Having taken delivery of our new Ford Fusion car on 20th December, we decided it would be a good idea to each have a set of keys - we always have in the past. So yesterday I went to the Ford main dealer to get them. I'd been told by the car salesman that the Parts Department would take car of that - "just pop in" and they'd supply them and activate them for me because neither DH or I were sure of the instructions in the owners manual.
You can imagine my reaction when I was charged 71 GB pounds for two keys, and was then told that I'd need to go to the Service Department to get them activated. The Service Department said the car would need to be booked in and hitched up to a computer to activate the keys. That would take about an hour and the charge would be a further 84 GB pounds. I my response to that could be heard in the next town! I 'phoned DH from the dealer to tell him the cost, and he thought I was joking. I protested, saying that according to the owner's manual it could be done in the car, and I that I hadn't yet completed the questionnaire from Ford on my satisfaction with the service I'd received from the dealer. They found the service manager who said he'd see if it could be done in the car as we already have one set of active keys. It took him over half an hour - 5 minutes to program the keys and the rest wasting time trying to start the car with one of the keys which had been wrongly cut by the Parts Department, getting it recut and then activating it. I wasn't charged for that - I don't think they'd have dared. The salesman is now quite certain what I think about the fact that he didn't tell us what new keys would cost when he said the Parts Department would sort that out for us. His only response was that if it had been a Ford Focus, the remote key would have cost 200 GB pounds and he didn't think telling us the cost of spares was part of his job. I'm going to write to Ford asking how they can justify 71 pounds for a couple of keys, one of which is a remote, when the remote control that operates both my TV and video recorder and carries out many more functions than the car key only costs a third of that. The main dealer is also getting a letter suggesting that the Service Department ought to know which cars/keys need to be activated by computer and which can be done in car, and that the Sales staff should have a list of the prices of 'blonde' accessories like car keys, manuals, floor mats, etc that customers can easily deal with themselves so they don't get the kind of shock I did. I'm so p****d of with main dealers that the Volkswagen dealer is getting a letter asking why they'd charged me 110 GB pounds NOT to solve the problem with cold starting I'd had on my 10-year old Polo because "the computer doesn't show there's anything wrong, so there isn't", was solved by my local friendly one-man garage for 25 GB pounds who cleaned the carburetta and replaced the cracked spark plug not noticed by the Volkswagen "technician", leaving the car starting and running perfectly. We sold the Polo to the ex-wife of the brother (also a car mechanic) of the one-man garage, who thinks it's absolutely wonderful, and, of course, has the connections to get anything fixed for free. End of rant. Jean in Poole To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
