A product in a customer's hand is still yours if it carries your logo

My wife and I bought a Honda City in early 2007 (slightly over 4 years ago at the time of writing) and the experience I had with the car and Honda Malaysia taught me a rather interesting lesson about the importance of corporate values and how these values affect and link the company to their customers.

Let me start with the car.  The fourth generation facelift version Honda City is a beautify car.  Its gives an amazing silky smooth ride even as it shift through the 7 speed Multimatic continuous variable transmission (CVT) gearbox.  We had the i-VTEC version and an incredible 14km/L was something achievable for city driving.  All in all, you have to say that this is an very nice car.

About a year ago, I was advised by someone at the Honda service center I frequented to "Get rid of the car.  It has a gear box problem!"  Curious, I asked more and was informed that he kept seeing that generation Honda City and another Jazz model frequently having had to have their gearbox repaired/replaced.  Well, we were still within the 3 years warranty period and so I thought nothing of it.  Slightly after 3 years and still way within 100,000 km, I noticed that something was wrong.  I was advised by the service adviser that we need to change the starter clutch to fix it and if we want to keep the car, it would be best we change the whole gearbox and that will costs slightly over RM20,000!  Not satisfied, I called Honda Malaysia and was told, there is no issue with the design and that the damage could be due to many factors such as the way I drove the car etc!  Interestingly, the current and fifth generation Honda City no longer use the troublesome CVT gearbox!

Now, compare such a response to what Toyota did with their Prius.  In June 2011, Toyota annoused that it will recall 105,784 Pius to fix a fault in the model gearbox and steering (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/us-toyota-recalls-idUSTRE7500S320110601).  This recall includes the first generation Prius launch in 1997 some 14 years earlier.

Honda Malaysia's response gave me the impression that they considered my Honda City mine not theirs.  While the way Toyota has responded to the Prius gearbox and steering fault as though it is still theirs!  Accordingly, I firmly believed that a product, even when it is owned by someone else, is still yours if it carries your logo.

Guess what I am driving now?  A Toyota!  Not only have I become a Toyota fan, I am sharing this rather unpleasant experience with anyone whenever the opportunity arises.

(The above photo is by  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Two_hundred_percent and the link to the photo is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Honda_City_(fourth_generation,_second_facelift)_(front),_Serdang.jpg)