Complaint Review: Richards Honda - Baton Rouge Louisiana

In 2007 I had difficulty starting my 1988 Honda Civic wagon car which I was living in at the time.  I could get it to start usually only after around 6 attempts each separated in time by around 5 minutes.  It would slowly become increasingly closer to starting, then around the 6 or 7th turn of the key (each lasting around 10 seconds) it would finally start.  I decided to take it to a professional place that specializes in fixing Honda cars.  I was asked to fill out a form on an envelope, put a key in the envelope and drop it in a slot.  The form provided a very small amount of space to write on (around the space of one side of a drivers license).   When I visited them a few days later to learn what they had done I was told by the customer/mechanic go-between man that "We couldn't even start it!", said with a tone of exasperation clearly intended to imply that this was a very difficult obstacle making it virtually impossible to make any progress.  

He said they wanted to try replacing the distributor.  The cost of the new distributor would be $595 he said.  When I asked "What if that doesn't fix it?", he said "Then we will try something else".  I was very disgusted with this exchange...it is the "dartboard method" of trying to fix something.  Just do one attempt after another until one hits the bullseye.  The bill for simply turning the ignition key, failing to start the car, and then just guessing that it might be the distributor was a hourly bill with the clock time rounded up to the nearest hour!  So, they just turned the key a few times then quit and billed me $99!!  I paid the money (I regretted this very much later...I should've given them at most $10...no more).  I later fixed the problem myself.  

I went to an Autozone store and bought a factory rebuilt distributor for $350, installed it, and the problem vanished.  The car then started just fine.  With the old distributor in hand next to the rebuilt one I did some simple testing with the continuity tester function of a cheap ($5) multimeter I had.  I discovered that when I placed the two probes into the female connector openings of the 7 wires coming out of both distributors I found a very important difference: with 7 wires there are 21 possible pairs, and only one pair of wires of the old one showed continuity, whereas four pairs of wires of the rebuilt one showed continuity.  When I examined a distributor schematic in my Honda Wagon shop manual I found that the three pairs of wires that failed do show continuity in the old one were all wires going to the "ignitor" in the distributor.

 This was a very important discovery for me because I already had in my storage unit an old distributor that I knew for certain had a good ignitor it in.  (I had tested it years previously by swapping it into a good distributor...and saw no difference in distributor function.)  In other words, if those "professional mechanics" had simply opened the hood, pulled on the wiring harness of the wires going into the distributor (so as to disconnect and expose the female openings) and done the simple test I did of testing continuity of all 21 wire-to-wire connections, they would've discovered (1) it definitely WAS the distributor malfunctioning, and (2) the ignitor inside the distributor wasn't working.  This would've saved me $350!

      Another thing that really irked me was the treatment I got when I went back to them an tried to get my money back.  The person I was directed to speak to was apparently tipped off and tried to hide from me.  I clearly saw him doing this...glancing at me, immediately turning away and walking around people so that they blocked my view of him.  He acted embarrassed and defeated when I did a quick jog to him to get close enough to start a conversation with him.  At least he didn't try to wiggle out from admitting that I got bad service.  He freely conceded that it was unfair to charge me so much when a simple test like what I had done would've quickly narrowed down the possibilities of what was wrong.

 However he expressed strong reluctance to have the refund done.  He said he would have to go upstairs and talk to a boss of his, and that he didn't want to do that.  I insisted that he do it anyway, but I couldn't get him to budge.  I found all this infuriating.  I earn my money at a rate of around $15 per hour.  In exhange for 6.5 hours of my time their "mechanics" (quotation marks seem warranted...I'm no "mechanic" yet I diagnosed the problem very simply!) merely turned the ignition key a few times and just quessed that it might be the distributor!