MikeW

Who should I contact? A dealer or does ford have a customer service line I should reach out to directly?

I have all the original paperwork, for the repair, and purchase of the vehicle. To be clear I purchased it from a chevy dealer 500 miles away, this dealer is not the one that did the botched repair, that was another Ford dealer, in the same area. I had been looking for a good deal on this vehicle for months, usually i'd buy closer to home, just were non available in my area. It looks like when my local dealer did this repair they replaced the entire drive shaft and some associated small parts.. the drive shaft was like 900$ and there was another 150$ in parts, the rest was labor. Every since the repair the transmission feels weird at low speeds too, sometimes in stop-and go traffic it feels like I get a kick in the ass, random, jerky behavior in 1st gear. I don't recall this issue before the repair, (just vibration), though to be fair, I'd only had the truck 2 weeks and put maybe 800 miles on it. I've now owned it about 4 months, and have put 2k miles on it Edit: I just checked my VIN and there is indeed a new recall for the drive shaft again. I had checked previously and there were no "Open" recalls. This is crazy I thought they already came out with a permenant fix for the 2015 transit's, why are they still issuing temp-fix letters? the way it's worded seems to make it clear that there is not a permanent fix. Odd.

cloneable transponder chips are actually more expensive then fixed type. Usually clones are done in a retail enviroment, it's much easier to train an employee in a shop setting to use a cloner then how to use expensive diagnostic tools (that are likely already on a service truck in the field). It also eliminates a whole lot of variables for the person doing it, as they don't have to worry about damaged OBD ports, blown fuses, low batteries, etc.

I am a locksmith, in case anyone is wondering, it cost about 40k to start a small locksmith business with the ability to cut car keys that people complain cost to much. That said - duplicates can often be had for ~150$, depending if you want remote capability or not. We can often times make a key with no remote for 90-120$ and Remote head keys can be 150-200$. Our trade takes years to master, with ten's of thosands of dollars in equipment folks. Next time you want to buy your own super cheap key from who knows where on ebay and expect a locksmith to program it for nothing, keep that in mind. Most people don't know that ford and dealers are NOT our friend. There are no "Official" diagnostic tools available for locksmiths, and manufacturer's literally fight us at every turn, the whole industry is reverse engineered. They want you to pay for a TOW at Midnight, on Chrismas Eve, to a dealer and wait a week for your keys. Hey Ford - that's not a tenable situation for most of my customers.

Hello, I recently purchased a Used 2015 Transit, I had to travel 500 miles to the dealer to pick it up. Vehicle was super clean, around 110k miles. I purchased it and drove it home (6 hour drive). After a couple weeks I noticed a vibration at low speeds, I took it to a local dealer and they then told me the drive shaft was damaged, and said it would be covered under Recall. They kept my new service truck for 2 weeks, and called me and told me that the Recall had already been completed by another dealer (600 miles away) 9 months ago, and that ford would not "repair the vehicle again". This was after they had my truck, for over 2 weeks, and had already told me it was a recall claim. This left me two options, pay out of pocket to repair the drive shaft, or drive the broken vehicle 600 miles back to the original dealer, who apparently botched the repair job, wait who knows how long for repair's of a service vehicle, and drive back to get it. Im trying to run a business here, this was an untenable option. I opted to pay out of pocket for the repair, to the tune of 1200$ (discounted from 1600$) Now... a mere 2 months later, I get another Recall notice, explaining that the old repair was no good, and I need to come back every 40k miles for a re-do. The vin has now been, apparently "re-flagged" as "recall status" and ford would now "pay" for this repair. How irritating. Do I have any recourse here?