The battle continues.....

 

I REALLY hope none of you has to go through this. It started with me dropping the vehicle off at the dealer on Tuesday, 3/27 after already knowing what the issue was. I went in after having read the larger cooling fan thread and armed with a lot of its material.

Apparently the information I was provided about the slightly altered part numbers was either not accurate or has changed. I finally managed to get my case escalated to the same manager Alaska mentioned, Millie (sp?). As an aside, she is well aware her name has been mentioned in some "blog" (her words) regarding this issue. She is supposed to have her investigation concluded by Friday. I will update again and provide some more details of this thoroughly frustrating experience. If I'm not successful in getting a system wide resolution in place, I will provide some suggestions for alternate solutions.

 

That is unfortunate but unfortunately not totally unexpected. Seems like instead of honoring their warranty, Ford prefers to try to outwait the customer to the point where the customer is discouraged enough to just give up. So now that Milli has been "outed" as the Ford person who knows that this a warrantied repair, she finds herself in a situation. Either
1) She has to somehow explain to you how it is that you are not covered
2) She tells you that you are covered and as a result she either
A) Gets more calls about this from other hybrid owners in the future, or
B) Is reassigned to Ford's newly opened Siberia office

But seriously, I'll bet that Milli will soon no longer be available for contact.

 

The hybrid battery pack bears the Sanyo "label". Panasonic purchased Sanyo a few years ago with the merger in place today. To avoid anti-trust concerns, Panasonic scaled back its "ownership" of Panasonic EV energy (the hybrid battery center) from 40 to 20% while Toyota increased their share to 80%!

Ford announced a few years ago (2009) that they were moving the hybrid components (battery and transmission) to in-house and items developed in the USA. Does Ford have trouble obtaining replacement components for the hybrid parts of their vehicles? Can anyone state where the hybrid battery cooling fans are manufactured/

 

I know they're from an outside vendor. I should be getting my truck Monday and since the dealer still doesn't believe (as of today) that the fans are covered by warranty, the old parts should be saved to return to me pursuant to Florida law. If the tech used the replacement kit box to store the old parts, I'll check the box for place of manufacture.

Update: Friday at around 2:30 PM I received a telephone call from Milli, the manager-level person at Ford Customer Service. She told me the fans are definitely covered under Ford's unique hybrid component warranty and the problem with getting them properly covered was a coding issue with the parts numbers. She told me she had left a message for the service manager at my dealership explaining how to do it.

I immediately called my service adviser and left a message for him with the substance of Milli's call. Having not heard from my dealership by 4:15, I called back and was told they had left mutiple messages for Milli and had not heard back from her. Another attempted call by me to Milli and I was assured by the person I spoke with she would send Milli a PM to call my local service manager. At 4:55 I talked with the local service manager who told me he had finally spoken with Milli, that she doesn't have the authority to approve the payment of anything and that no one at Ford has any idea what she is talking about. He went on to say she was nothing more than a nice person for you to talk to so you can feel better about the problems you're having with your car (nice).

Customer service closes at 5 PM, so I was done for the day.

To cap off my Friday, My Nissan Z was rear ended while stopped at a traffic light by some idiot dressed in a Batman costume. His only explanation was that his girlfriend (green and pink hair) told him to "go" so he did. Thankfully, no damage, but WTF?

Anyway, Monday I WILL have my truck back in my possession...stay tuned.

 

Hi GatorJ, since you're an attorney, I vote class action lawsuit. Seems like there's enough people on this site with the same issue.

I am currently fighting the same battle as you, although not quite as far along (talked to service manager, talked to escalated specialist at Ford who referred to TSB as not covered, but not giving up yet). I sure hope you are successful, and I really appreciate you (and Alaska and others) sharing the information to help the rest of us.

I look forward to reading some good news on Monday!

Thanks,
Tanya

 

By the way, may I ask what you (and others) are being quoted/charged for the fan replacement? My estimate is over $1,000. I read somewhere on here the parts are about $225, and if you say it's about 3 hours of labor... seems like it should be around $500 total.

Are you also having an issue with the blend door actuator (another $300)? Supposedly my car has both codes, although it seems odd to me that both would fail simultaneously. And the problem(s) appear to be intermittent as the car is now running fine.

Thanks,
Tanya

 

If anyone knows of a dealer who has covered this part/repair, kindly pass along their info. Maybe I can take my car to them, or have them talk to my dealer.

Thanks,
Tanya

 

My invoice for the replacement cooling fan kit is $683, parts and labor.

My blend door actuator is fine. I have a new one in hand as that part is clearly not covered by the unique hybrid component warranty.

I really can't speak to the viability of a class action suit as that is WAY out of my area of practice.

 

Tanya,
The dealer charged me (and I got back) just over $900 for the fan replacement, but things are more expensive in Alaska. Ford's online parts site FordParts.com shows list price for the part at $446.37. MY dealer charges $513 for the part PLUS shipping.
There is a dealer mentioned at least a couple of times in this thread who has covered this work under warranty with no problems. My best advice is for you to read the entire thread on this issue.

GatorJ,
What a cluster. No accountability whatsoever at Ford and at your dealership.
If and when you ever get this resolved and can talk to Milli, ask her what the next person who has this issue is supposed to do to successfully handle this warranty problem without having to go through all of this mess. I would think she would appreciate not having to continually deal with this. Plus, I would like to know why dealers do not know how to properly handle this matter when it first comes up.