I highly doubt this. If not enough refrigerant, the AC would not be able to cool the car from day one.
How would u argue against the dealership when they say things like this though? Heck I didnt know all these things until u guys started posting haha
AMAZING --- Service manager seems to KNOW that car come from the factory with low refrigerant, but the Dealership does nothing to inspect & charge the A/C before selling the car !!!
Checking the refrigerant charge is not easy or quick, and it can't be done by cheap shop boys. It is not like checking tire pressures, windshield fluid, or oil level. There is no need to routinely just check refrigerant because it is not supposed to leak over many years. Every check releases some refrigerant. Also, under-filling by factory should never be a common thing. Only if it is not operating properly, should they check the pressure, but it has to be done by qualified people.
He knows this because they have had to deal with it in the past. I have no evidence of deception or lies from this man in the 20 years he has worked there. Furthermore, as @Gruber points out, you don't do an AC charge check as part of a minimum pay job for PDI of the vehicles that come in. You deal with it as it happens to show itself.
Maybe you miss-read my comment -- I said CHARGE, not CHANGE ??
OK, first, settle down. The simple reality is that the charge state of the AC is not part of PDI. Not at the price point of the vehicles we are buying. Honda or not. Furthermore, who said you said to change? If someone did, it was likely a typo. We are all here talking about charge levels.
OK, so on this, I was partially wrong. I spoke with my brother (worked his whole adult life so far in the auto industry in dealerships and parts suppliers) and the deal is this: PDI is generally supposed to be done by qualified staff. The vehicle safety portion of the PDI is absolutely to be done by someone certified according to the jurisdiction you live in. Rates of pay are not at all master mechanic but are also not all the way in the basement for everything. Some parts of the PDI are done by lowest paid due to it being lower skilled things like cleaning and washing and removing plastic cling and whatnot. So at the end of the day, several people could have been part of the PDI process as a whole for each car. Where he worked, it was a checklist of 150 things. Only the certified mechanics would have been making decidedly more than $15/hr (Min wage here is $11) and the lowest skill items would very likely been at minimum wage or only a bit higher.
The issue at hand is that your expectations for what should be in a PDI ARE unreasonable. If I was buying an AMG or a top shelf Acura or Lexus or something else along those lines ($100,000 or up), then you are damned right I would expect it. We, however, are buying Hondas. The most expensive of which is still well less than half the price of the most expensive "high volume" manufactured luxury brand. My brother also told me that he has never heard of anything more than checking that the AC blows cold. Keep in mind too that this was even on top shelf Volvos (He worked at a Volvo dealership and a Subaru dealership).
I would totally agree with you under ideal circumstances, but for years now, there have been issues with the Honda A/C systems, which have been getting worse each year, not better.
And someone in the other thread didn't understand why people are so pissed about this whole AC issue and why it will stop people from wanting or keeping these cars. If the AC totally or even partially STBs, the costs are massive.
