ZTWsquared,Apr 14 2007, 02:44 PM Wrote:

oldeguy,Apr 14 2007, 02:21 PM Wrote:Noticed a common thread throughout your post...crummy service from Ford.
It must be very frustrating to the people who build a Ford to have someone on the "team" screw it up for them.

It's almost like saying the car is great, but don't buy it new.
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Bang on ... but a common thread throughout the industry IMO. I bought two new Honda's in the mid-80's for my wife at the time (85 and 88) -- both were excellent cars, but based on my experience at a number of Honda dealers I swore in 1991 that I would never buy another Honda or Acura in my life - and frankly it's been easy to do so far.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but for all the crappy service I've rec'd at the Ford stores, and I've had my share, they haven't come close to p!ssing me off like the Honda boys did.
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OAC_Sparky,Apr 14 2007, 02:21 PM Wrote:

oldeguy,Apr 14 2007, 01:21 PM Wrote:Noticed a common thread throughout your post...crummy service from Ford.
It must be very frustrating to the people who build a Ford to have someone on the "team" screw it up for them.[right][snapback]234707[/snapback][/right]

Unfortunately, dealers and their employees are not Ford employees; any more than Walmart employees work for Nintendo -- yet Walmart sells Nintendo Wii's. Walmart buys Nintendo products form Nintendo, and sells them to the public; just like the dealer buys vehicles from Ford and sells them to the public.

You might ask, "What's the difference?" and to the customer, there isn't one. They unfortunately see the dealer as "the Face of Ford", rightly or wrongly. But the difference is that unlike a Ford employee; as a salesman or service rep, today you could be selling or servcing Fords, tomorrow you could be selling Nissans across the street ( or like in the USA, off the same lot ). There is an arm's length relationship, and in the end Ford has little real recourse against dealers that treat customers poorly.

Generally, my dealership experience has been ok; I 've dealt with more good dealers than bad; the only really bad one went out of business. Unfortunately for Ford, it only takes one bad dealer to sour the brand.
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darkpuppet,Apr 13 2007, 03:20 PM Wrote:not to mention that you don't know what you have until you miss it.. like a turning radius.. how is it that I'm hitting full lock on the taurus when driving in my underground parking?

I mean, that's never happened before.. hell, the mustang is a full half turn away from full lock... and you'd have to be drifting the focus to need full lock... suddenly, I know why taxi drivers do 3 point turns when they have 4 lanes worth of space to turn.  They want to, but they can't!
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