Well, it’s been a hell of a week! Problems started last Friday, when we arrived at Mo’s mum for a long weekend. A warning light came on on our Honda CR-V: ‘engine fault’. Great. Limped to Inchcapes in Colchester who diagnosed a faulty Glow Plug control unit/relay. None in stock. Reset the lamp and the problem went away. Until Monday evening (we were due to set off home at crack of sparrow fart on Tuesday). Light came on and engine power went. So, back to Inchcape on Tuesday morning. They did a 2-hour round trip to get a part from another dealer and – it didn’t fix it. Phoned Honda. “Ah, might be the ECU (££££)” So tried to get a test unit. No luck. Car now in dock for at least a week. Aargh.
So, Inchcape got on to the RAC, who we’ve had as our Recovery supplier for 30 years. No joy. Sorry, can’t collect you from a garage. And, we were told, they would only deliver us to the nearest garage anyway, not home, as we thought we were paying for. Grr.
Inchcapes tried to get us a hire car, but none to be had (they tried at least 20 rental branches!) so arranged one for Wednesday morning then ran us back to Mo’s mum with all our junk.
Wednesday, rental car picks us up, with junk, and takes us to Colchester office where they give us a Corsa automatic. At least it went!
Drive home (6 hours…) and return rental. Phone RAC, who confirmed recovery only to the nearest garage. H’mm. Why did we pay them all that money for 30 years of ‘recovery’ service???
Inchcape phone Thurday. So sorry, it’s not the ECU: it’s the wiring harness (£1200 rather than £600): expensive because they have to dismantle the dashboard to fit it – whatever happened to bulkhead connectors?? They’re trying to persuade Honda to cough up for part of the cost, as the wiring harness shouldn’t fail on a 5-year-old car that’s been cosseted like ours (only 60K miles, regular servicing, no ploughed fields, etc.) We’ll have to wait and see. Plus a whole day out (at least) since we’ll have to drive all the way to Colchester to collect the bloody thing once it’s fixed. Time for a trade-in. we feel, and a new Recovery Service provider…
Points awarded:
- Honda, for providing a really reliable vehicle (since we had a VSA ECU fail last year – another £400-odd) Minus 100
- RAC, for refusing to honour their commitments minus several million for ripping us off for 30 years with false promises.
- Inchcape Honda (Colchester: +1000 for superb, sympathetic service above and beyond the Call.