- Honda HR-V owner says dealer charged $130 for cabin air filter.
- This allegedly happened at nearly every oil change service visit.
- Genuine filter costs $11-$25 and only takes a few minutes to swap.
It’s no secret that dealerships earn far more from their service departments than they do from selling cars. The margins are widely better, and the volume is steady. Still, many service centers manage to cross a line, exploiting customer trust in ways that are hard to justify.
Read: Dealer Offers A $9,645 Service Reminder Why People Stop Going To Dealers
Today, we have an example of that in action, courtesy of one Honda owner. They say that their local dealer charged them $130 for a cabin air filter almost every time they went in for an oil change. If true, it’s a serious knock against transparency and honesty in the service and maintenance industry.
The issue surfaced in a recent Reddit post on r/Honda, where the owner of a 2023 Honda HR-V detailed a pattern that started once the vehicle crossed 30,000 miles. According to their invoices, the dealer replaced the cabin air filter at roughly 10,000-mile intervals, each time adding around $130 to the bill. By 51,809 miles, the filter had already been replaced four times.
It’s worth noting that many air filter brands recommend replacing them around the 12,000-mile mark, or as often as every 5,000 miles in dusty conditions. Honda dealer websites vary in their guidance, but 15,000 miles is a common figure, depending on how dirty the filter gets.
We even found a Honda maintenance manual suggesting a replacement interval of every 24 months. Regardless of the timeline, Reddit commenters zeroed in on the real issue here: the cost.
A $10 Part With a $120 Bonus
Genuine Honda replacement filters (Part #80291-TF3-E01) can currently be found on eBay for as little as $11.77, shipping included. Equivalent aftermarket filters are available on Amazon for under $10. There’s even an upgraded option, Honda’s 4-layer premium version with an active carbon layer (Part #08R79-PS8-100B), selling for around $45, shipping included.
Not only are these filters inexpensive, they’re also widely used across Honda and Acura lineups. The same part fits everything from the 2023–2026 Accord and the 2016–2026 Civic to the CR-V, Odyssey, and the upcoming 2026 Prelude. Acura’s RDX, Integra, and MDX models also use the same filter configuration. So we’re not talking about some obscure, hard-to-source component.
How Hard Can It Be?
Some might argue that perhaps the $130 is mostly labor. After all, we’ve seen a few cases of bone-headed engineering decisions that require disassembling several components to just access the filter in question. The HR-V is not such a case, though. It requires little more than lowering the glove box to gain access. Bellow you’ll find videos to prove it for both the HR-V and CR-V.
To add some perspective, our own Editor-in-Chief recently ran into a similar upsell when his local Honda dealer quoted $189 to replace both the cabin and engine air filters. Instead, he spent about $30 online for the same parts.
Then he handed the job to his 9-year-old daughter, who, with a little supervision, got it done. If a kid can manage it, most adults probably can too. That’s a win for DIY sanity, and one less victory for opportunistic dealer pricing.