Ford Motor Co. and their warranty

I know this is off the subject of this forum but thought some might be interested in why the taxpayers are being ask to bailout FoMoCo. Bought a '08 F150 this spring, have driven it 3250 miles. Yesterday the Motorcraft battery failed. I live about 180 miles from the selling dealer, so called for permission to buy a new battery at their expense (warranty??) I was informed that I could only use a Motorcraft battery in that PU and that only a Motorcraft mechanic could install it--or my warranty would be voided. Their solution was to send a wrecker down of tow the PU into their shop, or the shop nearest me-90 miles. Cost effective don't you think? No wonder these jackasses are begging for money.

I worked for Ford for several years (and Tioyota, Nissan/Datsun, IH medium trucks, Honda, and others. Warranty is a liability, but if done by others, and not diagnosed by a technition, and replaced with a non-corporate component, there is no control. The whole thing goes to customer cheating and corruption, miss diagnosis, and more serious warranty issues. At least they fixed it! Reliability is better now than ever before. The lack of forsight and following buying trends instead of setting direction has been the downfall of US makes for a long time. We did things well and efficiently in the first half of the 1900s. The world copied our technology, and made it better. We failed to make that transition. JimN

I have a 1998 F-150, purchased new in Feb 1998. The original battery is still working.

All Ford wants is a line of credit, they may or may not need it, as they are not in as much trouble as GM or Chrysler. 90 miles from the nearest dealer, where do you live?

Jim N: The PU is not fixed. I failed to mention that with their proposal, after towing the unit to town and repairing it, it becomes my responsibility to drive the 200 or 350 miles round trip to pick it up. I realize there might be other issues with this PU, but all I want is permission to get a new battery so the outfit will run, then I can take it to be checked out. Out here, we do first things first, and catch up on the details later. When it is 8 degrees outside, snowing, and the wind blowing and your $35,000.00 outfit won't run, the frustration level tends to mount.

CNKS: I realize that FoMOCo is in better shape than the others. My point being, why throw money at a problem (running a tow truck hundreds of miles) when you are short of cash and begging for help. A load test on the battery showed that it is toast. Is it not reasonable to try a new battery and if that works, drive the PU to the service center? The line of credit you mention still involves using taxpayer $. I live in SE Montana.

Bus Driver: The PU I traded in was a '99 F 150, and the original battery in it lasted 'til the spring of 08. I'm sure you understand why I am angry and frustrated. Over the years I have purchased in excess of 20 new Ford vehicles and have had good luck with them until I got this lemon.

This isn’t a warranty issue, but I do have a few comments regarding Ford’s quality and their attitude toward their customers.

I had a 2002 Ford Explorer, and I must say I never had a vehicle that drove better in lousy weather.

However…

My wife ran it out of gas one day, then ran down the battery trying to start it. When we jump-started it, that fried the 4X4 control module and the vehicle became a rear-wheel drive only. The dealer said $600 for the part, plus (if I remember right) $220 to install it because it had to be “programmed.” Well, I found the part brand new on the Internet for $170, and installed it myself with a screwdriver in ten minutes – no programming required – thereby avoiding paying the dealer $1,320 per hour for labor. I added a $3.49 capacitor across the battery to absorb voltage spikes and had no further electrical problems.

The bottom line: Ford provided frail and feeble electronics for use in an electrically hostile environment, then tried to stick it to their customers when the parts (predictably) failed.

The topper came one day when I tried to shift from Park to Reverse – and the gearshift lever snapped off in my hand! Well, $1,000 for the part (have to replace the entire steering column – again, poor design), $1,000 for installation, and a six-week wait! So there she sat, stuck in Park, blocking access to the barn – until I traded her in on a Nissan Altima and somebody came and loaded her on a flatbed. Good riddance.

I kept the gearshift lever. I’ve considered sending it to a member of Congress, the CEO of Ford, or mounting in on a plaque and selling it on eBay.

There are a couple of things for sure: I’ll NEVER buy another Ford, and I will not support any form of help for them.

Mark W. in MI

Lemon is a prety strong reaction to a bad battery.

I have 1972 f350 and had it sence 1972 dam good trcuk and i like it to. thanks dan

I agree! Put a different battery in it then park it outside the dealer and replace it with the dead one? Still a massive amount of hassle. JimN

As a longtime dealership employee, let me explain a few small details to you.

These days, there are a lot of expensive electronics on these vehicles. So FoMoCo doesn't want Joe Greasemonkey putting a no-name battery in their vehicle for a number of reasons. First, they want to ensure that a battery of the proper CCA rating, and the proper dimensions, is installed. Second, they don't want Joe putting his wrench across the terminals of this newly-connected battery and shorting out said expensive electronics.

And third, there has to be a cause for the battery failure, and it might not be just the battery. Maybe there's a bad alternator, or maybe there's a short-cicuit or an excessive current draw somewhere. For the dealer, checking for this stuff and fixing it is "free money" from Ford; for Ford, it's insurance that they won't keep on replacing batteries because of some other, undiscovered fault.

And if you're complaining that the warranty doesn't cover transportation from your door to the dealership, maybe you should've ridden with the tow truck driver. Nobody else makes house calls anymore; why should you expect that of your dealer, or of Ford?

