place outside Ahmedabad, and some of those originals weren't immediately available.
After an hour of negotiation, we finally convinced the man to start-off the process with scanned copies of the documents.
Despite multiple requests, the service centre failed to give us the car in time for use in the wedding procession, and we had to arrange for another car at the last minute. In fact, they took more than 14 days to return the car, which forced my dad to extend his stay at Ahmedabad by a couple of days.
On receipt, we discovered that while re-painting one of their workmen had left a pain soaked rag on the bonnet of the car, which left a faint, yet noticeable paint smear. The repaired boot-lid developed a rattling noise which was corrected on the next service only. The Ahmedabad service centre was barely apologetic about the incident, but thankfully agreed to take in the car for additional repair. However, it was simply impossible to spend more time in Ahmedabad, so we had to take the car back and get those minor hicks resolved at our cost.
2. Test Drive of the Honda WR-V
Fast forward to June 2018, and the WR-V was a car on my consideration as I was looking for Compact SUVs. I think my worst showroom test-drive experience was at the Hallmark Honda, in Nerul.
The man at their dealership made us wait around 35-40 min, and turned out to have lesser knowledge about the car than even the brochure of the vehicle. He was not able to give satisfactory answers to any of my questions. They made us wait another 35-40 min at the showroom because of some unknown hiccup related to the test-drive vehicle. After that long wait, we were finally showed in to a vehicle.
I was immediately surprised to see non-stock red-leather seats and adornments in the car and asked the showroom person if this was someone else’s vehicle. He admitted that this was a customer’s vehicle which had come in for service.
They were offering it for the test-drive, because of the unavailability of a test-drive model for the variant I had requested. I was appalled and refused to drive another person’s car. In addition to being an inaccurate representation of a new car’s capabilities and comfort level, I think this was most probably a breach of trust between the service centre and the customer who had unwittingly dropped his car off there. What if a careless driver accepted the test-drive and crashed the vehicle? God only knows how they would have handled it later!