01-2013 Service Visit from Hell - 2013 Ford CMax Hybrid

Still not caught up with all events.  I can only post periodically, so I hope to get up to date very soon.  Today I will describe my service visit from hell.  In case you did not read my previous post, I am working with a Customer Service Manager (CSM) from Ford Motor Company because I have been experiencing several different problems with my 2013 Ford CMax Hybrid, and she helped arrange for me to bring my car in to a local Ford Dealership for service on Monday, January 21st.  Please read my previous post for the list of items I asked Ford to investigate.

I received a phone call about 9:20am on the 22nd from my CSM.  She informed me that she had spoken with the service manager and he informed her that they were working on each issue, one at a time.  The CSM stated to me that she wanted all issues fixed before returning the car to me, but that it may take several days.  She told me she would call me again on Friday, or sooner if the car had been fixed by then.

I called the service guy that same day (the 22nd) at about 4pm for a status update since I figured they probably managed to get through the list by then.  He didn't answer the phone, so I left a voicemail with my name and phone number asking him to call me back.

On the 23rd, at 9:10am I called the service guy again.  Again, he did not answer the phone so I left another voicemail with my name and phone number.

At 9:15 am, I called the main number and asked to speak with the service manager.  He wasn't available, but I was redirected to some other service guy who immediately placed me on hold.  After waiting a long time, I hung up and called again.  I got that same service guy, but this time he told me he would check with the service guy assigned to my car.  I was placed on hold for a few minutes, but eventually he came back and informed me that my guy was with another customer and could not talk right now.  He did say that he wanted to speak with me though, so I was placed back on hold.  At 9:25am, my service guy picked up my call, and began to go through the list of items and results of their diagnostics.

In a nutshell, the technicians were unable to reproduce the majority of issues I had reported.  One item they were able to confirm involved the check gas cap warning, but alas, the part necessary to repair it was on back order, and they had no idea when it would become available.  When pressed for a guess, I was told that it might become available in March but even that was just a guess.

He ran down the rest of the list, and as he did so, I became more and more unhappy.  They could not reproduce any of the other issues, and it appeared that the response they had for each was that it was either "normal behavior", or "perhaps I hadn't done something "just right"".  I became rather insulted by this, so I simply asked when I could pick up the car, and he said as soon as possible because he wanted it off his lot.  (If they were so hot to get it off their lot, why didn't they call ME instead of waiting for me to call THEM?)

I picked up the car that afternoon, and the very first thing I noticed was that the User Guide had been left prominently on the passenger seat.  Whether this was done on purpose or not, I was immediately insulted by the notion that perhaps I should just read the manual (or perhaps, the technicians were so ignorant of how the car worked, THEY needed the manual to help them out and simply forgot to put it back in the glove box?).  I read the manual cover-to-cover the first week I had the car, and I am no idiot, so this really pissed me off. 

I next noticed that all my saved "Favorites" for navigation destinations were no longer saved within the car's computer system, and that all my phone contacts had also been wiped out.  I was pretty sure this was a side effect of something they did, but since I hadn't read the entire report yet, I wasn't certain.  I just wanted to get out of there.  I knew those two things were things I could remedy myself simply by synching my phone, and re-entering the addresses of the places I wanted to keep in my list of Favorites.

It just so happened that this day, the 23rd, was also my son's birthday, and he and his girlfriend had invited me over for dinner, so I was very happy I no longer had to drive the rental Yaris with the Cyclops dashboard.  The temperature was beginning to drop again, and the wind was picking up.  I used the remote start to warm up the car before heading to his new home.  My little girl and I went out to the car which had stopped running at this point due to the remote start timer, got in, I placed my foot on the brake, pressed the start button, and ONCE AGAIN THE CAR DID NOT START.  Funny how I have no trouble reproducing this problem, but the technicians just can't seem to do it.  I tried starting the car again and, thankfully, this time it started. 

While driving off to my son's home for dinner, I decided that I needed to review everything the technician's had listed they had done, and then call my CSM again to determine what steps we could take next.  One of those, I determined, was going to be for me to start keeping a log of everything that went wrong as I experienced it, and also log discussions I had with people during phone calls.....