Big Problem With Ford Motorhomes -- This Cost Us A Lot Of Money!

if you own a ford motorhome this is really really important for you to watch in today's video izzy is going to talk to you about the horrible experience we had with ford what you can do to be your own advocate if something similar happens and what we did ultimately to get it resolved all right so like mj said we're going to talk about a problem we had dealing with ford in our motor home so this all started back in september if you remember we had a trip out to indiana and we actually went to a service center to fix a problem that came from the factory that could have potentially been a really big problem for us we will link the video above but just the cliff note version what happened was one of our wheel seals actually was leaking and all the diff fluid had leaked out thankfully it was caught on a routine service that we had paid for at mass service center they picked it up it could have been a real big problem for us if we head back to new jersey we probably have been stuck on the side of the road the techs there were pretty confident that this was an issue coming out of the factory simply because of the low mileage and actually when they pulled everything out they found that some of the bolts were not torqued to spec which is probably what caused the seal to be damaged now being that this was a warranty claim we were under both the years and the mileage so according to mass service center we should have been under warranty what we called four different dealerships commercial fleet dealerships for ford and they were in indiana none of them well some of them didn't even answer the call and none of them would take us it wasn't because they didn't have the facilities to do so they did they just didn't want to work on motorhomes that is the first thing that we think is a real problem with ford now as a result of us not being able to get into a ford dealership to get our problem fixed under warranty which is what should have been done we had to pay mass service center mass was nothing but professional they had our coach fixed within actually a couple days but a few days was to get the parts and then once they got the parts it was fixed the same day we haven't had a problem since as a result we had to pay out of pocket in excess of one thousand dollars okay that didn't sit well with me but i kind of accepted it because i just didn't want to deal you know it was fixed didn't want to deal with it on the way home we had a check engine light came on nothing was really that we felt driving was a problem but it was something i just want to have addressed it was getting toward the end of the season i figured let's take it in to our normal ford service center that we dealt with last year when we had our routine maintenance let's just take it in there it's not far from us have it dealt with well i call that service center and for the purpose of this video i'm not going to call out dealerships because that's not what we're about but it's a dealership in new jersey commercial fleet dealership and we found out that they just no longer service motor homes not because they didn't have the bays not because they didn't have the ability just because they don't do it thank you for calling hi i'm looking to bring my motor home in and make an appointment okay so we don't work on motorhome sir okay you guys used to work on them you don't work on them anymore we don't work on them anymore do you know anybody that in the area that works on them i'm not necessarily sure to be honest sir all right thank you that didn't sit well with me i called four other dealerships so five dealerships within a 60 mile range ford commercial dealerships now if you go on ford's commercial fleet website they have the dealerships that service their commercial fleets as well as the base sizes and the dealerships that i call all had the capability to service our motor home they just they just didn't do it in my opinion our opinion is that if ford is selling motor homes they're selling at 53 chassis dealerships should be required to service ford products and that is not what's happening in at least where we are here in the northeast in northern new jersey and out by elkhart indiana that was not happening either so now that this had happened to us two times i was not happy and now i wanted to readdress the issue with the warrant i wasn't going to let it go anymore and maybe a lot of people do let it go and and i was one of those people that were going to do it but now we had two instances where i was clearly under warranty we paid a lot of money for this motorhome and i just didn't feel it was right so i called ford's customer service the number was provided to us by the dealership that had serviced our coach last year i kind of gave them a little bit of a hard time on the phone i wanted an answer they gave me the corporate number the fleet management to call i called them and essentially what they told me was that it's up to the dealership who and who they don't want to service the dealership saying we don't want to service your motorhome call corporate corporate is saying well there's not much we can really do call the dealership and and i really wasn't happy mj was there when i was on the phone and i was just not taking no i finally got the number to a woman named ronda she's i believe manager of the fleet customer service i give a lot of credit to rhonda because rhonda actually was the only one that seemed to care from anybody that we dealt with with ford ronda advised me that ford actually does have a program to reimburse for warranty claims things that were paid out for the very reason that the