vraiblonde said:
Not fishy at all. If you ranted to the service tech the way you're ranting on here, he certainly made the GM aware of the problem. If he *didn't* inform the GM, THAT would be fishy.
Actually, I didn't rant at the service tech. He was a pretty decent guy, except for the fact that he lied to me, but I didn't know about that at the time I spoke to him. It was when I realized that I was lied to about my warranty and after I got the true diagnosis from my mechanic is when I called the "Manager", who was on the "defensive" when I told him my name. He also told me that he was the owner when I asked to speak to his boss, and this was a bald face lie as it is not hard to investigate to find out the owner's name of the dealership.
And the owner is a Mr. Thomas Kody, who also owns Waldorf Ford, Waldorf Dodge, Waldorf Ford Used Car Center, Indian Head Ford, Prince Frederick Ford, Richmond Ford and Car Center of Waldorf I've also found out that these dealerships can't keep an "honest mechanic" employed.
The problems that I have been experiencing go back to the beginning of last summer and while we were still covered under warranty. When the problem started, I first went to Waldorf, since it was closer to work. They wanted to charge me $700 for some fancy tune-up to fix the problem. They never even drove the vehicle because the issue was the back tires would "skip" when we would take off from a complete stop. I knew they were full of crap, so I paid my $99 diagnostic fee, and went to Leonardtown. Here, they at least did a test drive with us BUT they never wrote it down as a "service ticket". So I can't prove I was there, which the "manager" took great pleasure in telling me.
They told me that it was a "tire problem" and that I should rotate the tires, because a "slight" difference in the size of tires, will cause this problem but it was nothing to be concerned about. Since we had just purchased new tires, this seemed to be a likely solution. We rotated the tires and it seemed to make a difference.
Every now and then, we would feel it happen again, but no worries, right? The service guy said it wouldn't harm anything. But then a few weeks ago, it started to get much worse so we took it back, thinking that it was still under warranty because when I purchased the truck, they told me the warranty started from the miles that were on the vehicle when purchased. The exact words were.. "This warranty will take you over 100,000 miles". Yeah.. not true. The warranty started at 0 miles and I purchased the vehicle used. It was in the "fine print". My bad. Another thing the manager pointed out to me in a very snarky voice.
The only reason I took it to the dealer in the first place was because after having it looked at by our mechanic, (way back when) he thought it was probably a warranty issue.
Before taken it back this second time, we had found a "bulletin" issued by Ford on 03/06/06, informing the service centers about "Axle chatter, Shudder, or Binding sensation in the rear" for the 2003-2004 Ford Expeditions, Explorers, and Mustangs. Hey.. it's a known problem, it desribes our problems, so another reason we assumed it would be "warranty work".
So when I took it back to Leonardtown, they charged me $83 to tell me it was probably a "4x4 Electronic Module" (or something like that) was the problem. 3.5 hours in labor, $309 for the part, and 14% of the labor for "shop supplies" for an estimate of $620. They also said that they couldn't guarantee it would fix the problem. They would have to run another $83 diagnostic check after installing it, and oh.. by the way, you aren't covered under warranty anymore. I told them not to do any work and I would take it my mechanic.
So, my mechanic, bless his heart, borrowed one of these modules, and put it in (took him 15 minutes.. not 3 hours) and it wasn't even an issue. I should tell you that a good friend of ours is our mechanic and an authorized Ford technician who works at a private repair shop.
The actual problem with my truck? The transfer case is totally roached, and there seems to be an electrical problem too. It looks like we have been driving on it for awhile now, since the damage is so bad. We are pretty sure that it went bad, back when we first took it to the dealership.
Of course we can't prove it, but we have a feeling they knew exactly what our problem was from the get-go. But since I was pretty close to my warranty expiring, they lied to me so they wouldn't have to make the repairs.
We are now well over $1000 for repairs, and it all could of been avoided, if we hadn't been dealing with crooks.
And from what I have seen it normally gets results.
you guys have been great! 