Honda 6 year Warranty

[MrGrumpy]

Interesting little story...

https://www.visordown.com/news/honda-an ... -and-bikes

Basically, Honda will extend the existing two year warranty up to 6 years....the catch being that you have to have your bike serviced at Honda dealers and use Honda parts, so its not a cheap option! Still the warranty is associated with the bike not the owner, so you could in principle buy a 5 year old pre-loved Honda still under manufacturer's warranty!

[velocipede6295]

Some other dealers are already doing this as well. My Suzuki car also has a 7yr/70k service activated warranty, which now also applies to their bikes. It's worth it for my car, at the moment, but I don't know about bikes. I keep my cars a lot longer than my my bikes. For example my 2019 Forza 300 has a big service at 16k miles which for my bike would cost almost £1000. As the bike would only be worth £2000 trade in, or a bit more for a private sale, it would be half the bikes value, for that one service, so for that reason, I'm out!

[Hugoagogo]

That will be why the price of the Forza 350 and ADV has increased by £100 today, nothing is free it seems.

[Andym]

It's a sales pitch.

The dealers are struggling because no one wants to pay £90 an hour for bow string tight chains and drain plug threads ****** with windy guns. When they miss out on this they miss out having you stuck in a show room with nothing better to do than test ride the new Goldwing and get a PCP quote.

Good news is that they won't want to risk that much if this pitch fails, so they must have data that says 95+% make it to six years with basically zero servicing. We can assume the bikes are well made.

A six year warranty where they reject everything as "wear and tear" or "user damage" is no different from the same after 2 years or 11. Question then is are they going to honour it or go full BMW/Triumph and reject everything from rusty plastic to no oil as you leave the dealer after a service? We'll see if it's real or just marketing.

What they will almost certainly do is re-apply the warranty to used stock. First owner does nothing but put petrol in for 3 years. The dealer gives it a wash, stamps the book ten times and hey-presto approved bike with service history and 3 years warranty subject to fair use, the small print, only on Tuesdays, not when there is a R in the month...... Caveat Emptor still applies if they do automatically red stamp all warranty claims.

Not going to get excited and still going do all my own service work.

Andy

[Leadfarmer]

We’ve had 5 years warranty on Hondas here for a few years but under the same conditions of servicing them within the Honda network

The problem is Honda operates a fixed rate system depending upon the cc of the bike, and it’s ridiculously expensive

My first annual service cost 215 euros, for 1.5 liters of oil, a filter and a crush washer

I did the second one myself for 25 euros using genuine parts and the same Motul oil

[Data]

Since my two heart attacks I can't do much in the way of my own servicing anymore. I'm almost entirely dependant on dealer servicing for my Royal Enfield & my new MG car. Both have long warranties. 3 years for the RE & 7 years on the MG but 8 years on the cars battery pack (it's an Electric Vehicle Long Range ZS Connect).

So far the RE dealer is doing a good job & I've been satisfied with the work carried out. The MG is only just over 7 weeks old & hasn't required service yet. However, I don't expect any dealer issues as I know them very well. I bought my last car from them & they serviced that just fine for the last 7 years.

Of course, if I don't get them serviced on time or at all at the dealers I lose the warranty & the free annual AA roadside & at home assistance & recovery. The MG gets this renewed annually with the AA by MG at no cost to me. The RE is automatically covered each year. So for me the warranties are worth having & I don't mind paying someone to do the work. I'm a fussy bugger though & always expect everything to be just so. It's how I always presented a bike or car to a customer after service & it's just how it has to be for me now I'm the customer.

Honda have pretty much always made great bikes. The 6 year warranty is great for someone like me who can no longer do the work him or herself.

[MrGrumpy]

if I did buy a Honda, my difficulty is that my nearest Honda dealers are now in Blackpool or Carlisle....around 50 miles away in either case (though both relatively quick being via the M6). Not an incentive to use Honda dealer servicing if it means a long winter journey!

[Data]

Yes, I know the issue Grumpy. I no longer have a local RE dealer so travel 29 miles to a Chelmsford one. So a 60 mile round trip. It's ok though as it's just about all on the most dangerous road in the country (according to the AA) the A12! I do though have a good local MG dealer.

[Andym]

I suppose one advantage of the living in the hell, sorry, Workers Paradise, that is MegaCity-2 is that I have a choice of dealers were I to need one. I've only done quotes to change at Craig's so I'll leave them as a maybe. I've never had a bike back from Padgetts (first service on at least four) where I didn't have to fix something minor myself, usually chain tension, brakes not cleaned out on the Forza. Let's call that a difference of standards and assume my standards at their labour rate would not be compatible. The clowns at Via Moto put the wrong grade of oil in. Honda sacked them, which is maybe a plus for them.

Weirdly the independent who does our cars (including mine that replaced a company repmobile and gets hammered) has never missed a thing. You even find touches like they write the date a new battery was fitted on the top in paint marker so the next bloke would have less work to do to decide if that was a candidate for problems. They have the best selection of different greases for different jobs I've ever seen, unlike Mr. Honda.

Andy

[knight2]

Andy, I've got to ask where is MegaCity-2 as most of those dealers aren't a million miles from me having said that I've never used any of them.