Air Conditioner problems of the 2006 Honda Odyssey

I have a 2006 Honda Odyssey and on a recent trip to California my air conditioner stopped working. I brought it into my local dealership to have it checked out and was told at the time that if it was struck by a rock it would not be covered under warranty. About an hour later the service technician contacted me to tell me that sure enough a rock has hit my a/c condenser and it would cost $700. 00 to fix it because it is not covered under warranty or extended warranty. The service technician also stated that this has been happening quite often. I decide to google my a/c condenser and was not surprised to find countless forums with hundreds of people all stating the exact same story complete with the same exact comments from the technicians. My suspicions raised, this begins to sound like a rehearsed story of "a rock has hit your ac condenser putting a hole in it" . It would appear that Honda neglected to include a simple grill in the area beneath the license plate frame that would have prevented this from occurring. The stock grill has too much space so debris are able to get in. This should be recalled by Honda and fixed since it's their mistake.

I am unaware of specific events which led to this occurrence. At the first sign of warm weather, I attempted to use the air conditioner; it would only blow warm. We took the car to the dealer on 3/17/08, and were told something had hit the condenser and rendered it inoperable. This dealer quoted $773 to repair, and we declined. We took the car to another dealer on 4/4/08, and were told the same thing. The cost to repair was $829. An online search revealed many other owners have experienced the same problem; this is obviously a design defect which should be covered by Honda.