May 8, 2008 5:00 pm US/Pacific
Peeling Paint A Costly Problem For Ford Owners
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―
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A ConsumerWatch viewer had problems with peeling paint on a Ford Expedition like the one showed here.
Ford
Cars take a good deal of upkeep, but in California, you shouldn't be worrying about repainting a car that's just 5 years old.
T he CBS5 ConsumerWatch team was able to get a new paint job for a woman whose Ford Expedition started peeling several months before it turned 5. Janet Behr's family owns 8 Fords. If she wasn't so meticulous about its upkeep, washing it by hand herself, she wouldn't have noticed the rusting roof.
"I wanted to get up there and take a little cloth and go in between the grooves, and when i got up there i saw peeling paint," Behr told CBS5. An auto body shop found her SUV had absolutely no primer. Her insurance company sent a sample of the paint to a lab and confirmed the discovery.
"If you don't have a primer then the metal, the paint will not adhere to the metal," Behr says she was told. The repairs would cost $1,500. Her local Ford dealership, Walnut Creek Ford, offered to cover half the expense, but Behr didn't think she should have to pay anything at all. She contacted Ford Headquarters, but couldn't get them to pay for the paint job.
"For $1,500 they're being rather pennywise, pound foolish, because in the next couple of years we will buy another pick-up," Behr claimed.
Behr went online and found a website documenting case after case of Fords with peeling paint. Frustrated, Behr called the volunteers at CBS5 ConsumerWatch. After a phone call to Ford, the car company agreed to cover the repair costs.
Behr has had her car repainted. Ford has not said that the paint problem is a defect.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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