Ripoffs abound at Russell & Smith Honda in Houston Texas!
A few weeks ago the radio on my Honda Accord just stopped working. It just completely died. So I decided to take my Accord to the local Honda dealer here in Houston Texas – Russell & Smith Honda. It was also about time to have an oil change done so I told the service advisor to do that also after I told him about the problem with the radio not working.
I was there for several hours for what shouldn’t have been a long repair. I mean how long can it take them to fix the radio and to do an oil change? Well anyway, a few hours later the service advisor came out and told me that I had cracked radiator and a bad leak in my air-conditioning. He told me the repairs were going to be around $2100 including labor to fix these two additional things.
I asked him how much it was for the radio and the oil change. He said the radio was just a blown fuse and so that with the world change was $160. How on earth does an oil change fixing a blown fuse which is something very simple that anyone can do cost $160? I should’ve checked further blown fuse myself that’s my fault, but there is no way I’m going to pay $100 for them just to replace the fuse which takes all of one second to do. That’s highway robbery.
That means they either charged a sick amount for the oil change or a sick amount for the fuse replacement or both. No matter how you look at it that just was not right. Then to top it off they now wanted over $2100 to fix a supposedly cracked radiator and a bad leak in my air-conditioning. I don’t know about you, but if I had a cracked radiator don’t you think it would be leaking radiator fluid?
And I had not had any problems with the air-conditioning. The air in my car blows ice cold in here in Houston Texas where it can get to be well over 100° outside you would notice if there were something wrong with your air conditioning fast. This was just a little while ago during a heat wave where it had reached over 105°. If I had a bad leak in my air conditioning there is no way it would be blowing cold right now.
These guys at Russell & Smith Honda are full of crap. First they want to over charge you for the services you came in for initially and then they line up some completely unnecessary and unneeded services so they can make some serious profit off of you. I told the service advisor that there was no way there was a crack in the radiator or a bad air conditioning leak like he claimed.
I ended up paying for the way overpriced oil change and fuse replacement so that I could get my keys back and get out of this scam of a car dealer. I did tell them I was very upset about the ridiculous prices that they charged and that they would be hearing from me again as I would lodge a complaint with the dealer.
Just to make sure that I was right and that there was nothing wrong with my car I took it to Goodson Honda West on the Katy Freeway. And guess what the service advisor and mechanics there said? There was no crack in my radiator and there was no leak in my air-conditioning. When I told them what had just happened to me at Russell & Smith Honda they took me and my car out to their service department in front of me showed me and inspected the vehicle for these items and proved that there was nothing wrong with my car.
To top it off, the nice folks at Goodson Honda didn’t even charge me for that. At least there are some honest people left in this world and they work at Goodson Honda. They definitely do not work at Russell & Smith Honda! My advice if you’re in the Houston area and you need to have your Honda or other car serviced or even if you’re looking to buy a new or used vehicle stay far away from Russell and Smith Honda! They are bad news.
Maybe that’s why the car dealership parking lot is completely empty in the above picture – all the customers have left due to being ripped off at that Honda store? That’s what I am guessing. If you practice bad customer service and rip off your customers eventually they will catch on enmass and you will lose far more than you could ever have gotten by ripping them off. Live and learn. Car dealers tend to be really slow in learning this.