Do not purchase the I-Link from Honda Canada, and in particular do not do business with Westwood Honda.

Recently I had a Honda I-Link installed in my new Honda Fit. This allows and I-pod to interface with the Stock Stereo in the car. Before I had this unit added to my new car, i did what research I cold find and thought it might be a reasonable method of integrating an Ipod to the Honda Stereo.

My research led me to the Honda Music Link, where I read about the Text-to-speech capabilities of the hardware/software and thought that's what I was buying.

Unfortunately I found out that the units shown on the above noted site (Honda US) are not the same as what is put into Canadian Cars.

The Canadian version has no Text-to-speech capabilities. Note that the Canadian Honda site has no detailed information on the unit, no part numbers and a very limited description. The Canadian Honda site also has no search capabilities.

Before I learned that the unit was different than what I thought I was getting, I thought it just was not working. I took it into service to have it looked at. None of the technicians new what it should do, and none even knew the unit here did not do what I described from the music-link site. So how am I to know there is a difference, when even the Honda sales & technicians do no know the product.

Once discovered that it was indeed a different product, Honda Canada basically said it was up to the goodwill of the dealer if they wanted to refund me, as the unit does work as designed.

As you can guess, the dealer is basically saying to me 'too bad' its not broken. A dealer who does not know it's own products, from a company that can not describe them or even list so much as a part number, or link to detailed documents on the unit on its own website.

So the end result? I'm stuck with a very expensive piece of limited function (in my opinion) technology, and Westwood Honda has lost my future business, will not be servicing either of my family's two Hondas (they are Great cars, I'm not complaining about them at all), nor will they ever be getting a recommendation from me. No, my two cars service will not make them go broke, but it certainly would more than recover the value of the I-link, and maybe someone I would have recommended to go there to buy a Honda, now will go somewhere else. All little things, but since in this case, I'm relying on the dealers good-will, and there is no real wrong-doing, its all I can do.