My recent experience at Mike Piazza Honda was the ...

My recent experience at Mike Piazza Honda was the worst I have ever had at a Honda dealership. The service department showed virtually no care for me as a customer and actually said they would be happy if I took my business elsewhere.

It started with a simple warranty covered service for a headlight part. I called ahead and they told me I would have to bring the car in to make sure it was the part covered under warranty that I was claiming. Sure, that makes sense. So I brought the car in first thing on a Saturday for an 8am appointment. The crew there checked the car and confirmed what part needed to be replaced and that they had it in stock. I was told this would only take about 1hr to complete (after the 30 min I was waiting for the inspection). That sounded reasonable so I approved them to start the service.

As the clock ticked past 2 hours I knew something was wrong. Finally someone came out and gave me an update. They had successfully replaced the headlight component as required. However, while doing that they happened to break the foglight wiring on the opposite side of the car. I was told they could replace it, but it would take another hour at least. At this point I was no longer able to sit there trapped so I got a ride to pick me up and planned to get the car later in the day.

Later I received a call that actually the part they broke was beyond a simple repair and they needed to order a totally new part in order to properly fix the foglight. That part would not arrive for a few days. So now I had to go pick up my car, with a fixed headlight, but newly broken foglight, and drive it around until they got the replacement foglight in stock and I was able to bring the car back in for service.

I got a call from the Service Manager, Bud Armstrong, with the part update on Tuesday. He sounded sympathetic to the inconvenience they caused already by keeping me there hours longer than planned on Saturday and requiring me to come back on a completely different day to have the car completed. He said they would work on doing something to make up for everything. That sympathy turned out to be pretty hollow.

I went back the next Saturday again as early as possible to get my foglight fixed. I dropped the car with service and waited for it to be done. Bud and I spoke briefly about how he was going to make up for all my wasted time, but he didn't seem to have anything in mind that was worth the issue. When the car was completed someone else pulled me aside to sign the paperwork and Bud was not even going to talk to me again. So I asked if they could get him from the back so we could finish our discussion. I explained that this was a terrible experience all around. His offer was 2 complimentary oil changes. Why would I ever want to come back for an oil change if they couldn't accomplish this service without turning it into 2 service visits and additional broken parts? I told him those weren't really worth anything to me since I change my own oil at home and after this experience I had no incentive to ever come back. He told me that if I felt that way then I was free to take my business elsewhere. And he went on to say that I was "frankly being unreasonable". I know people make mistakes and I'm less upset about that than the way I was treated. Regardless of a mistake or not keeping the customer happy should be a priority.

Not to mention, this is not first time I have had issues with this service department. At a previous service I was given my Honda Civic back with the dashboard not hooked up; the wiring was left unplugged and I drove off the lot before I realized. This was not the issue it was in for and again I had to go back for an additional reason.