Honda and my fingers

My “Honda”-branded cordless hedge trimmer (it’s made by EGO) had a go at cutting my fingers off when it started whist I didn’t have my hand near the switch (in fact my hand was clearing an oversized stick from the blades when it started). I ended up at the local minor injuries unit at the hospital. Deep laceration to the ring finger on my right hand. Could have been much worse. It was with some trepidation that I took my glove off to see the damage.

Anyhow, I contacted Honda UK and they couldn’t have been less interested. Took two days to even get an acknowledgement and a week before I got through to someone. They basically said it was my responsibility to take the product to an authorised dealer else they were doing nothing. I spoke to the dealer who said he’d never even seen the product let alone been trained on it. I sent him a video of the product running on well after the switch was released (it should stop immediately). He forwarded it to Honda who said it was too short to tell.

I’m appalled by Honda’s disinterest but, living near Honda’s Swindon factory, I work with some ex-Honda employees who are not shocked. They said Honda UK simply don’t care.

I also let EGO know because their trimmer is exactly the same (except for colour and labels) - they weren’t interested either.

I contacted Citizens Advice who have passed the case to Trading Standards but warned me that they are overloaded and understaffed.

I just hope any scarring doesn’t make immigration in China more difficult because my print might have changed.

Bloody hell, Rich! Or bloody fingers, anyway. What an outrageous dereliction of consumer protection.
BBC Watchdog?

Is “DogWatch”, as my mum calls it, still on?

I’d never go near a Honda car on the basis of this experience. I contacted CEO Honda UK and got exactly the same disinterested response.

I sit on the safety committee of my crowd and the contrast could not be more stark.

Close call!

Glad you got off with everything still connected.

Best of a bad situation!

Regards

MM

MRS, have you considered tweeting them and copying in a few H&S twitter accounts. They don't like things like this in the Social Media domain so this cheap trick approach can sometime illicit a better response. It worked for me with Microsoft!

I tweeted them - what H&S accounts would you recommended? HSE?

Finally got a letter from a Honda today “without prejudice” saying they couldn’t recreate the issue and offering a “replacement product” with a form to sign for acceptance.

Basically "Sorry, not sorry."

Will you be getting the replacement product? Or have your fingers had enough?!

The power of dreams...

Yup - exactly.

No - I think I’ll ask for the product back on the basis that I’ll have my own testing done (I have about 300 test engineers reporting to me and access to quite a few product liability lawyers). I think that will be more unnerving for them. After all, I have no confidence that a replacement product will be any safer...

In the meantime, I’ve asked them to confirm my view of the situation - in particular, that they’ve ignored my video and that they haven’t even asked me under what circumstances the fault occurred.

They are rank amateurs. As this forms part of my day job (and has done for most of the last 15 years) I’m qualified to say how poor they have been. And they have been very poor.