Just FYI - Do not deal with these clowns.
Picture the snakiest used car dealer you've ever encountered. Thats Weiland Ford.
All plastic smiles while they're taking your money. Once they have it you get a big "EFF YOU!"
Not just from the dealers, but from the other two "separate companies" that all bad mouth each other - Ford Credit and Ford Customer Service. "One ford" really means everything until you've got a problem, then they're REAL fast to tell you they aren't the same company.
(Last time I checked, NYSE: F reported income from all three divisions.)
My beef with Weiland started at my first automatic payment. The $491 seemed a little high to what I was discussing in the dealership, which was $412. I looked at my paperwork and realized the $26000 I shook on had turned into $31000 I signed for. I called Steve, the guy who sold it to me and he said he would get back to me. Two whole days later he called me back saying there was nothing he could do and for me to forget about it. I remembered the conversation clearly, especially with the business manager, she said "good news! I can get you an aditional $750 off for being a recent graduate!" thats when I asked "so I'm only paying about $25000 with everything included?" she said confirmed my statement and got me to sign.
Yes, my fault for taking their word and not reading the paperwork.
I was later told by a customer service rep, I have 90 days to deal with a pricing issue. That was well past 90 days.
Not so bad, I could have avoided it by reading the contract before signing it.
Next, I needed to change my banking information, I called ford credit and asked how they wanted me to submit my new information. I was instructed to bring a void cheque into the dealership, I was told I had 22 days before my next payment was due which gave lots of time to make the switch. I took the cheque in that day. The receptionist took it and off I went, thinking all is good.
When the payment the next month didn't go through, I contacted ford credit again asking them what happened. They told me I didn't submit a new cheque and my payment came back NSF from the old account. I told them what happened and I was told it wasn't ford credit's fault, and to take it up with the dealership. That I did. The dealership said it wasn't them and to take it up with ford credit. So I called them back. This time I asked for a manager after about 5 minutes of "I'm very sorry, but we can't do anything for you here, its the dealerships fault, they do things like this all the time and the customers get mad at us..." - at the end of the day, the manager was set to waive the NSF charge, but as for the lost cheque, I had to take it up with the dealership. I've been bounced back and fourth, finally after two months and a 3rd cheque, we had the funds coming out of the correct account. My credit still took a blemish at Ford's hand's - which I'm still fighting for a resolution. All they have to do is send the amendment to equifiax or send me a letter of apology and let me do the leg work. I've gotten neither. Since then I've taken various loans and ford's blemish causes me to be a higher risk and therefore it costs me more to finance what I'd like.
Still, that wouldn't be enough to kill my business relationship, what happened next disturbed me as well as made me never want to be a part of the ford family ever again.
When I purchased the car, I was offered a set of locking nuts for a small price. Thinking how easy it would be to take my parelli tires, I took the bait. I didn't need to use the locking nut until a year after I bought the car. Until that time, it was in the filing cabinet with the ford paperwork. When I got a flat, I called a relative to pick it up and bring it to me so I could use it. It's the first time it's been outside my house, let alone used. We tried for 20 mins to get the nut to work. CAA came and tried. We got the car towed to the dealership and left it there.
Monday I get a call from the service manager saying the nut was stripped and a new one is $50. I told him it was the first time I had ever used it and he said "well you must have bent it."
Take a step back here. I'm not athletic, I can maybe bench press 75 lbs, the CAA guy would have been the strongest and he was about my size as well. I'm being told that I bent reinforced auto-part steel that is designed for 500+LB air pressure guns with my bare hands. After not taking no for an answer, I was told to call customer service. Surely they would see the hole in that story. After customer service "investigated" the situation. (took the opinion of the weiland service manager and went with it...) they told me I'd still have to pay for the nut. Fed up, I took the car to get the tires changed at another dealership and I told them about the locking nut situation. Two hours later, Parkway Ford calls me saying "well you didn't bend the nut, it's perfectly fine, its the completely wrong key." With my new info, I was sure Weiland would come clean.
I called the service manager, who after a few minutes said "I told you I'm not touching this one!" and hung up on me. Calling back, I was able to tell them about the other dealer's findings and they flat out said "I dont believe you." and hung up. Not even a consideration to verify those findings. Basically "screw you, we have your money, now if you dont pay us, we're going to repo the car, sure you and screw your credit."
Little do they know, that locking nut situation is enough to void the contract to purchase the vehicle. Especially with the recoded findings from the other dealership.
Still going back in fourth on that one. So far I've been told "I'm making stuff up." and "Life isn't fair, come to terms with that."
The final straw was when I complained about this on facebook, a dealer in the US saw it and apparently took it to heart, he wrote me an extremely rude and unprofessional message - insluting anyone whos had a financial issue in the past, and then proceeded to take my information from the ford systems to harass me. Getting text messages on my cell phone from him, pictures of my house send to me, being told "you'll see how a real new yorker handles things."
When I brought this extremely disturbing response to Ford, they simply said "dealers have nothing to do with ford customer service. we're sorry you are experiencing this."
Then how did that dealer have granted access to my personal information, Ford?
Did you give him the information to "make this problem go away?" (obviously not, but i wouldn't put it past them at this point...)
I contacted the local authorities in that dealer's area.
sending a threat like "showing me how a real new yorker does things" and then putting it into action through cellphone contact and seeing out my house information...is highly illegal.
Needless to say, I'm never ever buying another ford. Ever.
