CR Swade
~SPONSOR~
- Jan 18, 2001
- 1,764
- 5
Damnation is it the holiday season? Everybody must be in a dang cheery mood as there is just no juicy crap flying right now! Oh well, I suppose that is a good thing in light of what has taken place this last year...
But still, I think we can fan a few better flames than the docile stuff flying lately.
On to mine. This IS something that if you own a Ford you ought to keep in mind. This repair was initially going to cost me $2300 from the closest friendly Ford shop, but ol' KC Husky pulled my feet out of the fire and saved me quite a bit of jack (about $1500!!!-thanks, I owe you big time).
Keep in mind this is not so much about the product as I love my Ford truck (it's a 97 w/ the 5.4) and am looking at a diesel F250 Crew Cab right now, but am also considering a Chevy (gasp). My flame has to do with Ford Corp and their customer service.
When I found out the cost of the repair, I called Ford to see if there were any alternatives. You see, the history of this is simple-spark plugs have blown out of the 5.4 aluminum heads rendering them in the eyes of Ford, non-repairable (meaning replace the entire head). They KNOW about this situation, send bulletins to the service companies, then act like the customer is a complete doof for bringing this to there attention. In fact, the first shop that wanted $2300 were the ones that told me Ford wanted the heads replaced ,not the local shops. After listening to a customer service rep read off of a script for about 10 minutes, telling me in a robotic monotone "that must be very frustating Mr. insert name, errr... for you" and "that is a very odd condition on your normally reliable F150, how do you feel about that?" I was ready to push the thing off of a cliff. Not to mention, she flat lied to me when I questioned here about Ford's position regarding the head replacement as opposed to repairing them.
My point is this, the truck was out of warranty-no problem. If this was a freak occurance, I could almost accept it on face value. But it is not a freak occurance. It happens with some pattern and regularity (companies don't issue service bulletins for hit-or-miss situations). Did I want it fixed free? Heck no! Did want some price adjustment instead of the hind-side-auger treatment royale? You better believe it. Instead Ford MoCo decided to take a customer (me) who has owned 6 different Fords (3 trucks, # Mustangs) with great results, leave me with "pay the twenty-three hundo to the shop and quit bothering us" and negate all of those with this one incident.:mad:
The moral? Have a ford mechanic do the 70-80,000 mile tune-up so if the plugs come loose you have some recourse with FordMoCo and don't expect a damn thing from FoMoCo for being a loyal customer.
Moral #2? A riding buddy that happens to be a great mechanic w/ a great shop is dang near priceless.:)
But still, I think we can fan a few better flames than the docile stuff flying lately.
On to mine. This IS something that if you own a Ford you ought to keep in mind. This repair was initially going to cost me $2300 from the closest friendly Ford shop, but ol' KC Husky pulled my feet out of the fire and saved me quite a bit of jack (about $1500!!!-thanks, I owe you big time).
Keep in mind this is not so much about the product as I love my Ford truck (it's a 97 w/ the 5.4) and am looking at a diesel F250 Crew Cab right now, but am also considering a Chevy (gasp). My flame has to do with Ford Corp and their customer service.
When I found out the cost of the repair, I called Ford to see if there were any alternatives. You see, the history of this is simple-spark plugs have blown out of the 5.4 aluminum heads rendering them in the eyes of Ford, non-repairable (meaning replace the entire head). They KNOW about this situation, send bulletins to the service companies, then act like the customer is a complete doof for bringing this to there attention. In fact, the first shop that wanted $2300 were the ones that told me Ford wanted the heads replaced ,not the local shops. After listening to a customer service rep read off of a script for about 10 minutes, telling me in a robotic monotone "that must be very frustating Mr. insert name, errr... for you" and "that is a very odd condition on your normally reliable F150, how do you feel about that?" I was ready to push the thing off of a cliff. Not to mention, she flat lied to me when I questioned here about Ford's position regarding the head replacement as opposed to repairing them.
My point is this, the truck was out of warranty-no problem. If this was a freak occurance, I could almost accept it on face value. But it is not a freak occurance. It happens with some pattern and regularity (companies don't issue service bulletins for hit-or-miss situations). Did I want it fixed free? Heck no! Did want some price adjustment instead of the hind-side-auger treatment royale? You better believe it. Instead Ford MoCo decided to take a customer (me) who has owned 6 different Fords (3 trucks, # Mustangs) with great results, leave me with "pay the twenty-three hundo to the shop and quit bothering us" and negate all of those with this one incident.:mad:
The moral? Have a ford mechanic do the 70-80,000 mile tune-up so if the plugs come loose you have some recourse with FordMoCo and don't expect a damn thing from FoMoCo for being a loyal customer.
Moral #2? A riding buddy that happens to be a great mechanic w/ a great shop is dang near priceless.:)
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