Friday, February 05, 2010

Ford: update to the update

You have to give praise where it's due. After slagging off the local Ford dealer a week or so ago they did get back to me (after I followed up again), and they said call in, ask for "Ray" and he'll go out in the car with you.

So this morning I pooped into the garage on the way to work. Ray was there and we duly went for a 20 minute run in the car, where he acknowledged there was a problem with the steering/alignment, but wasn't sure whate.

When we got back he asked if I could hang on for 30mins whilst he stuck it on a ramp to rule out anything obvious. Then he said, whilst it's on there we might as well do the full alignment check. 25 mins later he showed me a printout that showed the rear wheel(s) were 8mm out of alignment and they'd fixed that.

That's a pretty significant mis-alignment apparently. He didn't have time to re-road test but was pretty confident it would have solved the problem. Then he and the desk girl had a chat about why the alignment would have changed so significantly less than 8 weeks after I'd had it doen previously, given there'd been no bump.

The long and short of it was they said, let us know if there's any further problem. If there is, you'll have to bring it in, get it checked and pay whatever to put it right, but for now, hope it's OK, on your way.

Well, it feels like a different car now. Steering wheel is aligned, and it doesn't turn left hand corners on it's own.

They could have charged me. But they didn't. Finally, some good customer service. Thanks Fordthorne Cardiff, and thanks, Ray.

No comments: