Late last year, the heater stopped working one day. The lights worked and there was no fan and it was winter and it got cool in there. I had to get it fixed quickly and decided to try a local shop for 2 reasons. First, it was closer to my work than the Acura dealer. Second, I thought it would be less expensive than a dealer.

As it turned out, it wasn't just a blower fan (I had chceked the fuse myself before taking it in, of course) but it was a transistor. This transistor was just a small box with a plug on it, found under the glove box in my 2002 RSX. Well, the part was like $80 but the final bill came to $350. Since I didn't go to a dealer, they had to take a lot of time to dianose the problem. I even got one call after they had used 2 hours asking for more time since they could not find the issue yet.

What I learned here is that I should have taken it to the dealer instead of a local shop for this one. Yeah, it seemed just like a blower motor or something, but with all the electronics in cars today, it can easily be more than that - especially when you look at the climate control system in an Acura (which has a thermostat and does auto climate control - like on a lot of new cars today). The dealer wouldn't have taken 2 hours to diagnose the problem. I'd guess a half hour or less. The local shop had to buy the part from the dealer, so the price would have been about the same for the part.

So this has taught me that I need to think very carefully about where to take my car if it's not for simple maintenance like brakes or exhaust. I think I could have saved money going to the dealer in this instance.

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