I purchased an OEM (Ford Motor Company) Certified Used Car from Courtesy Ford back in February (11 months ago). The Ford model is 2003 Windstar. The Certified Used Car program offered by the Ford Motor Company, for authorized Ford Dealerships, is suppose to certify that the car has gone though an arduous 115 point check of it's soundness and road worthiness.
We were told by multiple Courtesy Ford representatives that because of this Certification that only the best used cars (above the standard) were allowed to be certified. I asked our Sales representative (Jeremy) and the Sales manager (Tim) if this vehicle had ever been in an accident. I was told repeatedly by the Courtesy Ford representatives that the car had not been wrecked and that if it had been, it would not have qualified for the Ford Motor Company certification.
The Ford Certified car is marketed as being of such exceptional quality that the FORD MOTOR Company (not the dealer but the manufacturer) doubles the original 3years / 36,000 miles warranty to a 6 years/75,000 miles and claims the care is better than NEW! We also purchased an additional extended warranty for the vehicle up to 7 years / 100k miles.
I discovered while shopping for car insurance that the Windstar had been in a MAJOR accident where a very LARGE claim had been paid out by State Farm Insurance, to the previous owner. I contacted Courtesy Ford. And spoke with the General Manager. The General Manager could not explain WHY a car which had been wrecked in a MAJOR head-on collision, would have been a candidate for their Certification program. He wanted to know where we had gotten our information. Then he said, Well Carfax doesn't show it! We then told him we wanted return the Windstar and get our money back. But the General Manager was not interested. His offer was to sell us another vehicle!!!
I had taken the Windstar to Carmax to find out what possible options we had on the car. Carmax stated the Windstar would not even be a car their company would consider purchasing, due to the structural damage of the car.in addition, the value of the Windstar, as a result of the structural damage is significantly less than our purchase price of $17,900. The Windstar is actually only worth $7,200!!! Carmax was able to determine this after a 10 minute inspection.
I did get intouch with Randy Morris, the Dealership owner and he has refused to take the car back.instead he has offered a collateral swap. This was three months ago and no one from his organization has ever presented a single vehicle to me for consideration.
I filed a complaint with Ford Motor Company and they responded with a form letter.
DO yourself a favor and stay far away from THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY, COURTESY FORD CONYERS and Coutersy LINCOLN in Decatur.
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