What Goes On at the Dealership: You'll Be Surprised
"During the Bumper to Bumper Coverage period, your authorized Ford Motor Company dealer has the desire to ensure your complete satisfaction at no out-of-pocket cost to you." - Mustang Warranty Guide booklet (emphasis added)
Or do they? You might already know that dealerships get less money for performing a repair under warranty (in which Ford pays them for it) than they do if the customer gets the bill. The main reason for this is that Ford Motor Company guidelines set the number of labor hours that a given repair job takes, and this time figure is often grossly unrealistic. For example, it's rumored that the time figure for pulling and replacing an F-150 truck engine was developed using a Roush Racing pit crew; Ford officials stood by with a stopwatch. Though the truth of this particular tale can't be verified, it's common knowledge within the automotive community that many repairs performed at the dealership end up taking longer than Ford says they should.
Conversely, when a dealership's service department performs repair work with the customer footing the bill, there is no such Ford-specified limit on the amount of hours that can be written up. Dealerships have a monetary incentive to perform work on the customer's dollar instead of under warranty.
If this doesn't surprise you, check this out: Thanks to the hourly system set up by Ford and its dealerships, the mechanics themselves end up getting paid less for doing the same exact repair job under warranty than they would if the dealership were getting paid by the customer.
"It all starts with the mechanic," says Golick. "They are piecework people whose pay is graded on the amount of hours they produce. If they can sell the job at retail as opposed to the factory warranty rate, they have an incentive to do this, and sometimes they'll say they won't fix it under warranty."
And this is where aftermarket parts come into play. If the mechanic sees something aftermarket on your car that he doesn't like, he can sway the dealer by saying this item disqualifies you from warranty coverage on the job. Since people in the service department often have no idea about the mechanical aspects of a car, they'll just write things up and take the mechanic's word for it.
For a given warranty denial situation, then, the problem can be with a misinformed-or outright dishonest-mechanic who believes that aftermarket parts on a customer's car void warranty coverage. Whether or not this belief is genuine matters not, since either way he or she can conveniently get paid more for the fix by making the customer pick up the tab.
The fault isn't all with the dealership and its personnel, though, as Ford is continually getting more and more strict in terms of what repairs it'll cover. According to Joe Amato of Downs Ford, an SVT dealership in Toms River, New Jersey, "Ford has it set up now where, say, a customer comes in with a ripped molding in the interior; we actually have to take a digital picture and e-mail it to Ford and get an approval before we even order the parts. God forbid you need an engine; you have to go through about 20 steps before you can get an approval for it. Ford wants to know if the pulleys have been changed, if the mass air meter has been changed; they want to know everything and get pictures of everything. Ford, with how many claims they deny now, is saving itself millions of dollars. It's getting so strict that anything you do to the car, you're taking the chance of having to pay the bill yourself."
According to another dealership's warranty administrator, "If it's regular work, it's no problem. But if the car is having a transmission problem, or engine problem, then you have to call Ford on the phone and they ask you all kinds of stuff. It's enough if the rear tires are worn excessively-it's considered abuse, and they deny the claim. If you see something like this, it might jeopardize the claim, depending on whether Ford assumes it contributed to the failure or not. Most likely, if there is a chip in the PCM, or there are headers or pulleys, they'll most likely deny the claim because they'll say the car isn't being used as a regular car; it's being used for racing. They'll cancel the customer's warranty. They can also cancel the warranty on the engine only or the transmission only. They're very tight on money right now, so with all this new technology-computers, digital pictures, and so on-they can watch a lot of things from afar."
Amato elaborates, "But then again, it still all goes back to the dealer. There are a lot of dealers that don't get into performance whatsoever and always blame the part you've changed before they even figure out what the problem is. They're more apt to blame a computer chip for the windows not working than anything. They get real nervous when they see performance parts on the car because they just don't know; it's not something they're used to dealing with."