The terms of the warranty are spelled out in your owners manual. They were available at the dealership prior to your purchase of the vehicle. FoMoCo is fulfilling the contract as it's written, a contract you implicitly agreed to by purchasing the vehicle. If you had problems with the terms of the warranty, you should've purchased a vehicle from a manufacturer whose warranty you agreed with...unfortunately, EVERY manufacturer I'm familiar with--and I've worked for dealers for every domestic make, and a lot of the imports--has a warranty similar to Ford's. Warranty work has to be handled by dealership technicians in order to be covered.

That's just how life is. Whether you're a doctor, lawyer, or a banker, the rules apply equally to you and me. You can't "buy" these folks or otherwise expect them to "look the other way," even "just this once." No matter whether you're a judge or a laborer, the contract is equally binding on both FoMoCo and the purchaser.

And if a simple battery failure makes a vehicle a "lemon," then a lot of states need to rewrite their "Lemon Laws."

This is just the latest of the problems I've had with this PU, and the least serious!

Thanks for the lecture. See Fancy Farm concerning the lemon aspect.

I don't disagree. My opinion is to let them go into Chapter 11. As to the battery, there may be some problem in the charging system, or maybe even in the computer that causes the damage. To keep the warranty, looks like you don't have any choice -- do they want to charge you for the tow truck? I hope not.

I dont understand how you "load tested" a dead battery. IMHO only a fully charged battery can be sucessfully load tested. CC

I have the original BATTERY in my 99 FORD V-10.

70,000 miles.

That's easy. Hook up the load tester to the battery. Watch the gauge. May have voltage or not. Push load test button and watch the needle go to left.

IS there not another dealer closer to where you live? The selling dealer doesnt have to perform the work.

Some of those bad deals can be the local dealer not the company. Sometimes??????

Good thought Jim, but my battery had factory goop on the terminals so they could tell if it had been tampered with.

I knew this topic would get lots of posts.

Ford Motor Co. has an 800 million dollar aviation dept. (With frequent flights to the Carribean)

Top execs make in excess of 100 million.
(They want factory workers to take a pay cut so they can keep their millions) And now they want the american taxpayers to support their salaries.

CEO"s should be paid $100,000 and then IF the company makes a profit AFTER stockholder dividends have been paid they can receive a bonus comparible to the profit margin.

Foreign investors purchase controlling interest in American companies then send the work overseas.

Corporate Integrity is an oxymoron as is George W. Bush Intelligience.

(quoted from post at 20:37:04 12/06/08) I know this is off the subject of this forum but thought some might be interested in why the taxpayers are being ask to bailout FoMoCo. Bought a '08 F150 this spring, have driven it 3250 miles. Yesterday the Motorcraft battery failed. I live about 180 miles from the selling dealer, so called for permission to buy a new battery at their expense (warranty??) I was informed that I could only use a Motorcraft battery in that PU and that only a Motorcraft mechanic could install it--or my warranty would be voided. Their solution was to send a wrecker down of tow the PU into their shop, or the shop nearest me-90 miles. Cost effective don't you think? No wonder these jackasses are begging for money.

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Warrenty policies of this nature are often adopted in response to customer abuses of the system. In some circumstances, such as yours, they seemingly make no sense. Overall, however, they may be necessary. Mike

Not trying to lecture. Just pointing out that you're not being singled out for discrimination by FoMoCo. They have policies and procedures, just like insurance companies have. Assuming the "Dr." in your handle means anything, then you should know that, in order to get reimbursed by insurance companies, you have to follow the companies' procedures. The Ford dealer is similarly constrained as to following company procedures in order to get reimbursed by Ford for warranty work. So if they filed a claim on your truck for a replacement battery, and they didn't follow factory procedures, the claim most likely would be denied. And since your warranty claim has to be handled through a dealer, the dealer is constrained by company policies and procedures.

And the reason that these policies and procedures exist is that there have been abuses in the past that had to be addressed, whether the problem was unscrupulous dealers or unscroupulous customers. Like everything else, a few bad apples has caused them to make the procedure more complicated for everyone involved.

I would buy the stinking batt myself from my choice of stores and forget about it. No joke.
Years ago Ford would tell you, let dealer do what he wants, then write customer relations and they would make it right. Guess they decided that policy doesn't work anymore. What a shame on the corporation.

You hit the nail on the head.

In an effort to drive service business to dealerships, Ford has gone out of its way to produce vehicles that are electronically frail and difficult/expensive to maintain. Great for the dealer, not so hot for the consumer.

There are numerous places where a capacitor here or a zener diode there would make the electronics much more robust, but Ford would rather gouge the customer for maintenance than build a reliable, easy-to-maintain product. The problem for Ford is that most customers are smarter than that.

I agree with your suggestion to buy vehicles from other manufacturers. In my case, I've had imperfect but pretty good experience with Nissan. Ford's poor designs, quality problems, and attitude are no longer a factor for me.

Well, okay, I still have the '65 Mustang out in the barn. But it has just the right amount of computers in it: zero. And nothing gets fried just because I change the battery!

Mark W. in MI

Could be they thought you might be trying to get free battery for your 88 Dodge.