Sands Ford of Red Hill — Local services in Red Hill

Quite simply the worst service center I have ever dealt with. My truck broke down on a Friday, I already had an oil change scheduled for Saturday at 10am before the breakdown even happened. I called Saturday for an update on my truck at 12:30 and they hadn’t even started working on it yet. They found it appropriate to not work on it until the end of the day, just so that they wouldn’t have time to diagnose it until Monday, I’m guessing so that they could charge me for another hour of labor in the diagnosing process. Monday rolls around and these clowns figure out first thing in the morning that my truck needs a new battery before they can even diagnose it. However their less than acceptable communication skills failed me and they never called to tell me that until I called them at 4:00pm that Monday. Now I would think that it only takes 5 minutes to determine that a battery needs replacement and a quick phone call to let me know that so they can continue to diagnose the issue with my truck would be proper. That was not the case. Not only did I have to babysit these service guys every step of the way, THEY COULD NOT EVEN MANAGE TO COMMUNICATE WITH THEIR TECHS THAT I TOLD THEM I WANTED A NEW BATTERY IN MY TRUCK SO THEY COULD FIGURE OUT THE ISSUE. So here I am Monday night thinking that I’m gonna be getting a call first thing Tuesday morning with a report on the issue with my truck, I was mistaken. I never got a call that day. Wednesday morning first thing I call to check in, and as I previously mentioned, they never told their techs that I wanted a battery in my truck. So Wednesday they told me that they forgot to tell the techs that I wanted a new battery and they would get right on it. It took them until 2:30 Wednesday to finally diagnose it and then they could get my vehicle back up and running that afternoon. Just for a little back story I have a 2019 F150 XLT with only 56K on it and somehow the alternator already was bad on it. When I asked the service guy how it was possible to already have a bad alternator on a vehicle that was barely broken in he says “oh it’s likely just wear and tear”. That answer in itself could not have been more frustrating seeing that MY TRUCK ONLY HAS 56K ON IT AND IS BARELY BROKEN IN. Seemingly just as frustrating for me was that it wasn’t covered under warranty (of course they won’t cover it because a stealership like this has to milk every ounce of money out of their customers). Now this review may sound like I have no understanding for schedules and the fact that they, like most other service centers are jam packed with work. However, if they had simply started my truck at 10am that Saturday for the oil change like it was scheduled too be, they would’ve been able to have enough time to call me saying I needed a new battery (which they stock) and they would’ve had enough time to put in the new alternator (which they also stock) after diagnosing. But I guess it’s to much to assume that a service center that is supposed to be professional and well rounded at communicating with their customers do just that. So after all this and their failure’s to communicate with me the service manager felt great giving me $150 off my final bill. What a lovely amount of savings for me. Thank you Ford for your amazing...

We bought a truck over the weekend at Sands Ford.

It should have been an indication after we first got there and we were waiting. One of the sales associates received a call, put the customer on hold and called over to one of the sales managers and said “your favorite customer is on the phone and wants to talk to you”. The sales manager said tell him I’m busy and that’s exactly what the associate did. Told the customer he was “busy helping other customers”, which was a lie because the place was empty. So if you called about 1:15pm on Saturday 11/23, that’s what happened.

The sales manager Derek was another less than impressive figure at the dealership. Didn’t address my fiancé when going over numbers, which she wasn’t too happy about and I don’t blame her. Also, once the paperwork was done, we had asked about a second key a couple times, but everyone kept telling us Derek is the one that can help and they’ll talk to him. We kept getting passed off until the end as we were leaving we got to ask Derek this time. He got aggravated and said there’s nothing he can do. The car got traded with one key and that’s what you get. We followed up and asked if they could help out and get a key? Derek said you have to go to your local ford dealer. I ask “isn’t this a Ford dealer”. Derek, very red faced by this point, says I don’t have money in every deal to get keys for every car we get. We just don’t have the money in it. Realizing that he just didn’t want to be bothered with it, we left. If I would have had to pay for it, whatever. I just wanted to find out the avenue to get one. Derek was a piece of work.

I’ve been a Ford guy for a while and have a few Ford vehicles. It seems this trend is not isolated when going to a Ford dealer. If you have the choice and are looking to buy, I would avoid this place.

The positive of the experience was that the finance lady was great. Very friendly and made that part of the process extremely easy.

The sales team should take notes from her on customer service.

Ian was good. No complaints there, but if I was that dealership, I would take a hard look at those sales managers. Derek should not be in front...

We scheduled my son's 2017 Fusion for a preventative maintenance transmission fluid flush and fill as they are notorious for becoming dirty early and leading to premature failure. Instead of draining any fluid they added to it and the fluid was still black and thin. How did we know? The high pressure caused the trans to push the transmission fluid out through the site plug and spray it all over the inside of the engine, hood and onto the driver's side wheel, suspension and brakes . Smoke was actually pouring out from under the hood and from under the car. The car began to throw error codes which we could read with an OBD 2 scanner we had. My son took it back a second time, the service manager supposedly checked it and they still said there was nothing wrong!! The situation was blamed on 'modifications' to the car which include lowering springs, aftermarket exhaust and a cold air intake, none of which presented any problems for the last 20k miles. Ultimately, we took it to another shop who confirmed that:

The fluid was in fact dirty and did not appear changed but added to It was overfilled The car's computer was in a panic over all the pressure causing codes.

We have bought 3 cars there in the past 5 years, so would not expect this treatment even regardless of that. BTW, they charged us both times as well for essentially nothing. And finally, we were never offered an explanation or apology for 3 trips to them and the inconvenience and potential damage to the transmission this may have caused. All for a preventative maintenance issue. We will never be...