Eric owns an elderly (model year 1999) Ford Windstar, and isn't particularly interested in trading it in for a new car for financial reasons. Ford recently recalled hundreds of thousands of older Windstars, and Eric dutifully brought his car in for repair. Instead of a freshly safe car, he received an offer of $3,700 for his van. If he wanted to keep the van, he would need to sign a document absolving ford of any liability if anything goes wrong with the car. What would you do?
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first of all, ford recalls the vehicle, not the dealer ship. Now the dealership can not hold a vehicle with out customer consent. I would fight ford on the issue, explaining your situation that you can not afford another vehicle, and that THEY have put you in a predicitiment where your driving your family around in an unsafe vehicle, and you are un able to purchase another vehicle, but a recall has to be fixed by the company! warranty covers this repair. ford pays the dealer to do this repair! that van needs to be fixed or ford needs to put them in a vehicle equivilent to what they have (yet safer!)
ReplyDeleteFirst off whomever wrote this story needs to get their facts straight,I'm a service consultant at a local FORD dealership...the process for the rear axle recall is as follows...Cust brings affected Windstar into the dealership for an axle inspection if the axle is found to be cracked the dealership contacts Ford Motor Company and reports their findings then Ford provides an offer to purchase the vehicle back from the customer which is genrally alot higher than the veh is actually worth...the customer has the option to accept the offer or decline it.If they accept the offer Ford provides a rental veh of comparable size to customer at no charge untill the payment is provided to the customer and they can use it however they'd like.If the customer opts to not take the offer then Ford supplies the customer with a rental,again at no charge to customer other than fuel that they use while having the rental untill thet rear axle assembly becomes available to the dealer from Ford,we have some windstars that have been parked since November waiting on axles and the cust has been in a rental since then.If the axle passes the inspection with no cracks then the dealer installs 2 reinforcment brackets and sealers to the axle to prevent future cracking.At no tinme does Ford require the customer to sign a form that absolves Ford of any responsibilty if an axle cracks.So as I said before rocks are thrown the facts need to be straight.Ford Motor Company is doing everything in their power to ensure the saftey of their vehicles owners by addressing the fault with the windstar including footing the bill of at the lowest 3k dollars for an extended rental for a veh that is only worth at best $1800.00.Thank you and have a nice day.
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