Dear Alex,
Our Honda Jazz Crosstar, purchased new in July 2020, suffered a catastrophic systems failure, diagnosed as a “brake simulator fault”. A new part costs about £1,600 and will not be available until June. The car was six months out of warranty with 19,000 miles. Honda offered a goodwill gesture of 40 per cent of the parts cost, yet we understand that there are a significant number of similar cars with the same problem – indeed, we believe the part may have been recalled in Japan. What grounds do we have for a free-of-charge replacement?
– AW
Dear AW,
You supplied evidence of your assertion that this issue had been subject to a recall in Japan, in the form of a link to the recalls section of Honda’s Japanese website, which does indeed list one such action for the “Braking device (brake operating simulator)”.
This recall encompasses more than 525,000 Japanese-market cars, including Jazz, Vezel (badged HR-V in the UK), CR-V and e (all of which were also sold in the UK) built between 2018 and 2022.
The reasoning translates from the original Japanese as follows: “Due to an inappropriate manufacturing process, assembly oil used during manufacturing may seep into the pressure sensor. Therefore, during use, the resistance part within the sensor may corrode, causing the output value to become abnormal, causing the warning light to illuminate, the failsafe to activate and the force required to operate the brake pedal to be increased.”
I was baffled as to why Honda has seen fit to issue a recall on this part in Japan but not here, especially as a look at various owners’ groups online reveals plenty of other UK Honda owners who have experienced this issue.
I was also surprised that Honda, which is clearly aware of this fault and its magnitude, was only willing to offer a fairly meagre contribution on a car so recently out of warranty.
So I asked Honda firstly to look into your individual case and also to explain why customers in Japan are having their cars recalled whereas UK owners are expected to pay.
You got in touch again to tell me that Honda had revised its offer following my intervention and that it was now willing to cover the cost to fix your car in its entirety, an outcome with which you were satisfied.
While pleased for you, I had still not received a response from Honda to my original question. So I asked again whether the recall would now be rolled out to the UK or whether other owners would be offered similar levels of goodwill.
Honda did not answer those questions directly, but instead sent the following statement: “We sincerely apologise for the issues that AW has encountered, and will investigate this further. If any other Jazz customers are affected by the same issue, we would advise them to please contact Honda Customer Support on 0345 200 8000. We will then review with customers on a case-by-case basis.”
I suggest Honda owners whose cars have been affected by this issue follow that advice.
I also suggest that owners who are concerned as to whether their cars might be at fault in the future do so too. Perhaps they can convince Honda to do what it arguably should have done in the first place – recall the affected cars in the UK and carry out the fix free of charge.
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