Left a message at the Service Dept. of Civic Motors this afternoon asking to book an appointment for the first oil-change, but not before telling the receptionist that their website was tossing IIS/MSSQL errors.

Minute(s?) later the service dept. rep calls me back but tells me they’re booking next Friday! Doh. I indicate that won’t work for me so she askes me if I can come in at 1930 tonight. Uh… k.

Actually, she offered 2000, but because there’s a small assembly defect with the nylon floor-mat just under the driver’s seat (the mat was rippled/folded when the seat was bolted in) that it might take a longer than a simple oil change.

Fast forward to half-way thru the 2nd period of the Carolina@Montreal game, the ‘Service Advisor’ asks me to show him where the problem is.

Long-story short: Honda’s ordering a whole new floor mat for me. $430.59… and that’s not taking the labour into account, which I’m sure will be probably close to a whole day’s worth of work because they have to remove the seats, all the trim, swap the mats, put all the stuff back and then check the safeties on it all. The seats have airbags and seat-belt detectors in ’em you see.

And in all honesty, it wasn’t a really big problem in the first place… but I did spend $30K on the thing, I don’t think it unreasonable to expect near-perfection.

Funny enough, I mentioned that I think the rear brakes are failing to release sometimes to the Service Advisor, he told me that if it’s not a big problem that on my next ‘B’ service that brakework is included in the flat fee, so mentioned it then. Heh – sometimes getting one’s car serviced at a dealer *is* worth it. (Don’t worry Joe, I’ll come back to your shop once I get all the warranty stuff taken care of)