07 V-8 Lemon

[Thomas Rogers]

Right, that's what I am saying, PRM. If your front-lines stink, then not only can they not fix things, but they can't make the customer happy and can't feed back and legit defect stats back to corp and the engineers so that things don't get addressed. Case-in-point: Explorer front tire wear...c'mon...even if all it takes is dumping the Crapyears, this has been a chronic problem for years. Fix the problem Ford.

 

[P M]

Agreed.



On a related note to the crappy wear of tires. Yesterday I had to pick up new tires for a friends new BMW 3 series. Turns out they have cupping problems that exceed the ST. He's only had his a couple of months and it the tires are badly cupped. By the way, the BMW dealer points their finger at the tires and the tire manufacturer is pointing to BMW leaving the consumer stuck in the middle.

 

[FlipTrac_511]

There is already a TSB on the cupping issue to either adjust toe and/or replace tire. It's official, so why are dealerships still fussing? Well we know why (money), but don't take it out on us...we already paid ~$30K!

 

[P M]

TSB for the BMWs or ST? If there is one for the BMW I'm sure my bud would like to know.



Edit: He is quite displeased with his BMW ownership experience at this point.

 

[FlipTrac_511]

ST, sorry.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Agree, Flip, but a TSB isn't a recall, and I haven't been able to get my dealer to replace my tires and give me a free alignment like some here have gotten...and frankly, I should have to even try. That's my point. Instead, I now have noisy tires in the back, which are better than noisy tires in the front. But in 4K more miles, I get the noisy ones in the front again. Should I try to get new tires with 32K on the truck? Seems kind of petty at that point.

 

[William Washington]

Clarence,

TJR is correct about "Not threatening them". Often times the dealer will do anything to prevent the vehicle from being declared a Lemon since in most states that means the vehicle title is converted to a Salvage title and the dealer can't sell it for anywhere near the true used value.

I don't understand this statement? Vehicles that are determined to be lemons go back to (are repurchased by) the manufacturer. The dealer is just a convenient place from which to stage the transactions?

 

[Thomas Rogers]

The reason I said what I said was because once the dealer and then Ford knows you are pursuing lemon law litigation the "relationship" (dealer to owner) can change quite significantly, and the dealers willingness to fix things seems to go out the window. And, as I said, there are legal issues as well. Some law firms dealing with this sort of thing don't want you to start the ball rolling...they want to handle it all.