predicament we were in so what she told me was that i would have to go to a local ford dealership see the service manager or somebody in warranty claims and submit a claim the invoice from wherever we had our coach fixed with a detailed uh list of what was fixed and they would submit it to ford for reimbursement so we did that september 22nd 2020 this year i went to a local dealership again i won't mention names and i saw the service manager service manager was very nice came out met me in person i submitted everything to them along with the appropriate paperwork and my current home address and this is going to be very important for later on in the video you're not going to want to miss what happened with later on i'll leave it that way so i spoke to the manager he told me it would be 7 to 14 days before things were submitted he didn't see a problem he looked at the invoice he said everything looks good you should have a check within seven to 14 days so the service manager he provided me with his email his phone number he said if you have any questions give me a call you should be hearing from us you know within the next couple of weeks so on october 6 i emailed the service manager from the unnamed dealership just to see what the status was so what this led to was a series of multiple phone calls unanswered emails and i'm not the type of person to hound somebody i understand if it takes time that's fine i would just expect a mutual courtesy if i email you or i call you once twice three times over several weeks just shoot me an email hey it's been submitted here's the status that's all i care i just wanted to know that this stuff was set out what happened was that that communication broke down whether they were too busy whether they just couldn't be bothered i don't know the reason why but there was no communication between me and the dealership what i did wind up doing was calling rhonda again and advising her and this was after probably close to a month advising her you know what was going on i was kind of not in the loop on what was going on and you know rhonda was understanding and she did agree that at the very minimum the dealer should just keep us updated she did advise me that normally it takes about six to eight weeks which is fine i wish i was told that from the beginning so we waited it out a little bit and ultimately in november this is what happened so on november 20th 2020 i received an email from rhonda and i just want to follow up throughout this whole incident once rhonda was made aware of the lack of communication between myself and the dealership she followed up with me weekly i didn't have to email her she just shot me out a quick email hey just want to know how everything's going have you heard anything from the dealership if the answer was always no she would reach out to the dealership she had told me that her herself was not getting answers from the dealership but she kept me in the loop anyway november 20th 2020 she advised me that the dealership had a check ready for me apparently the dealership sent the check to an address they had on file uh when mj first bought her car that we haven't lived there in four years so they sent the check out to an old address and then it was later returned to them and when i looked at the address it was completely different than what i had submitted the information to them in the beginning so again a lack of attention to detail this could have easily been resolved if the emails were answered where do you want the check to be sent you know we got the check company none of that was done ultimately we did get a check and the check was the amount of 965.44 so kudos to ford for actually paying that amount but customers out there people that own these rvs do not be discouraged by the dealerships whether it's purposeful or not whether ford's doing this on purpose not i don't know i don't know the answer but two things need to be addressed number one dealerships commercial fleet dealerships should be required to service to motorhomes if ford is selling them they should be required to service them okay they're selling those products number two there needs to be some addressing on customer service now ronda seems to have that down perfectly she works for corporate she understands the value of customer service i know where i'm at when i'm at work and somebody calls me whether that's another agency or a victim or a complaint i take the time to call them back because that is decent human communication right that's what you do with people you don't leave them hanging it's not fair to them so we felt this video was appropriate and necessary to tell the people out there the ford owners that if you find yourself in this predicament do not give up we will put the links below to the corporate fleet number i will also put the link to the the phone number for ronda if you have the same problem she is very accommodating and understanding in the comments below if you've had an experience with ford warranty claims has it been different than ours if it has been what part of the country are you in also put in the comments below have you had an experience similar to ours and what did you do to resolve that and for myself and mj we thank you guys for watching and we'll see you on the [Music] road

Channel: Endless RVing

Views: 216,760

Keywords: endless rving, rv life, rv living, rv, ford motorhome, ford, ford rv, ford chassis, rv problems, rv chassis problems, ford chassis problems, ford f53 chassis problems, ford problems, broken down rv, ford service, ford rv service, rv service, rv service issues, rv issues

Id: csl63ON0sAg

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2020