Neal can’t get his 2007 Ford Freestyle fixed because Ford tells him the part is backordered until December, and his Ford dealership will only cover a rental for part of the timespan as his car sits in the dealership. He writes:

We bought a Ford Freestyle in May of 2007. We changed the oil and performed the routine maintenance according to the maintenance schedule.

July 2009 – Vehicle’s transmission light came on when starting it, vehicle died, restarted, light was gone.

August 2009 – Vehicle’s transmission light came on when starting it, vehicle did not drive correctly until it was restarted.

September 2, 2009 – Bring the vehicle in for service, local Ford dealership could not get the vehicle to mess up, recommend bringing it back when it is messed up, without shutting it off.

September 18, 2009 – Vehicle’s transmission light came on when starting it; took it to the dealership for them to diagnose the problem

September 21, 2009 – Informed the bad part was the “Throttle Body” and that it was not covered under the 60k power train warranty.

September 23, 2009 – Talked to local dealership and told the part is NATIONALLY back ordered UNTIL DECEMBER 2009.

Praise to Ford for offering to:

-cover the cost of a rental car

-trying to expedite the part replacement

-cover all but $150 of the repair

Major Criticism to Ford for:

-Not covering a rental car for the entire time I’m without our car. They will pay only up to $550, translation not much more than two to three weeks.

-Trying to expedite the replacement part –- sounds good, but the millions of Freestyle owners having the same problem are probably being told the same thing?

-Not covering the cost of the entire repair. This part was so poorly designed that the supplier went out of business and the new supplier is redesigning the part. I would call this a defective part. I was told because it is not a safety issue; there can’t be a recall on it.

More details:

Ford has killed the Freestyle (which was renamed the Taurus-X for 2008) for the 2010 line up which has kill the resale/trade-in value. It leaves us up-side down in our payments if we wanted to try to get out of this situation.

This vehicle was our 6th (and our last) Ford between us (others including Escort, Explorer Sport, Explorer Sport Trac, Explorer, & a F150). None ever had any major problems and routine maintenance was done on all of them.

While I appreciate what Ford is trying to do to help us, it is not enough, not to be paying a $500 note for a vehicle to sit at the dealership and continue to depreciate for the next 3 months.

Anyone out there have an extra throttle body sitting in their garage?

(Photo: ibeamee)

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