I had good experience with maintenance - it seems that they make those prices competitive, since people will shop around. So when my car died recently, I had it towed there. They diagnosed the problem as failure of the ignition coil and igniter. and gave me an astronomical quote.
I looked up the parts online and found the parts that they charge $410 for were available elsewhere for $160. These were OEM parts, not aftermarket replacements. No, I don't expect the stealership to match online prices, but charging more than 2.5 times as much is gouging.
At first, the mechanic told me that the igniter was not available separately. I had to buy the entire distributor and this explained the difference in price - Honda did not sell the part I needed separately. He said that the part I needed was special to my year and model. He showed me the part I needed in the distributor he had taken out of the car.
I told him and the service mgr. that this was not acceptable - that the part was easily available elsewhere by itself. In fact, a search for the unique Honda part number of the igniter he later installed shows that the exact same part is used on a variety of Hondas and Acuras from that time period. It was not special to my car.
The service guy, Luis, later called to tell me that the outrageously expensive part was NOT the whole distributor, but was the same part I had priced elsewhere. This, of course means that they had pulled the distributor - and would have to reinstall it - needlessly. The parts that were replaced are simple plug-in electronics. I wonder how much I paid for the extra work. The labor for replacing these plug-in parts was nearly $200.
The total bill was $635. I had them do it because my car was in their shop - they had me and they knew it. This ends a 17 year relationship with Honda, though I've never owned another brand. I'll definitely shop elsewhere.
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