2022 Escape had door welds prgm#23B56

[bobbyd]

Just received Customer satisfaction program notice #23B56 about certain 2022 Escapes with potentially cracked check-arm reinforcement welds. Bad robot!

[92merc]

Got the same notice for my 2020 Escape.  Haven't called to make an appointment yet.

[MrCurvedLimos]

I got the same notice for my 2023 Escape. 

[Kingi]

Any further news on the door welds program? I've heard that if they fail the only way to fix is by replacing the entire door and that raises the question as to who pays, Ford or the owner?

[akirby]

9 hours ago, Kingi said:

Any further news on the door welds program? I've heard that if they fail the only way to fix is by replacing the entire door and that raises the question as to who pays, Ford or the owner?

Sometimes they extend the warranty as part of the customer Sat program.  If not then the normal warranty applies.  Unless it turns into a recall.

[MrCurvedLimos]

I recently got a letter from Ford about this recall / customer satisfaction program, saying that a fix is now available for people with broken doors, and a reinforcement kit is available for people whose doors haven't broken yet. "Your vehicle will receive either a reinforcement kit or a full door replacement," it says, and "Ford strongly recommends that you bring your vehicle in for repairs as soon as possible."

 

I'm in the "doors haven't broken yet," category, so I called my dealer and scheduled an appointment to have the service done. Later in the day, I got a voicemail from the service manager assigned to me, saying that if my doors aren't broken, there's really nothing they can do, and the body shop is backed up 6 weeks for fixing doors. So I canceled the appointment. 

 

A couple weeks went by, and I decided to stop in at the dealer and talk to them. See if I could just schedule an appointment 6 weeks out for the body shop, and take it in on the appointed day. I talked to a different service manager, and she told me it's a whole big process because they contract out their body work to an independent shop. (Which is kind of a surprise, since it's a big dealership in a chain with locations across the country.) She said I'd have to schedule an appointment at the dealer, they'd have to do an inspection, send information to Ford, Ford would have to review the application and then either approve or deny the service, and if they approved it, THEN the dealer could schedule a service with the body shop, which would probably be 2 months out. Plus she said the service is pretty invasive because they have to remove the doors, cut out the door pillars, and weld in new metal to reinforce the check arms. Just the whole way she described the process, every sentence was designed to sound awful and dissuade an owner from wanting to pursue the service. 

 

I'm curious what other people are finding on this check arm reinforcement program? Are you getting similar pushback from other dealers? Are the pre-damage reinforcements being performed readily, or only begrudgingly? The letter said, "Your vehicle *will* receive either a reinforcement kit or a full door replacement" (emphasis mine)... does Ford ever deny the application, if that's what the process really is? What should I do next... insist the dealer do the work? Go to a different dealer? Any thoughts welcome. 

[92merc]

I'm in the "my door is broke" category.  It's been almost a year and Ford still hasn't provided me a new door.  They said they'd do the passenger door bracket at the same time.  

 

I would like to have my trans fluid, PTU, and diff fluid all changed.  I think I'm going to make them do the passenger door fix at the same time.

 

The bracket on my driver door was flopping around inside the door.  I got tired of waiting for them to get me a new door.  I watched a YT video on installing rivets to hold the broken bracket to the door.  So that's what I did.  Drilled a bunch of holes and put in rivets.  Unless you're looking, you can't see them.  But still kinda pisses me off.  Shouldn't be taking this long.  They're still making the Escape for cripes sake.