To ask for ways to blast Honda?

[Staffielove23]

This is a follow up from my previous thread but I’ll give a quick summary of events:

• I brought my car into Honda Edinburgh last Monday following a recall for passenger airbags.
• I waited five hours to be told they needed to order a part (apparently they didn’t anticipate needing this particular part as it’s an issue with my car or something).
• They said they didn’t have a courtesy car and they couldn’t give me my keys back because it’s an MOT fail, and I was left stranded 40 plus miles from my home.
• Phoned Honda customer services to try and get a hire car as advised by Honda Edinburgh, and told no because we didn’t meet the criteria.
• Eight days on and my car is still at the garage because they are still waiting on this part. We were initially told 3-4 days then told it will need a few more days and I am fearful that this will go on and on. We have another car but my husband needs it to get to work so myself and DD who is only two years old are stranded Monday to Friday as we are very rural.

I think they should provide me with a hire car or a courtesy car because it’s at the garage due to a manufacturing recall. Customer service has been at best unhelpful, and at worst quite rude and dismissive. I can’t even get the car towed to another garage as apparently it needs to be Honda who fits the airbag. I have twitted them (no response unsurprisingly) and am thinking of contacting the motoring ombudsman and Watchdog but where else can I turn? Any ideas?

Honda need to recognise that they cannot treat people like this.

Her first bullet point says passenger side

So it does. My bad. Either way not difficult job to do

There's been a shortage of hire cars for a while - not sure if that's over now though.
We were told it's because hire car companies have to retire hire cars after a certain time (9 months??) as per manufacturers' instructions, but there aren't enough new cars on the market to replace them (memory chip problem??).

It's the same reason second hand cars are so expensive at the moment.

There's also Honest John in the Telegraph

It's a car dealership - vehicles are being traded in all the time, they have used vehicles for sale, they have demo vehicles - they could let her have a loan car if they wanted, they are just being cheapskates.

A lot of misinformation on this thread.

The car is not roadworthy, therefore it legally cannot be driven. That is a fact. If the police were to pull you over, you would get a punishment.

Utter bollocks.

Speak to Honda not the dealer - the dealer is not part of Honda they are simply the franchise that sells them. Honda can do something eg force them to provide a courtesy car

I had a similar experience with a different brand of car. I called another dealership and asked if they would be prepared to transport the car from the rubbish dealership and complete the work. Funnily enough the mere threat of another dealership getting involved spurred the first one into action

Well it isn't rubbish, obviously if a car isn't roadworthy, you could be for the high jump if the police pulled you over.

But it's not up to the garage to do the police's job for them. And they could easily solve the issue by lending the OP a car.

It's Honda customer services who are being obstructive here.

Contact Honda CEO - Jean-Marc.Streng@honda-eu.com. When I had problems with a Citroen that the dealers messed up, I wrote to Citroen CEO - problem sorted. Oddly enough the garage that I dealt with no longer have the Citroen franchise

@Neededanewuserhandle not always
The used cars are for sale so we can't put a customer in them and we don't always have demos. Often there's a shortage as they've been damaged while with a customer or in a fair few cases, written off so no demo cars available

Putting a customer in a used car that's for sale risks the mileage being run up, the car being damaged or destroyed, extra wear and tear etc