Zimmerman Honda

I recently bought a CPO (certified pre-owned) Honda Odyssey with 17,500 miles from Zimmerman Honda. CPO vehicles are supposed to go through rigorous 150 point inspections. In the first year and a half of owning this vehicle it has needed: new piston rings for cylinders 1-3, a new door closure motor, a new catalytic converter, two new front strut assemblies, a left front drive shaft, and resurfacing of the front brake rotors. I haven’t had to pay for any of these repair because they were all warrantied, and I believe the dealership, having paid a nominal fee to Honda up front, ends up making money back on these repairs. But all these repairs have been inconvenient for my wife and I, two professionals with two young children with not much free time. Further, our sense is that the rigorous 150 point inspection maybe wasn’t as rigorous as it should have been given all the problems the vehicle has had since day one. So I asked to trade in the vehicle for a brand new one. They offered me 16,500 dollars on the car and a “great deal” on a new car. The exact Blue Book and NADA dealer trade in value for our Odyssey currently is listed at 18,273. I was expecting more not less since it seems that maybe the car was as carefully inspected as it was supposed to have been. This is my sense of Zimmerman Honda: They are a very successful dealership that is fortunate enough to sell one of the best products around-Hondas. They are unfailingly polite-they really are, and work very hard on managing their image (see all the responses from Zimmerman that seek to wash away the negative reviews they receive here and elsewhere). If you buy a car from them that works as it should, or if you have work done on your car that is warrantied, you will be happy with their services. If you ask them for an unusual but equitable solution, like buying back your car at fair market value because it didn’t perform like the CPO vehicle it was advertised as, then you will be disappointed. Or to put it differently, in borderline cases, even ones in which their vehicle inspection processes may have been flawed, causing the consumer to get less than what was paid for, they won’t come to an equitable solution if it means temporarily cutting into their bottom line.