For the last two-and-a-half years, Marina Roma-March has been driving around in her Honda Odyssey feeling kind of stupid.
“I’ll be driving and… I’m constantly smelling,” she joked.
The Burnaby mom has been sniffing around to try and find the source of a not-so-funny smell that she says first appeared in her 2013 vehicle a couple days after she took it home from the dealership.
She bought the car brand new from the Open Road Honda on Kingsway, but within a couple days, a bad odour started emanating from the vents.
Roma-March brought it back right away, but Honda couldn’t find a problem. It was the beginning of a two-year odyssey for the family’s Odyssey.
Every time the car was up for maintenance, she would complain about the smell that never seemed to go away but mostly appeared when she turned on the defogger, predominantly on the driver’s side.
Mechanics told her they found evidence of rodent droppings but not the culprit.
At one point, she turned to Honda Canada for help, getting the dealership to take apart the van’s H-vac system and dashboard in November 2014, but Roma-March claims the smell came back a couple weeks later, just a little less pungent.
The smell continued until the beginning of this month, when her husband noticed the reflection of fur in the windshield on the driver’s side.
A mouse or rat had indeed found its way into a vent on the inside of the van and died.
“Just driving the car knowing there’s a dead rodent there, it’s creepy,” Roma-March told the NOW.
The question now is how the rodent got in the van and how long it has been there.
The answer also depends on who you speak to.
Roma-March insists her home doesn’t have a rodent infestation, and she believes the dead animal has been in the van since day one. She also noted a second Honda they own has no rodent issues. She said she feels let down by Honda for failing to find the dead animal earlier.
“I need to know the people who are servicing my car have my general interest at heart,” she said. “I don’t feel that with Open Road Honda.”
But the dealership is confident there is another possibility behind the dead rodent.
Open Road general manager Ian Quinn suggested Roma-March has a rodent issue around her house and one got into the vent.
“If a rodent decides to crawl into their car at any time, it may not be there when we look at it,” he said.
Quinn also noted the dealership wants to help the family and has been working with them to try to fix the problem.
“We’ve offered to fix it,” he said. “We’ve never refused anything with them, but it’s got to a point now where they’re saying ‘you know what? This isn’t good enough,’ so we’ve referred them to Honda Canada.”
All Roma-March wants now is to get rid of the rodent. But the fix is still in limbo. The dealership has offered to do the work, but she doesn’t want to take the van back to Open Road in Burnaby because she doesn’t trust them.
She’s been told by Honda Canada if she goes to another dealership, she’ll probably have to pay for a diagnosis. It’s something she sees as being unnecessary since the problem appears to be stuck in the vent.
“I just want to get rid of (the rodent); they (Honda) were supposed to get rid of it before, but I don’t know,” Roma-March said.
The NOW reached out for comment to Honda Canada media relations for comment but did not hear back prior to press deadline.
