John wrote:
>
> dealer around here who could do competent warranty repairs,
>
> Admittedly, I never encountered a Ford dealership service
> department that was a bunch of outright crooks, like the service shop
of a now
long-gone multi-brand dealership where we bought our '92 Saab.
Okay, another long story.
I once had a dealer take my Jeep back for 66 repairs during the first
year (but none of them were safety related so it did qualify under the
lemon laws of that state (they vary by state).
But I did put that dealer out of business.
My Jeep finally had a problem with the transfer case - it wouldn't go
into four wheel drive. They had the car for about a week, and then
returned it after explaining to me that they had to rebuild the transfer
case and charging Jeep for the warranty repairs. However me being the
trusting person that I was, crawled under to check their work. That's
when I called the state consumer complaint division and the factory rep
and arranged for them to meet me at the dealer a few days later (the
state consumer complaint rep told us that their complaint file against
that dealer (the only one within a couple hundred miles in that state)
had a file thicker than the rest of the complaints for the entire rest
of the state (Wyoming).
When we all gathered at the dealer, I had them put it up on a lift.
Earlier, my drive shaft had a lot of surface rust, so I wire brushed of
the rust, and painted the bare metal on the drive shaft with black
paint. The over spray was all over the bolts on the transfer case (that
the dealer had supposedly rebuilt), and none of the bolts had been
touched. To demonstrate, I took a sick point socket and turned one of
the bolts, a quarter turn, and demonstrated that the pint over-sprat all
flaked off the head of the turned bolt.
The Dealer (and by that I mean the owner and manager) lowered the Jeep
off the rack, told me to get the #$%& out and never come back. The
dealer rep told me that they would take care of things. The dealership
was out of the Jeep business within two weeks, and a new Jeep dealership
had opened up (and one of the GM dealerships) in town with a month. I
believe that the original Jeep dealer had lost their other franchises
within a couple of years after that - but I'm not sure, as I had moved
away by then.
I did make the state consumer rep happy as I did catch them in fraud -
although it was against Jeep and not a consumer.
Sometimes the little guy can win.
Tim Mullen
Chantilly, VA
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