Honda Motor Company owns a large sales showroom and repair workshop in Chiswick, West London which sells and services cars, motorcycles, garden tractors and marine outboard engines. I bought one of their smallest and cheapest products, a 2.3 HP four stroke marine outboard. The engine has worked absolutely fine.
Unfortunately it became submerged with seawater, for just a few seconds, in a boat turnover. It was carefully flushed out with fresh water, restarted and dried and ran absolutely normally.
It was later taken to the Honda dealership which is directly controlled by the Japanese company, out of convenenience, because there are few outboard repair outfits in the city. After several weeks the company phoned and said it was ready after an annual service. But on arriving at the workshop it was still in pieces. It was just possible to notice a wafer thin patina of rusting on some components of the disassembled engine, something which could be readily removed with wet and dry paper.
The Honda company wanted 500 = about $800 just for replacement parts to repair the engine. I refused to pay this and was offerred instead a new engine for 30% more. But my engine had been used for barely 20 hours and Honda would give me no trade in.
I asked that the engine should be re-assembled so that I could take it elsewhere. The Australian employed to sell outboards then demanded a large charge for this. I informed him that this was illegal in the United Kingdom unless advised in advance that there would be a handling charge. With this he gave me an insolent look and said "Is that so? Do you think that you can repair it yourself?"
Clearly the Australian is remunerated partly on new engine sales rather than customer satisfaction. So I have now bought a Yamaha which I am advised is a better engine. But on taking the Honda 2.3 HP apart again it appeared that the engine had been deliberately sabotaged by making the most obvious faults in reconnection such as leaving a con-rod in the wrong place and the starter cord untied.
That is why I bought Yamaha and will take it for service to a sole trader.
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