The customer of a dealership has taken to social media to really go to town on them after accusing them of selling him a car that was a ‘ticking time bomb.’ The user posted on Reddit that the dealer knowingly sold him a Ford Escape that was faulty, then demanded an extra $4,000 to fix it.
Posting on a subreddit that regularly showcases bad dealership experiences, the user said that they trusted that the Ford Escape had been properly checked. That is required by state law, so they were happy to buy the SUV.
However, it didn’t take long for things to unravel. According to the car’s buyer, the couple noticed that there was an undisclosed broken taillight. While they shrugged that off and had it fixed, the Ford began to randomly misfire and refused to start on the first Monday that they owned the car.
Yet that wasn’t the end of their woes. Just a few days later, the problems got a lot worse. While driving to her parents’ house, the owner suddenly noticed that the car had overheated to an almost violent level. That is when they realized they had a big problem on their hands.
The Ford Escape Was a Mess Under the Hood
A car dealership screwed me and my husband over, and now we can’t figure out how to strike back. Please help us!
by
u/Strong_Relief_4923 in
FuckDealerships
The owner pulled over, and she took a look under the hood of the Ford Escape. When she opened it up, she realized that every single drop of coolant from the engine had gone, even though a few days before the car had been running seemingly okay. Not wanting to take any chances, the couple took the car to an independent mechanic to see what the damage to the Escape was.
It was there that they were delivered the bad news. The Escape’s engine was totaled, and it needed a brand new engine installed. “We took it in to the mechanic, and they told us, point blank, we needed a new engine. They told us it was very far gone, and the test they’d used to see if coolant was leaking into the engine cylinders actually caused it to be unable to start,” the owner said in her Reddit post. “They told us the spark plugs were literally seized in the vehicle and that the engine problem it was having was common to the vehicle,” she added.
The mechanic then said that they should take it straight back to the dealership and get it returned under warranty. Their mechanic believed it had definitely had this problem before the car was sold to the couple. Under the hood of the car was either a 1.5-liter or 2.0-liter EcoBoost engine. But both are prone to a “coolant intrusion” defect, meaning a design flaw allows coolant to bypass the engine block and leak straight onto the cylinders.
The Ramifications of This Major Failure
That failure can then lead to low coolant levels, misfires, overheating engines, and catastrophic engine failure. Class-action lawsuits are currently ongoing against Ford due to this problem. So the couple decided to try to get their money back from the dealership.
“We called the dealership/mechanic we bought it from, and they didn’t believe us and insisted we bring it in for their own inspection. We reluctantly did, as we didn’t trust them at all,” the owner said. “They called us back over a week later, and their only offer was to fix it for us for about 4k (original cost would’ve been 12k), which most would love, but we didn’t trust them anymore at all. We were very nice over the phone and asked, could we return it? We cannot afford this, but they said no,” she added.
In short, the couple felt they had been scammed. They then took their case to the Department of Transport (DOT), but a technicality with the paperwork made things worse. The car was sold at auction via the dealership, but because they didn’t sign paperwork stating the technical issue had been disclosed to the dealership, the DOT could not build a case against the dealership. At the time of writing, the couple is now stuck with the dead car and a vindictive dealership that is accusing them of ‘lying.”