Lessons in Brand Loyalty
filed in Blogging/Web, Design: Branding/Identity on Apr.10, 2007
My first car was a 1986 Honda Civic Hatchback. Powder blue. Manual transmission. It was awesome. It looked just like this. It was mostly indestructable… until it wasn’t anymore. Ever since I have loved Hondas.
I currently own two Hondas. A 2001 Civic sedan and a 2005 CR-V. I’m a Hondavangelist! I tell everyone what reliable, safe, long-lasting cars they are.
My Civic has over 147,000 miles. I just had some work done recently and in the process the battery needed to be disconnected. Honda has it set up so that when the car radio disconnects from the battery it thinks it is being stolen and so it locks itself. When I bought the car I was given a little card with the unlock code. I have since lost it. My fault. And so for the last few days I have been driving my 1-hour-each-way commute with no form of audible entertainment, save for my rather loud and animated version of American Idol (commuter edition!).
Anyhow, I called up the Honda dealership to get my unlock code. Afterall, they gave it to me – so they can get it again. They know I own the car. I can prove that. I bought the car from them. They can prove that. Honda’s solution? Bring the car in, we’ll rip out the radio to get the serial number and then we can look up the code with that. That’ll be $90.
Obviously that wasn’t going to happen. So I hit the blogs. Found this extremely helpful blog with extremely helpful comments. By reading those I was able to get my radio’s serial number simply by pressing 1 & 6 while turning the radio on. Then it was just a simple phone call to get the unlock code.
Now my question is… If I had brought my car into Honda, would they have ripped the dash apart to remove the radio to get the serial number printed on the back… or would they have pressed 1 & 6 like I did and still charged me $90?
This is the type of scenario that causes people to seriously question their brand loyalty. You can sell the best product on the planet, but if your customer service stinks you will ultimately fail. I hope Honda wakes up and fixes the little things like this, and continue to focus on the bigger things… like making great cars.
April 10th, 2007 on 5:05 pm
I would put the blame more on the individual dealership, as opposed to Honda Corp. Perhaps the person that answered the phone didn’t know about the key-stroke solution and you should inform them. After you inform them, call back next week with the same problem and see if they still want to screw you out of your $90 dollars. 🙂 In any case, I would still inform them about the less destructive solution. Between Honda, Subaru and Toyota, I think it’s a photo finish as to what brand is most reliable. I’ve owned all three and currently own a Toyota, but I miss my Subaru dearly. I wrecked it in a roll-over accident. I rolled over, the other car didn’t. The other guy was hurt and I walked away from the accident. Go figure.
April 11th, 2007 on 11:47 am
I love that fact that the 3 brands lowest on consumer reports “most reliable” list (or in this case highest on least reliable list) are :
jeep (the “tough man” car)
Hummer (another “tough man” car)
Mercedes (the “you wish you made enough money to own me)
I owned , or was given, a honda accord in high school and had it with 200,000 miles and it ran great until it was stolen last year. now i own a subaru and I expect the same thing.
April 18th, 2007 on 8:25 pm
Funny thing about that car (the Honda you linked), it moved like a tank no matter how deep the snow. We miss it dearly. We only gave it up because it was nearly disintegrating from rust.