A month ago I bought a fiesta for my wife from a Ford Dealer. At the time they had a new-year sale on their warranties. The car is a 51-plate but the sale rep said he could provide a unlimited parts and labour warranty usual only available for cars less than 5 years, because this fiesta was low mileage. He also said all the cars were checked by the RAC and were service and MOT'd before sale.
We agreed to buy the car, paid a deposit and were told it would take a couple of days to bring the car to the garage and service it. We didn't see the car on the day we paid the deposit because it was at a storage depot. Normally I wouldn't have paid the deposit before seeing it but he assured us that it was RAC checked (else I would have got the RAC or AA to check it myself). On the deposit receipt it clearly say 'Premium warrenty', but nothing about the RAC check.
10 days goes by before the car is ready. When it is delivered it only has a limited warrenty, called 'plan B' (covering less and with £1000 limit). We phone to complain but the sales rep is on long term sick leave. Sales rep 2 says its impossible to administer the 'plan A' warrenty on this car and say we must have mis-understood. He offers us a free service instead. We then check the service log and it hasn't been serviced before we got it, so the they agree to service the car immediately (as well as the free service in a year).
Having driven the car around for a week we've noticed some unusual 'stuttering' when accerating in 4th + 5th (probably HT leads or ignition coil) and a rattling noise for the tapets. I checked the valve clearences myself (they were miles out!) and this has improved it slightly but having phoned the dealer it now turns out that it wasn't checked by the RAC (only their in-house mechanics). If I had know this I would not have bought the car.
I would expect these sorts of problems from a dodgey back-street dealer but this is a main Ford dealer. I'm tired of listening to excuses from their internal complains department. Surely there is someone we can report this to as a misleading sale? Any sensible advice?
(I know the Ka still used the Endura engine on the 1.3 model so I guess the smaller Fiestas were too...)
