Steve Gregory has finally been reimbursed the $11,295 he paid out to repair the transmission on his 2013 Ford Mondeo. The clutch failed after the car had done 82,000km.
At first, Ford NZ said it wouldn't cover the cost because the car was out of warranty. Gregory was told to get a lawyer if he wanted to take things further. Instead, he came to Fair Go.
Fair Go pointed out to Ford it was a product failure. This means reimbursement is due even for products outside their warranty. We also provided information to Ford that the fault was happening regardless of whether full servicing had been carried out or not.
But as Fair Go went to air at the end of May, Ford stood its ground. It wouldn't refund any of the four customers Fair Go was assisting. It reiterated it would happily refund customers but only if the transmission had been fully serviced and if the fault occurred at a reasonable mileage.
But as the show aired, Ford had a change of heart. Steve's wife Tracy said they had an email straight after the show, saying "they were happy to reimburse us for the repair cost so we were really happy with that". The letter they received stated "on review, it should have been approved".
Another customer, Wade Bishop, has also since been refunded. However, his case wasn't as simple. Bishop's clutch had given up after just 62,000km. Bishop says Ford had previously fobbed him off with a long list of excuses including "lack of maintenance which we proved was wrong, then there was where we purchased it from which we said was irrelevant, then there was where we got it repaired".
Then Ford NZ said it couldn't accept responsibility because Bishop hadn't told the company about the problem before the six-week repair was done. But as far as Bishop was concerned, he had.
Bishop had limped his car into a transmission repair specialist. He then walked the 1.5 kilometres to the local Ford dealership. "I told them what I'd done and they said leave it there, that I've done the right thing." The frustrating point for Bishop was that telling the dealership was not the same as telling Ford NZ, the company.
Ford NZ said it needed to assess the fault and agree to the repair in order to decide whether it should be responsible for payment. Fair Go didn't believe this was Bishop's fault, so we subsequently got in touch with the dealership to explain. Fairview Motors in Hamilton did the right thing and agreed it was at fault and reimbursed Bishop the full cost of repair.
Bishop was grateful to the local dealership and to Fair Go. "Yes, it was lovely and a very big surprise actually." But he was still unimpressed with Ford NZ. "It's a fault with their product and they need to take some accountability for that,” he said.
Yet there is still no compensation for either Steve Turner from Dunedin or Kelvin Gray from Christchurch. They both purchased cars they believed to have been well maintained, as several services were recorded in their service books. But in both cases, transmission servicing didn't happen at the correct interval. Ford NZ says without this it cannot consider any reimbursement. Gray is in disbelief.
"It's just so unfair because some of the cars that have been refunded are being serviced on time but they've still got exactly the same fault".
SHARE ME