To whom it may concern:
Acura/Honda has had a long and respected history of excellent service and world-class products. The Acura brand was created in the US to give service, support, and products that exceed those of the Honda nameplate, at an expense above their Honda cousins. Distinction is given to Acura models by features, performance, and service that exceed expectations and come with a price that is not matched in its competition. Value and excellent service - "precision crafted performance", are what sell Acuras.
You have damaged your credibility, service, and respected past with your handling of the transmission failures on your vehicles.
At no other time in my knowledge has a failure of the same breadth affected American Honda. By your own admission, odyssey minivans, TL sedans, CL coupes, Accord sedans, Prelude coupes are all affected - 5 vehicles across two brands.
Your own spokesman, Kurt Antonius, is quoted in USAToday by saying, "We wanted to make sure our customers still believe in Honda, and we didn't want them to have any lingering doubts about our quality". Unfortunately, the damage is done. Before the warranty extension was announced and you publicly acknowledged your issues with the cars that many of us had been dealing with for over a year. I personally suffered through one transmission replacement in my 2001 CL Type-S that took almost 30 days to replace, and then a replacement transmission in my 2003 TL Type-S that thankfully took only 3 days to replace.
American Honda has some repairing to do. People are still untrusting of these products. The owners of these vehicles feel that failure is imminent on their transmissions. They are selling your product and buying Infinities, Lexuses and BMWs. You are losing brand loyalty from customers who have owned multiple Acuras, and that will affect the bottom line.
How is this situation rectified? First, you must enact a program internally to punish dealers who give terrible service. Dealers use bribery in the form of tanks of gas, free oil changes, and other items that will make their customers agree to give high marks on your survey. You must know the results are tainted. Create a system where the customer is explicitly asked if the dealer offered anything to them in exchange for higher ratings.
Service departments are the most guilty of poor service - which is quite unfortunate. On several instances, members of this forum have been dealt with in the most unprofessional of ways regarding their transmission failures. One member who approached a dealer on multiple instances regarding the eminent failure of his transmission was treated with such disrespect that he vowed to never go to that dealer again even though it was the closest to his home. Some weeks later, that same member had a transmission failure that nearly caused a serious accident. Service departments need to be trained, tested with Honda "secret shoppers", and then trained again. Secret shoppers should be trained to test the service department on a very challenging topic where they will be apt to respond in a negative manner even though company policy dictates otherwise.
Finally, your own customer service department needs to have some teeth. By their own admission, there is nothing they can do to ensure that dealers who deal badly with customers get punished. Give them power to help in punishing bad dealers. Give them power to make the changes that will make your customers satisfied and restore their brand loyalty. And next time a wide-reaching failure occurs, and there will be a next time, respect your customers who say there is a problem. Deal with them individually. Admit if you know of an issue.
As a 3-car owner and loyal Acura customer, I urge you to make changes and ensure that there is clear communication of those changes. Participate in these forums - don't just read them. That is how an entity to which people are loyal responds to waning customer confidence.
If you wish to sign the petition, please go to:
http://www.petitiononline.com/acura/petition.html