Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi

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Mon 27 Sep 2010 10:40
Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - injection doc

My Wifes 1.6 TDCi Zetec has just past its three year mark and first MOT having just covered 20K.

Well its been three years trouble free motoring with just one glitch with a cooling fan relay stick on, but rectyfied in one fix by the ford dealer with no issues at all.

Now its covered 20 K the fuel consumption is improving and we covered 279 miles on thursday with 200 on motorway & 79 all town work, filled back up at the same fuel pump on the same forcourt untill the fuel was level with the neck & it took 22 lts dead so averaged 60.1 to the gallon and that was with good motorway speed just trying to crack on for the day. In fact we have been so pleased with the reliability & economey and the tourque which makes it a pleasure to drive we have taken out extended warranty with Ford & decided to keep.

I have never had to top up with Oil in between services and the engine is so willing and quiet, very different from our previous 1.4 TDCi. I also have to say the body work is so much more substantial than our peugeout that in three years we are still car park ding free which is a result, as a ding used to appear in the 206 everytime we parked it ! it was like a pepsi can!

Happy Ford Customer

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Mon 27 Sep 2010 11:12
Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - angryman

Wow, that is incredible.You sure are a happy Ford customer!

I think that Ford are a pile of s***. Their customer service is dismal. Their dealer network is incompetent. They make a huge mark-up on replacement parts.

My Sob story: It cost me £1300 to replace the Continental Teves Mk60 ABS pump that was fitted to my Ford Focus because it failed only 10 months outside of warranty. Ford refuse to acknowledge that this was caused by a manufacturing defect; when many on this forum and elsewhere on the web will vouch that it is.

What a truly marvellous company. What an incredible car. b******s.

Unhappy Ford customer.

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Mon 27 Sep 2010 11:40
Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - injection doc
I'm sorry to hear about your ABS saga but there was always a choice of purchasing extended warranty which would have covered major items such as the ABS failure. Warranty is warranty and many manuafctures follow suit now, even if its a TV or washing machine and many take a hard line due to the fact that extended warranties are optional. I also belive that VW have dire trouble with their ABS units and have many dissatisfied customers as well.
I also know how it hurts as i had trouble with the wiper linkage on my L/rover when it was 18 months old but L/rover insisted i had to pay for a replacement as i had used it in the snow ! ( laughable for a 4x4 ) however i did fine another dealer who then fixed the problem FOc so partly can be down to dealers as well.
I have to say my Ford Dealer has been very good in every aspect of service & repair.
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Mon 27 Sep 2010 13:46
Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - angryman

Sure, warranty is warranty and Sale of Goods Act is Sale of Goods Act.

They take a hard line with extended warranties, so dealer clowns (on the whole) can service/repair your vehicle and they can screw you for even more money. Excuse my cynicism, although, I feel it is well justified.

I have written five letters in exchanges with Ford customer services and their Technical department. They don't answer the majority of your questions. The standard of their English is, well, 'hurried' and waffly; so much so that you don't understand the point that they are trying to convey in defence of this stupid ABS unit. All they do is state that the warranty has expired - 'so tough luck'!

I've washed my hands of trying to squeeze a dime from Ford, so it’s with the credit card company. Wish me luck! At least VW has offered goodwill recently. I’m led to believe the only charge is 50% labour costs. Preferable to £1300, I think.

I believe that the true test of a product/service is the after-sales support. It may have been fun times for you and your Ford up until till now, but I hope to God that you never have a problem that requires good customer service from said company. Then you're screwed.

By the way, my local Ford dealer doesn't know how to do an oil change.

Maybe my standards and expectations are too high?

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Mon 27 Sep 2010 20:31
Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - Glenn 42

Another reason why I would never buy Ford even if most of the current range of cars are good. Most of the local dealerships have been bought up by a chain notorious for terrible customer care, inventing work during service time and in some cases leaving people with their cars in a worse state than when they sent thim in for repair.

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Tue 28 Sep 2010 02:05
Ford Fiesta hatchback - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - Avant

Fords are basically well-designed, well-built cars, but in any mass-production outfit there will be rogue units.

Ford's real trouble is that most of their dealers are parts of a chain, where as you say above customer care is minimal in the pursuit of misguided short-term gain. For similar reasons mechanics are given ludicrously short timescales to do jobs ans (my particular gripe) service receptionists are pen-pushers with no knowledge of what goes on in the workshop.

But they survive because most of their sales are to fleet managers whose only motivation is discounts and not the service that the car users will get from the dealer.

Finding a good dealer - ideally one owned by a family - is important enough to sway one's choice of car. It's one of the reasons Skodas sell so well.

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Thu 30 Sep 2010 05:06
Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - SteveLee

£1300 for an ABS unit? (which goes wrong on lots of other makes of car, VW included who use the same crap Teves unit on some of their cars.) Citroën wanted £1100+ VAT for a backbox on my C5, expensive I presume because it's a rare V6 petrol and the KwikFit mob don't offer an alternative. That's expensive! Especially as it's a paper-thin, mild steel rot box of an exhaust that didn't last two years. Your ABS unit looks positively cheap in comparison!

I didn't buy the Citroën backbox in the end, I bought an aftermarket Sebring one for £200 which is beautiully crafted weighting about 4x more than the o/e unit - it'll probably last 10+ years.

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Thu 30 Sep 2010 13:53
Ford Fiesta Saloon - 3 years with ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi - angryman
That’s ridiculous for an exhaust back-box! I thought Land Rover parts were expensive, until I met Ford, Citroën et al.

The saying "you can polish a turd and put it in a box, but it's still a turd in a box" expresses my contempt pretty accurately with regard to this ABS unit. It’s a rather expensive mass-produced turd though. IIRC £1100 of the £1300 was material cost of the part. It’s pretty obvious from this, I think, that Ford are making a huge mark-up.

I suspect the difference between a Ford Teves mk 60 unit and a VW Teves mk 60 unit, for example, is few bits set in memory locations of the embedded computer system to inform the unit of the specification of the vehicle it is inteded to be installed in. For my Focus you can’t buy it from anywhere other than Ford. I suspect this is the same for other manufacturers.

My point here is at least you have the choice of aftermarket parts when it comes to items such as exhausts. The options with the Teves mk60; a) get it repaired (potentially by a bunch of cowboys? (BBA reman etc) b) get a new replacement. I try to do the responsible thing bearing in mind that it’s brakes. So option b). Thus, no choice but to buy it from Ford. It’s probably anti-trust; unfortunately I don’t have time to fight the world.

p.s. £1100 +VAT = £1292.50 + cost of fitting. Yes, slightly more expensive. Doesn’t make ABS unit look cheap though! Looking on the bright side though, at least I got a nice box for my turd, you would’ve just got a box made of turd. ;-)
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